The University of Southampton
University of Southampton Institutional Repository

The influence of the Union on working hours, wages and employment

The influence of the Union on working hours, wages and employment
The influence of the Union on working hours, wages and employment

The purpose of this thesis is to study theoretically and empirically union influence on bargaining outcomes, and particularly on hours of work. I explore these ideas using an establishment level survey data within the UK electrical engineering industry from 1979 to 1984, which covers a recessionary period.

Chapter 2 is a survey study of unionism and hours of work. The main difference of this survey to others is that, rather than generally exploring all the union bargaining models, the focus here is on modelling a union's influence on working hours, and providing a summary of the empirical finding in the literature.

Chapter 3 studies the effect of union bargaining on working hours in different union-management bargaining frameworks. Three kinds of bargaining scenario are presented: two Right-to-Manage models and one Efficient Bargaining Model. The comparative statics show that higher union bargaining power leads to lower working hours and a higher wage rate in all the models. The employment effect is ambiguous, and depends on the bargaining framework and the value of other variables. Also a comparison of this paper with other literature has been provided. Chapter 4 is an empirical study of union's influence on hours using the survey data.

Chapter 5 studies the union and firm size effects on wage rates. The firm size effect on the wage rate is found to differ in the union and non-union sectors. In the union sector, the influence of size on wages is negligible or even negative. However, in the non-union sector, wages increase with firm size for manual workers. The union wage differential is larger during the recessionary phase of our sample. By decomposing the union wage differential, various factors have been found to contribute differently to it, and unemployment is one of the most significant factors.

University of Southampton
Yu, Zhi-Peng
5249bb47-bfeb-46f5-8838-e633d19a2fe8
Yu, Zhi-Peng
5249bb47-bfeb-46f5-8838-e633d19a2fe8

Yu, Zhi-Peng (2001) The influence of the Union on working hours, wages and employment. University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.

Record type: Thesis (Doctoral)

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to study theoretically and empirically union influence on bargaining outcomes, and particularly on hours of work. I explore these ideas using an establishment level survey data within the UK electrical engineering industry from 1979 to 1984, which covers a recessionary period.

Chapter 2 is a survey study of unionism and hours of work. The main difference of this survey to others is that, rather than generally exploring all the union bargaining models, the focus here is on modelling a union's influence on working hours, and providing a summary of the empirical finding in the literature.

Chapter 3 studies the effect of union bargaining on working hours in different union-management bargaining frameworks. Three kinds of bargaining scenario are presented: two Right-to-Manage models and one Efficient Bargaining Model. The comparative statics show that higher union bargaining power leads to lower working hours and a higher wage rate in all the models. The employment effect is ambiguous, and depends on the bargaining framework and the value of other variables. Also a comparison of this paper with other literature has been provided. Chapter 4 is an empirical study of union's influence on hours using the survey data.

Chapter 5 studies the union and firm size effects on wage rates. The firm size effect on the wage rate is found to differ in the union and non-union sectors. In the union sector, the influence of size on wages is negligible or even negative. However, in the non-union sector, wages increase with firm size for manual workers. The union wage differential is larger during the recessionary phase of our sample. By decomposing the union wage differential, various factors have been found to contribute differently to it, and unemployment is one of the most significant factors.

Text
825333.pdf - Version of Record
Available under License University of Southampton Thesis Licence.
Download (5MB)

More information

Published date: 2001

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 464548
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/464548
PURE UUID: 627e8ec0-7834-4ddc-86f2-4ce32d9616a2

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 04 Jul 2022 23:45
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 19:36

Export record

Contributors

Author: Zhi-Peng Yu

Download statistics

Downloads from ePrints over the past year. Other digital versions may also be available to download e.g. from the publisher's website.

View more statistics

Atom RSS 1.0 RSS 2.0

Contact ePrints Soton: eprints@soton.ac.uk

ePrints Soton supports OAI 2.0 with a base URL of http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/cgi/oai2

This repository has been built using EPrints software, developed at the University of Southampton, but available to everyone to use.

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue without changing your settings, we will assume that you are happy to receive cookies on the University of Southampton website.

×