Hourly Earnings Differentials for Unionised Labour: A Decile-Based Examination in Great Britain

This paper assesses the impact that trade unions have on the wage rates paid to full-time employees in Great Britain using data from the Quarterly Labour Force Survey. Unlike previous research, this analysis is conducted over the entire range of the earnings distribution, where it is found that unions have more scope for increasing the earnings of workers on the very lowest of wage rates. Asymmetries in the effect of union membership and union coverage are found for both male and female, manual and non-manual workers and we conclude that those studies which concentrate upon solely membership or coverage are likely to misjudge the true size of the union markup.