Declining Unions and the Coverage Wage Gap: Can German Unions Still Cut It?

John Addison, Paulino Teixeira, Jens Stephani () and Lutz Bellmann ()

Journal of Labor Research, 2015, vol. 36, issue 3, 317 pages

Abstract: That German trade unionism is in profound decline seems to be beyond dispute. More controversial is the implied change in union impact on worker wages. A linked employer-employee dataset is deployed over an interval of continuing decline in unionism to address this issue. Over the sample period 2000–2010 it is found that joining a sectoral agreement always produces higher wages, while exiting one no longer leads to wage losses if the transition is to a firm agreement. Leaving a firm agreement to non-coverage also leads to wage reductions, while joining one from non-coverage appears decreasingly favorable. The one constant is the persistence of a small positive union wage gap. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015

Keywords: Firm-level agreements; Sectoral collective bargaining; Bargaining transitions; Wages; Germany; J31; J51; J53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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DOI: 10.1007/s12122-015-9209-9

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