IMPACT OF TRADE UNIONS ON ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE: THE CASE OF SINGAPORE

Soon Beng Chew ()
Additional contact information
Soon Beng Chew: Division of Economics, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

The Singapore Economic Review (SER), 2014, vol. 59, issue 04, 1-13

Abstract: Trade unions may exact a heavy cost on an economy, but there is one mode of trade unionism that will enable the trade union to play a positive role in economic development. This mode of unionism, which may be characterized as macro-focused, requires the trade union to work closely with the ruling party in order to contribute to economic development. The required symbiosis between such a trade union and the ruling party may not be sustainable when there is a change in government. This paper argues that a union can remain macro-focused as long as it is not part of any political party and therefore can work with any government regardless of which political party is in power. The paper will examine the various conditions, both economic and non-economic, under which such an outcome can exist and be sustainable. The paper will also analyze how a macro-focused union induces workers to join the union based on the results of a field survey of 690 respondents in Singapore.

Keywords: Strategic collective bargaining; union social responsibility; macro-focused union (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0217590814500350
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
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:wsi:serxxx:v:59:y:2014:i:04:n:s0217590814500350

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from

DOI: 10.1142/S0217590814500350

Access Statistics for this article

The Singapore Economic Review (SER) is currently edited by Euston Quah

More articles in The Singapore Economic Review (SER) from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tai Tone Lim ().