The Impact of Collective Bargaining: Illusion or Reality?

This paper reviews a significant body of evidence regarding the impact of trade unionism on economic performance and seeks to evaluate antithetical views regarding whether estimated differences between union and nonunion workers and firms represent: illusions created by poor experiments, real effects explicable solely in price-theoretic terms, or real effects which reflect the non wage-related dimensions of trade unions. The review yields conclusions on both the substantive questions at hand and the methodologies which have been used to address their validity. With respect to the illusion/reality debate, the preponderance of extant evidence indicates that union effects on a wide variety of economic variables estimated with cross-sectional data are real. Moreover, since the effects of unions on nonwage outcomes generally come from models which hold fixed the level of wages and variables affected by wages, the evidence supports the view that unions do much more than simply raise wages as an economic monopolist. While, in this study, we do not examine interpretations of these nonwage effects, the effects represent an empirical foundation for the "institutional" view of unionism, which is described in Section I. With respect to methods for evaluating the quality of standard cross-sectional experiments, some techniques appear more useful than others. In particular, we find that sensitivity analyses of single-equation results and longitudinal experiments provide valuable checks on cross-sectional findings while multiple-equations approaches produce results which are much too unstable to help resolve the questions of concern.

New Estimates of the Industrial Locus of Unionism in the United States

This study presents new estimates of collective bargaining coverage and union membership for detailed U.S. industries. It compares the new coverage and membership figures with each other and with figures derived by researchers for the early 1960's and analyzes the divergences. This analysis leads to three primary conclusions:1) Estimated coverage percentages are on average higher than estimated membership percentages; 2) This relationship is primarily the result of the absence of union security clauses (under which covered employees must at some point become union members); 3) Even among production workers within detailed industries, private sector unionism has been dwindling during the past two decades.

Higher Level Moral Principles in Argumentation

Suppose two persons disagree over whether an act is right, justifying their judgments by appealing to divergent higher-level moral principles. These principles function as backing and rebuttals in their argumentation. To justify these principles, we may argue either that they would be accepted in some ideal model or that they are in reflective equilibrium with our considered moral judgments. Disagreement over the model indicates difference in philosophical anthropology but does not preclude resolution through argument