The Tradeoff Between Wages and Employment in Trade Union Objectives

John Pencavel

The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1984, vol. 99, issue 2, 215-231

Abstract: This paper demonstrates that, contrary to a widely held opinion, the determination of the goals of unions is fully amenable to empirical analysis. A characterization of the wage and employment-setting process in unionized markets is adopted, and its qualitative implications examined. The first-order condition for this model is fitted to time series data on the newspaper industry from ten cities. The International Typographical Union's objective function reveals very restricted opportunities for substituting wages for employment in response to a change in the slope of the employer's labor demand function. Larger union locals place greater emphasis on wages versus employment than smaller union locals.

Date: 1984
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Working Paper: The Trade-Off between Wages and Employment in Trade Union Objectives (1982)
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