The percentage of the U.S. work force that is unionized is at its lowest level in more than 50 years. Although many studies have sought the reasons for this decline, few have investigated characteristics of unions themselves as possible factors. This paper focuses on unions as organizations, and...

Although it is commonly argued that unions need to innovate in order to grow and achieve success, little is known about the characteristics of unions that facilitate or hinder innovation. The authors of this study develop a model of union innovation and test it using data collected from many...

Analyzing data from the Union Image Survey (a 1984 Harris poll examining workers' attitudes toward various forms of employee organization), the authors compare the motives and characteristics of workers who expressed a desire to join an associate membership program with those of workers who...

The authors investigate whether, as commonly believed, union members and their families strongly support the political candidates endorsed by union leaders. Using 1978 data on U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives, and gubernatorial races, they find that union members, and to a lesser...

This study uses Bacharach and Lawler's behavioral theory of bargaining to derive hypotheses about the impact of strikes and compulsory interest arbitration on teacher salaries. Those hypotheses are tested with data sets on Illinois and Iowa school districts and on a national sample of teachers...

The authors use union contract and laboratory experiment data to assess whether the distinction between mandatory and permissive bargaining subjects affects collective bargaining outcomes. In general, the findings suggest that the distinction has an impact. The contract analysis suggests that...

A survey of fifty years of research on the Wagner and Taft-Hartley Acts reveals that researchers' conclusions about the NLRA and its enforcement have generally depended upon their perceptions of the law's purpose; most researchers do not seem to consult relevant research outside their own...

Recent studies have investigated arbitrator decision rules in both experimental and field settings. The authors of this paper evaluate the external validity of experimental studies by comparing the decisions made in an experiment with those made in actual cases by the same arbitrators. The...

This study examines the role of wage comparability in the decisions of arbitrators in final offer wage disputes between Wisconsin teachers and school boards in 1977-86. The authors find that wage increases agreed to earlier in the bargaining round by comparable school districts (specifically,...