Length of Service and Layoffs in Union and Nonunion Work Groups

Katharine Abraham and James Medoff

ILR Review, 1984, vol. 38, issue 1, 87-97

Abstract: This paper presents survey evidence from about 200 firms that protection against job loss grows with employees' length of service even after controlling for the perceived net value of employees to the firm. As would be expected, senior workers are better protected against permanent layoff in union than in nonunion firms, but even in the absence of unionism, longer service generally translates into extra protection. Among the private sector hourly work units outside of agriculture and construction represented in the authors' survey, seniority led to additional protection against job loss in 97 percent of groups covered by a union contract and in 86 percent of uncovered groups. Importantly, however, the extra protection was considerably stronger in the average union group than in the average nonunion group.

Date: 1984
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (58)

Downloads: (external link)
http://ilr.sagepub.com/content/38/1/87.abstract (text/html)

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:sae:ilrrev:v:38:y:1984:i:1:p:87-97

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in ILR Review from Cornell University, ILR School
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().