Unions, Collective Bargaining and Firm Performance

Patrice Laroche

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: The impact of unions on firm performance has been the subject of debate and controversy in most industrialized countries, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom. The purpose of this chapter is to review and assess the scope and limitations of the economic analysis of unions as well as the controversies surrounding the conclusions of existing empirical research. Although it is difficult to draw firm and general conclusions on the effects of unions on firm performance, the existing results lead us to consider unions not solely in terms of their costs for the company. Empirical results suggest that unionism is often associated with higher productivity but this relationship might vary across industries, institutional contexts and over time. Estimates of the causal mechanisms through which unions affect productivity allow a better understanding of the effects of unions. The literature on the effect of unions on productivity recognizes that part of this effect may work through reducing employee turnover and other mechanisms, such as technological and organizational innovations, which are essential factors of productivity growth. Recent studies dealing with the effects of unions on firm profits support Freeman and Medoff's (1984) conclusion that unionization is associated with lower profitability. Finally, union activities, especially collective bargaining, trade off some economic efficiency for greater justice in workplaces and reduced inequalities

Keywords: innovation; productivity; collective bargaining; high-performance work practices (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-12-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eff
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-03058266
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published in 2020

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.science/hal-03058266/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Unions, Collective Bargaining, and Firm Performance (2021)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03058266

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().