Unions, Training, and Firm Performance

John Addison () and Clive R. Belfield ()
Additional contact information
Clive R. Belfield: Queens College, CUNY

No 3294, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)

Abstract: The present paper uses a combination of workplace and linked employee-workplace data from the 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey and the 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey to examine the impact of unions on training incidence, training intensity/coverage, and training duration. It also examines the impact of unions and training on earnings and a measure of establishment labour productivity. In addition, the implications of training for the firm’s bottom line are evaluated. Union effects on training emerge as fairly subtle, and are more positive when using individual rather than plant-wide training data. A positive impact of training on earnings is detected in both the individual and plant-wide wage data, albeit only for the earlier survey. Consistent with other recent findings, the effects of union recognition on earnings are today rather muted, while union-training interaction effects vary greatly. Instrumenting training provides positive results for the labour productivity outcome and, in the case of the earlier survey, for the financial performance indicator as well. However, some negative effects of unions are now also detected.

Keywords: earnings; training duration; training intensity/coverage; training Incidence; employer-provided training; bargaining structure; union recognition; financial performance; labour productivity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J24 J33 J51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-eff, nep-lab and nep-ltv
Date: 2008-01
View list of references

Published in: Journal of Labor Market Research/Zeitschrift für ArbeitsmarktForschung, 2007, 40 (4), 361-381

Downloads: (external link)
http://ftp.iza.org/dp3294.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Unions, training and firm performance (2007)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
Address: IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Mark Fallak ().