Collective Bargaining (collective + bargaining)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Distribution within Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting


Selected Abstracts


Collective Bargaining and The Performance of the Public Schools

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, Issue 1 2009
Terry M. Moe
Students of American politics rarely study public sector unions and their impacts on government. The literature sees bureaucratic power as rooted in expertise, but largely ignores the fact that bureaucrats often join unions to promote their own interests, and that the power of their unions may affect government and its performance. This article focuses on the public schools, which are among the most numerous government agencies in the country, and investigates whether collective bargaining by teachers,the key bureaucrats,affects the schools' capacity to educate children. Using California data, analysis shows that, in large school districts, restrictive labor contracts have a very negative impact on academic achievement, particularly for minority students. The evidence suggests, then, that public sector unions do indeed have important consequences for American public education. Whether they are consequential in other areas of government remains to be seen, but it is an avenue well worth pursuing. [source]


Capital Structure as a Strategic Variable: Evidence from Collective Bargaining

THE JOURNAL OF FINANCE, Issue 3 2010
DAVID A. MATSA
ABSTRACT I analyze the strategic use of debt financing to improve a firm's bargaining position with an important supplier,organized labor. Because maintaining high levels of corporate liquidity can encourage workers to raise their wage demands, a firm with external finance constraints has an incentive to use the cash flow demands of debt service to improve its bargaining position with workers. Using both firm-level collective bargaining coverage and state changes in labor laws to identify changes in union bargaining power, I show that strategic incentives from union bargaining appear to have a substantial impact on corporate financing decisions. [source]


Collective Bargaining and Wage Dispersion in Europe

BRITISH JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, Issue 1 2007
Carlo Dell'Aringa
The level at which collective bargaining takes place is usually considered important in determining wage levels and wage inequalities. Two different situations are considered: a first in which bargaining is only ,multi-employer', and a second in which it is ,multi-level', in the sense that workers can be covered by both a ,multi-employer' and a ,single-employer' contract at the same time. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the impact of these different institutional settings on pay dispersion. The study is carried out using the European Structure of Earnings Survey, which is a large dataset containing detailed matched employer,employee information for the year 1995. The countries analysed are Italy, Belgium and Spain. The empirical results generally show that wages of workers covered by only a ,multi-employer' contract are no more compressed than those of workers covered by both ,multi-employer' and ,single-employer' contracts. This implies that where workers are not covered by single-employer bargaining, they receive wage supplements paid unilaterally by their employers. [source]


Global Collective Bargaining on Flag of Convenience Shipping

BRITISH JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, Issue 1 2004
Nathan Lillie
The most significant case of transnational union bargaining co-ordination in existence is in the maritime shipping industry. A global union association, the International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF), and a global employers' federation, the International Maritime Employers' Committee (IMEC), now negotiate over pay scales for seafarers on Flag of Convenience (FOC) ships. These negotiations set the pattern for pay and working conditions for a signifi-cant portion of the global seafaring work-force. The ITF brought about global wage bargaining by building and enforcing a global inter-union consensus between developed and developing countries around a uniform wage rate. [source]


Collective bargaining and new work regimes: ,too important to be left to bosses'

INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS JOURNAL, Issue 3 2009
Patricia Findlay
ABSTRACT The formal negotiations process remains perhaps the least-studied moment of collective bargaining. Drawing on ideal types of ,distributive' and ,integrative' bargaining and the ,formal/informal' distinction, this article reports non-participant observation and ethnographic research into the negotiations process that enabled a change agreement in a British multinational, hereafter anonymised as FMCG. Informal bargaining relations provided the backdrop to,and emerged within,the formal negotiations process. Formal bargaining established new employment contracts based on a simplified internal labour market and generated the joint governance processes to enable and regulate the change process. Neither management nor union strategy was wholly derived from rational, interest-based positions. The negotiations process was essential to strategy formation and to the emergence of sufficient ,integrative' bargaining for all parties to devise and approve new processual institutions and norms to deliver a more flexible labour process and to restore the long-run viability for ,distributive' bargaining. [source]


Collective bargaining and equality: Making connections

INTERNATIONAL LABOUR REVIEW, Issue 4 2003
Adelle BLACKETT
First page of article [source]


Collective bargaining and community colleges

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR COMMUNITY COLLEGES, Issue 125 2004
Richard J. Boris
This chapter reviews the three-decade history of collective bargaining at community colleges and analyzes how collective bargaining has altered critical areas in the life of community colleges. [source]


Equality Bargaining: Where, Who, Why?

GENDER, WORK & ORGANISATION, Issue 6 2006
Edmund Heery
It is common to identify a role for trade unions in combating sex inequality at work through collective bargaining. This article uses a survey of paid union officers to identify the context in which equality bargaining by unions is likely to occur, using the specific issue of bargaining on equal pay. It concludes that equality bargaining is a function of women's voice within unions, the characteristics and preferences of bargainers themselves and of a favourable public policy environment. Bargaining on equal pay is also more likely in centralized negotiations that cover multiple employers. [source]


Australian Universities 1939-1999: How Different Now?

HIGHER EDUCATION QUARTERLY, Issue 2 2000
Bruce Williams
Between 1939 and 1999, when the Australian population increased from 7 to 19 million, university enrolments rose from 14,236 to 681,870. Until 1974 the most notable changes were the increases in the size of universities and of departments (which encouraged greater specialization), continued increases in research expenditures, in the percentage of postgraduate students, and a gradual decline in collegiality. In 1974 the Commonwealth Government assumed full responsibility for government grants to universities and abolished fees at just that time when growth rates in the economy fell sharply. Government influence on the universities increased, and there were some departures from the no-fees policy for international and postgraduate course-work masters and diploma students. Then in 1988 the Government decided to abolish the distinction between universities and colleges of advanced education, to create through amalgamations a smaller number of much larger universities and to set a specific mission for each university in the interest of economic growth. The Tertiary Education Commission was abolished and the universities dealt directly with the Minister and his Department. The Universities became distinctly more managerial, less collegial, and the range of courses and degrees was greatly expanded. There are now legitimate doubts about the quality of some degrees. Student fees came back, but in a way that reduced the financial burden on the government without giving the universities greater freedom. The government sponsored collective bargaining for university staff but as universities were not given the capacity to earn much additional income, increases in salaries increased student/staff ratios and induced a decline in morale. [source]


Undermining or reframing collective bargaining?

HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, Issue 4 2008
Variable pay in two sectors compared
Although it is widely presumed that variable payments systems (VPS) such as individual merit and profit-related pay are corrosive of collective bargaining, the actual relationship between the two remains little explored. Drawing on company case studies from retail banking and machinery and equipment, this article finds that collective bargaining can variously be reconfigured , as over individual merit pay in the banks; extended to cover local bonus arrangements, evident in instances in both sectors; or lose its purchase on a significant proportion of earnings , as with management-determined profit-related bonus in both sectors. In terms of the implications for collective bargaining, much therefore depends on the type of VPS. [source]


Growth of Participant Direction in Defined Contribution Plans

INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, Issue 2 2010
WILLIAM E. EVEN
Using data from IRS Form 5500, this study examines the causes and consequences of the shift toward participant direction of investments in defined contribution plans. The analysis reveals that collective bargaining and pension investments in employer stock reduce the chance of a switch to participant direction, whereas below average returns increases the chance. Also, a switch to participant direction increases employee contributions to the pension and reduces the share of assets invested in employer securities. [source]


Unnatural Extinction: The Rise and Fall of the Independent Local Union

INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, Issue 3 2001
Sanford M. Jacoby
This article analyzes what happened to independent local unions (ILUs), also known as company unions, since 1935. After providing a statistical analysis of ILU membership since 1935, the article looks at the factors that shaped membership trends: changes in labor law, the characteristics of ILUs, worker attitudes toward ILUs, and employers' industrial relations policies. New evidence is presented that suggests that even those employers who still favored ILUs in the 1950s were orienting them away from collective bargaining and toward the "new nonunion model" of the 1960s and 1970s. [source]


Collective bargaining and new work regimes: ,too important to be left to bosses'

INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS JOURNAL, Issue 3 2009
Patricia Findlay
ABSTRACT The formal negotiations process remains perhaps the least-studied moment of collective bargaining. Drawing on ideal types of ,distributive' and ,integrative' bargaining and the ,formal/informal' distinction, this article reports non-participant observation and ethnographic research into the negotiations process that enabled a change agreement in a British multinational, hereafter anonymised as FMCG. Informal bargaining relations provided the backdrop to,and emerged within,the formal negotiations process. Formal bargaining established new employment contracts based on a simplified internal labour market and generated the joint governance processes to enable and regulate the change process. Neither management nor union strategy was wholly derived from rational, interest-based positions. The negotiations process was essential to strategy formation and to the emergence of sufficient ,integrative' bargaining for all parties to devise and approve new processual institutions and norms to deliver a more flexible labour process and to restore the long-run viability for ,distributive' bargaining. [source]


Why is there not more ,annualised hours' working in Britain?

INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS JOURNAL, Issue 5 2007
James Arrowsmith
ABSTRACT Annualised hours (AH) contracts offer employers greater control over working time at lower cost. These efficiency gains may also be shared with workers in terms of pay or time off work. Yet AH remains relatively rare in the UK. Though under-researched, one explanation is that AH normally requires collective bargaining, which is disappearing across most of the private sector, and often high-trust employment relations, which is in still shorter supply. [source]


The de-collectivisation of pay setting in Britain 1990,98: incidence, determinants and impact

INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS JOURNAL, Issue 1 2007
Andy Charlwood
ABSTRACT What were the causes and consequences of declining collective bargaining coverage in Britain? The demise of collective bargaining did not lead to a greater use of individualised payment mechanisms, ,high-involvement' practices or productivity gains. Wage inequality rose as a result of the decline. However, workplaces that abandoned bargaining created more jobs. Overall, these results raise questions about Britain's labour market performance during the 1990s because they suggest that falling unemployment as a result of weaker trade unions came at the price of slower productivity growth and widening male wage inequality. [source]


Exercising power in a prisoner's dilemma: transnational collective bargaining in an era of corporate globalisation?

INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS JOURNAL, Issue 4 2005
William N. CookeArticle first published online: 21 JUN 200
ABSTRACT The extraordinary growth in foreign direct investment coupled with the widespread declination of union penetration has increasingly allowed multinationals to pit unions across borders as competitors for investment and jobs. Based on a theoretical analysis of the exercise of power in a prisoner's dilemma game, the essential conditions and incentives for cooperation among unions across borders for the purpose of collective bargaining with multinationals are identified and practical, strategic-level implications for transnational interunion partnerships are addressed. [source]


European dimensions to collective bargaining: new symmetries within an asymmetric process?

INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS JOURNAL, Issue 4 2002
Paul Marginson
The impact of economic and monetary union on the structures, processes and agenda of collective bargaining at sector and company levels is explored. Drawing on cross,national evidence from two sectors, considerable differences between sectors within national boundaries are identified, but also some striking parallels within sectors across national boundaries. Convergence and greater diversity are simultaneously evident. [source]


Industrial relations law, employment security and collective bargaining in India: myths, realities and hopes

INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS JOURNAL, Issue 2 2000
Anil K. Sen Gupta
This article examines the debate on reforms in industrial relations law in India, needed to support its economic liberalisation programme. Analysing a distinctively Indian experience of state intervention in industrial relations, it concludes that the thrust of the reform should be towards entrusting union recognition and promotion of dispute settlement to an authority that is independent of the state executive. [source]


Low-wage work in five European countries and the United States

INTERNATIONAL LABOUR REVIEW, Issue 4 2009
Gerhard BOSCH
Abstract. Analysing research findings on Denmark, Germany, France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States, the author shows that the incidence and conditions of low-paid employment in each country are determined by a set of institutions, including minimum wage and active labour market policies, tax and social security systems, and collective bargaining. The widely assumed trade-off between employment and wages, he argues, is not inescapable: active labour market policies for individual empowerment and institutions imposing "beneficial constraints" can prevent improved conditions at the bottom of the earnings distribution from translating into higher unemployment, while also helping to narrow inequalities. [source]


Towards socially sensitive corporate restructuring?

INTERNATIONAL LABOUR REVIEW, Issue 1-2 2009
Comparative remarks on collective bargaining developments in Germany, France, Italy
Abstract. Rapidly changing markets in the context of globalization call for increasingly frequent restructuring to sustain the competitiveness of individual firms. To meet this need while minimizing consequent job loss, the social partners in major European countries have devised a variety of decentralization mechanisms that enhance local-level flexibility without fundamentally calling into question the traditional national models of collective bargaining. Analysing the use of "opening clauses" in German industry agreements, France's firm-level "derogation agreements" and mandatory bargaining on "workforce planning", and Italy's tripartite "territorial agreements", the author concludes with a plea for a supranational framework to support socially sensitive restructuring across Europe. [source]


Fixing minimum wage levels in developing countries: Common failures and remedies

INTERNATIONAL LABOUR REVIEW, Issue 1 2008
Catherine SAGET
Abstract. Some developing countries have set their minimum wages too high or too low to constitute a meaningful constraint on employers. The article compares minimum wages worldwide, proposes several ways of measuring them in developing countries and discusses whether they are effective thresholds in those countries. The second part of the article considers the institutional factors leading countries to set minimum wages at extreme levels. The author concludes that the minimum wage is used as a policy instrument to several ends , wage negotiation, deflation and social dialogue , which results in the absence of a wage floor, weak collective bargaining, or non-compliance. [source]


A Revised Role for Trade Unions as Designed by New Labour: The Representation Pyramid and ,Partnership'

JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY, Issue 3 2002
Tonia Novitz
A key objective of British unions is to develop their representative role so as to establish their relevance to the workforce and thereby reverse the overall decline in trade union membership. To many, the legislative reforms undertaken by New Labour since 1999 offer some hope that this can be achieved. These reforms seem to provide a pyramid of representation, whereby trade unions can establish their relevance when they ,accompany' individual employees in grievance and disciplinary proceedings, and when they act as recipients of information and consultation. By attracting members in this fashion, there would seem to be the promise that unions can reascend to the position of recognized and effective parties in collective bargaining. However, this paper suggests that a barrier to the achievement of this objective is the particular conception of ,partnership' adopted by New Labour, which deviates from that of the TUC. This ,partnership' is essentially individualistic in character, procedural in form, and unitary in specification. These characteristics are reflected in the relevant statutory and regulatory provisions and are therefore likely to inhibit the progression of a trade union to recognition in collective bargaining. [source]


National Culture and Industrial Relations and Pay Structures

LABOUR, Issue 2 2001
Boyd Black
The paper develops an explanatory model of comparative industrial relations and labour market structures based on national culture. The four cultural variables derived by Hofstede (Culture's Consequences, Beverly Hills: Sage, 1984) are used to investigate the relationship between national culture and various dimensions of industrial relations and pay structures. The paper finds national culture to be associated with the centralization of bargaining, the extent of corporatism, the degree of co-ordination in bargaining, the coverage of collective bargaining, trade union density, the extent of worker participation in decision making, and most dimensions of the pay structure. Hofstede's MAS variable, measuring cultural values representing gender social structuring, is associated with both industrial relations institutions and the pay structure. The results provide support for our cultural model. [source]


A ,sea change' for collective bargaining as the U.S. Supreme Court permits unions to agree to arbitration for discrimination claims

ALTERNATIVES TO THE HIGH COST OF LITIGATION, Issue 5 2009
Christopher Walsh
Last month's U.S. Supreme Court decision in 14 Penn Plaza LLC v. Pyett may signal a big change in the skills needed by labor arbitrators, according to Christopher Walsh, of Newark, N.J. He analyzes the case and tells readers what to expect as a result of Justice Clarence Thomas's majority opinion. [source]


Governance in a union environment

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR COMMUNITY COLLEGES, Issue 141 2008
Timothy K. Garfield
The presence of a faculty union in a community college has a significant impact on its governance. This chapter offers recommendations for dealing with the challenges presented by collective bargaining in the postsecondary education environment. [source]


Collective bargaining and community colleges

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR COMMUNITY COLLEGES, Issue 125 2004
Richard J. Boris
This chapter reviews the three-decade history of collective bargaining at community colleges and analyzes how collective bargaining has altered critical areas in the life of community colleges. [source]


Seniority Profiles in Unionized Workplaces: Do Unions Still have the Edge?,

OXFORD BULLETIN OF ECONOMICS & STATISTICS, Issue 3 2008
Alexandros Zangelidis
Abstract The focus of this study is to distinguish the different paths seniority earning profiles follow depending on whether the individual is employed in a workplace where trade unions and collective bargaining are present, or not. Within this framework, two propositions are set. In the union sector seniority should be an important determinant of wages, while in the non-union sector productivity, proxied by occupational experience, should have a key role on earning profiles. The empirical analysis verifies both propositions. Seniority earning profiles appear to be steeper in the union sector, while occupational expertise is estimated to have a more significant role in non-union jobs. [source]


Collective Bargaining and The Performance of the Public Schools

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, Issue 1 2009
Terry M. Moe
Students of American politics rarely study public sector unions and their impacts on government. The literature sees bureaucratic power as rooted in expertise, but largely ignores the fact that bureaucrats often join unions to promote their own interests, and that the power of their unions may affect government and its performance. This article focuses on the public schools, which are among the most numerous government agencies in the country, and investigates whether collective bargaining by teachers,the key bureaucrats,affects the schools' capacity to educate children. Using California data, analysis shows that, in large school districts, restrictive labor contracts have a very negative impact on academic achievement, particularly for minority students. The evidence suggests, then, that public sector unions do indeed have important consequences for American public education. Whether they are consequential in other areas of government remains to be seen, but it is an avenue well worth pursuing. [source]


THE EFFECT OF THE COLLECTIVE BARGAINING LEVEL ON THE GENDER WAGE GAP: EVIDENCE FROM SPAIN,

THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL, Issue 3 2008
FLORENTINO FELGUEROSO
Several studies have found a negative relationship between the level of collective bargaining centralization and the degree of wage inequality. So, more centralized bargaining seems to lead to lower wage gaps. On the other hand, there is evidence that the gender wage gap increases as we move upwards along the wage distribution, illustrating the glass ceiling hypothesis. In this paper we study how the wage gap changes throughout the distribution of wages, as a function of the level of collective bargaining by which workers are covered, using data from the Spanish Wage Structure Survey of 2002. [source]


Pattern Bargaining: An Investigation into its Agency, Context and Evidence

BRITISH JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, Issue 1 2008
Franz Traxler
Pattern bargaining stands out as both an under-researched and controversial subject. This article is an analytical and empirical contribution to this debate. Theoretically, it provides a conceptual framework, which enables analysis to systematically differentiate between distinct forms of pattern bargaining in terms of scope, agency, development and function, which arise from differing contexts in terms of interest configuration, power relations and economic conditions. This framework is used to develop testable hypotheses on pattern bargaining as a mechanism of inter-industry bargaining co-ordination. The empirical part of the article examines these hypotheses for collective bargaining from 1969 to 2004 in Austria, which is commonly seen as a paradigm case of pattern bargaining. The article concludes by highlighting the broader implications its findings have from a cross-nationally comparative perspective. [source]