published in: Southern Economic Journal, 2003, 69 (4), 822-841
In this paper we exploit the longitudinal element of the 1990 and 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Surveys for Britain to investigate the effect of unionism on establishment closings. Contrary to both recent U.S. research and British work using information from the earlier workplace surveys, we find a robust positive association between two measures of unionism - union recognition for collective bargaining purposes and union coverage - and plant closings. This association survives the incorporation of very detailed industry controls but is driven by plants that are parts of multi-establishment enterprises. There appears to be little or no statistically significant association for single plant enterprises. In explaining our findings, we address their consistency with the widely perceived reduction in the "disadvantages of [British] unionism" in recent years.
We use cookies to provide you with an optimal website experience. This includes cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site as well as cookies that are only used for anonymous statistical purposes, for comfort settings or to display personalized content. You can decide for yourself which categories you want to allow. Please note that based on your settings, you may not be able to use all of the site's functions.
Cookie settings
These necessary cookies are required to activate the core functionality of the website. An opt-out from these technologies is not available.
In order to further improve our offer and our website, we collect anonymous data for statistics and analyses. With the help of these cookies we can, for example, determine the number of visitors and the effect of certain pages on our website and optimize our content.