Unions as insurance: Workplace unionization and workers' outcomes during COVID‐19

Abstract

We investigate to what extent workplace unionization protects workers from external shocks by preventing involuntary job separations. Using the COVID‐19 pandemic as a plausibly exogenous shock hitting the whole economy, we compare workers who worked in unionized and non‐unionized workplaces directly before the pandemic in a difference‐in‐differences framework. We find that unionized workers were substantially more likely to remain working for their pre‐COVID employer and to be in employment. This greater employment stability was not traded off against lower working hours or labor income.