The New Great Debate about Unionism and Collective Bargaining in U.S. State and Local Governments

David Lewin, Jeffrey H. Keefe and Thomas A. Kochan

ILR Review, 2012, vol. 65, issue 4, 749-778

Abstract: Recently some state and local governments in the United States have sharply reduced or eliminated public employee unionism and bargaining rights in the belief that their fiscal adversity stems mainly from overcompensation of public employees caused by collective bargaining. The authors examine public-private sector pay and benefit relationships, the effects of unions on public employee pay, the effectiveness of employment dispute resolution procedures, and the ability of public sector labor and management to combat fiscal adversity. They provide new evidence showing that: on balance, public employees are undercompensated relative to their private sector counterparts; the effects of unions on compensation are smaller in the public than in the private sector; and public sector dispute resolution procedures and joint labor-management initiatives to reform work function reasonably well.

Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/001979391206500401 (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:65:y:2012:i:4:p:749-778

DOI: 10.1177/001979391206500401

Access Statistics for this article

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