Explaining union growth and decline with flows in and out of membership. An analysis of Swiss union locals

Daniel Oesch ()

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: This paper enquires into the causes of union growth and decline by analysing flows in and out of membership. It does so at the level of 70 Swiss union locals over the period 2006-08. Gross flows in union membership are found to be much larger than the resulting net changes: turnover of annually 10 per cent thus is a surprisingly constant feature across unions. Net changes in membership are primarily determined by inflows: successful union locals differ from languishing ones with respect to their entry rates, whereas exit rates are similar. There is large variance in union locals’ entry rates that is not accounted for by the labour market context. Rather, it seems attributable to differences in union organization and strategy.

Keywords: trade unions; membership; strategic choice; turnover; recruitment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J5 J51 J63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/24358/1/MPRA_paper_24358.pdf original version (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:pra:mprapa:24358

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().