published in: Industrial Relations, 2014, 53 (1), 125-157.
This study provides updated evidence on the union contract differential in Germany using establishment-wide wage data and two estimation strategies. It provides pairwise estimates of the union differential based on separate samples of collective bargaining leavers and joiners vis-à-vis the corresponding counterfactual groups. It is reported that average wages increase by 3 to 3.5 percent after entering into a collective agreement and decrease by 3 to 4 percent after abandoning a collective agreement. Excluding establishments that experience mass layoffs little influences these net findings, although such establishments record wage losses – statistically insignificant for joiners but up to 10 percent in the case of leavers, as compared with the counterfactuals. The backdrop to these new indicative estimates, which are properly conditioned on establishment size and industry affiliation, inter al., is one of wage stagnation and continuing union decline.
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.