Union Decline in Britain: Is Chauvinism Also to Blame?

Getinet Haile

No 6536, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: The paper examines if workplace gender diversity offers some explanation for the decline of unions in Britain. Using the WERS2004 linked employer-employee data and alternative econometric estimators it reports an inverse relationship between workplace union density and gender diversity. Gender and ownership status based sub-group analyses suggest the inverse relationship to be stronger for male union members and those in the private sector. Gender group size based analysis reveals a positive link between workplace union density and gender diversity in workplaces with a female majority. The findings in this paper may mean that unions (and their main constituents, men) may need to embrace the changing workplace demography genuinely to improve their fate.

Keywords: trade union decline; gender diversity; linked employer-employee data; Britain (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J16 J51 J82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29 pages
Date: 2012-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec and nep-dem
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published - published as 'Union decline in Britain: does gender have anything to do with it?' in: Scottish Journal of Political Economy, 2017, 64 (1), 25 - 49

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp6536.pdf (application/pdf)

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:iza:izadps:dp6536

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany
library@iza.org

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte (hinte@iza.org).