Using data from a 1986 survey of employers and a 1982-83 survey of union organizers, the authors investigate the determinants and consequences of employer opposition to union organizing drives. They find that strong management opposition, as evidenced by, for example, the filing of formal...

This study investigates the impact of unionization on closures of firms, business lines, and establishments. Analyzing data from two major data sets-one (from the COMPUSTAT files) on the union status of solvent and insolvent enterprises and business lines, and one (obtained by matching files...

This study analyzes the consent decree of 1974 that reformed plant seniority systems in basic steel to resolve problems of equal employment opportunity. The author argues that the major factors leading to the negotiation of this industrywide decree were the large number of plant-level suits...

This study estimates the effects of unionism on the compensation of firefighters through regression analysis of cross-section data for over 1,000 cities and for pay before and after the advent of formal bargaining in 300 to 500 cities. The author concludes that there is a greater union effect on...

This paper analyzes the effects of bargaining law characteristics on rates of unionization in over 10,000 local government departments, representing five different government services, that were without bargaining units in 1977. Duty-to-bargain laws significantly increased the probability of...

This paper investigates the effects of association-style unionism on union membership. In a 1984 Harris poll examining workers' attitudes toward various forms of employee organization, nearly half of all nonunion workers indicated they would join an association, but most of these potential...

This paper uses longitudinal data provided by a large unionized grocery store chain to examine the relationship between profitability and compensation adjustments between 1976 and 1985. Consistent with the predictions of a Nash bargaining model, negotiated compensation adjustments were inversely...

This study explores the strengths and weaknesses of economic reasoning in explaining, and suggesting remedies for, the stubborn presence of racketeering in New York City construction. In this industry, the authors argue, transactions cannot be conducted efficiently either between a large number...

This study develops and tests a production function that includes a plant's grievance filing rate as a determinant of productivity. Application of that function to data on nine unionized paper mills for 1976-82 shows that the more grievances that were filed in a mill, the lower that mill's...

This paper examines the effects of a set of nonwage job characteristics on the quit decisions of young and middle-aged men. The data set was constructed by merging data in the National Longitudinal Surveys of Young and Mature Men with data from the Dictionary of Occupational Titles file and the...