TRADE UNIONS AS SUBJECTS OF LABOR LAW

Labor Unions and Labor Management: 1900-1930

some times used their powers to achieve unjustifiable ends, at employers' or public's expense. But, although such excesses might illustrate the need for enlightened leadership or perhaps for some mild legal reforms, their conclusion on balance is that big labor was a necessary offset to big businesses. Knowing and agreeing to the outcome -big labor -in turn informs most histories of the evoluti...

Trade unions and development

Trade Unions in Germany

Hard Marriage with Heavy Burdens: Labor Unions as Takeover Deterrents *

We examine the causal effect of unionization on a firm’s takeover exposure and merger gains. To establish causality, we use a regression discontinuity design that relies on “locally” exogenous variation generated by elections that pass or fail by a small margin of votes. Barely passing a union election leads to a significant reduction in a firm’s probability of receiving takeover bids. Conditio...

How Trade Unions Increase Welfare

Historically, worker movements have played a crucial role in making workplaces safer. Firms traditionally oppose better health standards. According to our interpretation, workplace safety is costly for firms but increases the average health of workers and thereby the aggregate labour supply. A laissez-faire approach in which firms set safety standards is suboptimal as workers are not fully info...