Trade Union Membership and Dismissals

Laszlo Goerke and Markus Pannenberg

No 324, SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research from DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP)

Abstract: In Germany, there is no trade union membership wage premium, while the membership fee amounts to 1% of the gross wage. Therefore, prima facie, there are strong incentives to freeride on the benefits of trade unionism. We establish empirical evidence for a private gain from trade union membership which has hitherto not been documented: in West Germany, union members are less likely to lose their jobs than non-members. In particular, using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel we can show that roughly 50% of the observed raw differential in individual dismissal rates can be explained by the estimated average partial effect of union membership.

Keywords: free-riding; trade union membership; survey data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C23 H41 J51 J63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 p.
Date: 2010
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-int and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.362291.de/diw_sp0324.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Trade union membership and dismissals (2011)
Working Paper: Trade Union Membership and Dismissals (2010)
Working Paper: Trade Union Membership and Dismissals (2010)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp324

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