The authors use British establishment-level data from the 1991 Employers' Manpower and Skills Practices Survey (EMSPS) and individual-level data from the Autumn 1993 Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) to investigate the links between training provision and workplace unionization. Both the...

The authors hypothesize that the effectiveness of external threats in raising workers' effort is mediated by, among other labor market conditions, the presence or absence of a powerful union. In particular, they argue that because powerful unions reduce the potency of the external threat of job...

The authors examine trends in nonwage aspects of job quality in Europe. They focus on both the level and the dispersion of job quality. Theories differ in their predictions for these trends and for whether national patterns will converge. Data from the Fifth European Working Conditions Survey...

The author investigates the evolution of job skill distribution using task data derived from the U.K. Skills Surveys of 1997, 2001, and 2006, and the 1992 Employment Survey in Britain. He determines the extent to which employee involvement in the workplace and computer technologies promote the...

The authors use British workplace data for 1980-98 to examine whether increased human resource management (HRM) practices coincided with union decline, consistent with the hypothesis that such practices act as a substitute for unionization. Two initial analyses show no important differences...

This paper examines the structure of wages in a very specific labor market: care assistants in residential homes for the elderly on England's "sunshine coast." This sector corresponds closely to economists' notion of what should be a competitive labor market, both because it has a large number...

This examination of establishment-level data from the Workplace Industrial Relations Surveys of 1980, 1984, and 1990 shows that the proportion of British establishments (that is, workplaces in both the private and public sector) that recognized unions for collective bargaining over pay and...

Using data on Wages Council coverage from the United Kingdom New Earnings Survey, the authors examine the impact of mandated minimum wages on wage dispersion and employment in the United Kingdom in the 1980s. They find evidence that a dramatic decline in the toughness of the regulation imposed...