Union-N onunion Wage Differentials in the Public Administration, Educational, and Private Sectors: 1970-1983.

Abstract

Over the past thirty years, union membership and bargaining activity in the United States has been declining in the private sector and rising in the public sector. The authors use two large micro databases to estimate changes in the union wage premium among public administration, education, and private sector workers for the decade of the 1970s and early 1980s. Their empirical analysis indicates that the union relative wage effects continue to be lower in the public sector than in the private sector, despite the relative gains in public sector union membership and bargaining activities. Copyright 1987 by MIT Press.