Unions and Productivity Again: New Evidence from Matched WERS and Business Census Data*

In this preliminary paper we match business Census productivity data from the Annual Business Inquiry (ABI) with WERS data and (i) compare the WERS self-reported productivity data with that of the business survey and (ii) examine the relation between unions and productivity using the business data productivity measures. We find (a) no significant relation between self-reported productivity data and ABI productivity data and (b) a significant positive relation between ABI productivity data and union recognition; a significant positive relation between the K/L ratio and union recognition and negative relation between TFP and unionisation. *Contact: Jonathan Haskel, Queen Mary, University of London, Economics Dept, London E1 4NS, j.e. [email protected]. Financial support for this research comes from the ESRC/EPSRC Advanced Institute of Management Research, grant number RES-331-25-0030 and was carried out at Centre for Research into Business Activity (CeRiBA, www.ceriba.org.uk) at the Business Data Linking Branch at the ONS; we are grateful to all institutions concerned for their support. I particularly thank DTI for making an extract of the WERS data available. This work contains statistical data from ONS which is crown copyright and reproduced with the permission of the controller HMSO and Queen's Printer for Scotland. The use of the ONS statistical data in this work does not imply the endorsement of the ONS in relation to the interpretation or analysis of the statistical data. All errors are of course my own.