Was it worth it? The impact of the German minimum wage on union membership of employees

Simon Ress and Florian Spohr

Economic and Industrial Democracy, 2022, vol. 43, issue 4, 1699-1723

Abstract: This contribution scrutinises how introducing a statutory minimum wage of EUR 8.50 per hour, in January 2015, impacted German employees’ decision with regard to union membership. Based on representative data from the Labour Market and Social Security panel, the study applies a logistic difference-in-differences propensity score matching approach on entries into and withdrawals from unions in the German Trade Union Confederation (Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund, DGB). The results show no separate effect on withdrawals from or entries into unions after the minimum wage introduction for those employees who benefited financially from it, but a significant increase of entries overall. Thus, unions’ campaign for a minimum wage strengthened their position in total but did not reverse the segmentation of union membership patterns.

Keywords: Dual labour market; low wage; minimum wage; modern causal analysis; union membership (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:ecoind:v:43:y:2022:i:4:p:1699-1723

DOI: 10.1177/0143831X211035828

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