3 ms·
I found a few studies but to be honest I don't have time to read them. Here is an interesting snippet from one report (which I believe is disputing the other st
by johnward 11y ago
I found a few studies but to be honest I don't have time to read them. Here is an interesting snippet from one report (which I believe is disputing the other studies that say wages increase in proportion to union wages):
The effect of labor unions on wages is one of the more heavily studied topics in empirical
labor economics. There exists a reasonably strong consensus among economists
that the average union-nonunion wage gap is about 15 percent, a consensus based in
no small part on the influence of work by H. Gregg Lewis (1963, 1986). A survey of
labor economists at leading universities by Fuchs, Krueger, and Poterba (1998) asked
the question: "What is your best estimate of the percentage impact of unions on the earnings
of their average member'?" The median response was 15 percent and mean response
13.1 percent; dispersion was low. "
http://www2.gsu.edu/~ecobth/PaperReprints/UnionWageEffects.pdf http://www2.gsu.edu/~ecobth/PaperReprints/UnionWageEffects.p...
- cheald 11y agoThe conclusion of this paper is that the 15% gap estimate is likely far too low (he estimates its actually 21-28%). It also states that when gaps outpage gains, downward wage pressure on nonunion wages due to the "spillover effect" can be understood to be outpacing the upward pressure of "threat effects" (page 4, labeled 236, p.3), which pretty strongly suggests that if his conclusions are correct, unions may have the effect of reducing nonunion wages.