Norm-Based Trade Union Membership: Evidence for Germany

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent, nonprofit limited liability company (Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung) supported by Deutsche Post World Net. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its research networks, research support, and visitors and doctoral programs. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. The current research program deals with (1) mobility and flexibility of labor, (2) internationalization of labor markets, (3) welfare state and labor market, (4) labor markets in transition countries, (5) the future of labor, (6) evaluation of labor market policies and projects and (7) general labor economics. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available on the IZA website (www.iza.org) or directly from the author. In the absence of closed-shops and discriminatory wage policies, union membership can be explained by the existence of social norms. We describe a model, incorporating institutional features of the German labour market, which explicitly allows for social custom effects in the determination of union membership. Using panel data for Germany, we find evidence for according effects which restrict freeriding. The impact of social norms tends to increase with net union density. Hence, observed reductions in the demand for union membership can weaken the impact of a norm and accentuate the free-rider problem. for comments on a previous version of the paper, where we looked at cross-country differences between West Germany and the UK using cross sections of the GSOEP and the BHPS. All remaining errors are our responsibility.

Trade Union Membership and Sickness Absence: Evidence from a Sick Pay Reform

“…In contrast to countries like the United States or the United Kingdom (Schumacher 1999, Budd and Na 2000, Eren 2009, Hildreth 2000, union members in Germany do not obtain higher wages (cf. Schmidt and Zimmermann 1991, Fitzenberger, Ernst and Haggeney 1999, and Goerke and Pannenberg 2004.…”

Trade union membership and dismissals

“…For example, union membership of the father has been shown to raise the likelihood of joining a trade union in the United Kingdom (Blanden and Machin 2003). Furthermore, selfemployment of the father when an individual was young reduces the probability of joining a union in Germany (Goerke and Pannenberg 2004) and of being a member in some other…”

The Aging of the Unions in West Germany, 1980-2006

“…Data on union membership can also be found in several waves of the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) since 1985 and have been employed in various econometric studies, e.g. by Beck/Fitzenberger (2004), Goerke/Pannenberg (2004, and Fitzenberger et al (2006). We use the ALLBUS data instead of the GSOEP for three reasons: First, we can cover a longer period of observation.…”

“…Cross-sectional and panel analyses using individual-level data on union and non-union employees have identified a number of personal and occupational characteristics (such as sex, political orientation and employment status) as well as firm characteristics (such as establishment size) that are related to the probability of union membership (see, e.g., Beck/Fitzenberger 2004;Goerke/Pannenberg 2004Fitzenberger et al 2006;Biebeler/Lesch 2007). However, significant covariates often differ widely between (and even within) studies depending on the data set and the years analysed and on the econometric specification used.…”