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Using a panel survey, the authors investigate how the welfare of rural-urban migrant workers in China is affected by trade union presence at the workplace. Controlling for individual fixed effects, they find the following. Relative to workers from workplaces without union presence or with inactive unions, both union-covered non-members and union members in workplaces with active unions earn higher monthly income, are more likely to have a written contract, be covered by social insurances, receive fringe benefits, express work-related grievances through official channels, feel more satisfied with their lives, and are less likely to have mental health problems.

The 2008–2009 recession created major budgetary problems in US cities and states. Conservative Republicans who had triumphed in many state elections in 2010 introduced laws to weaken or eliminate public sector bargaining on the grounds that it contributed to the deficits and hampered government responses to the crisis. Unions and their allies fought back in an effort to preserve collective bargaining and unionism in its last stronghold in the country. This article finds that states with public sector bargaining laws have higher debt-to-state gross domestic product (GDP) ratios and slightly higher deficits than states without such laws, but that the dominant cause of the budgetary problem was the recession, and that unions gave sizable wage and benefit concessions to deal with the crisis. The main motivations for the attack appear to be political opportunism and ideological opposition to governments bargaining with their employees. The majority of citizens favored maintaining public sector bargaining. The backlash from unions and their supporters to the attack in two key states, Ohio and Wisconsin, was sufficiently vigorous to suggest that the long-run effects of the war on collective bargaining may boomerang against the opponents of unionization.

While the United States welcomes foreign-born students and trainees and, less warmly, temporary workers such as H-1B visa holders, it places an array of requirements, obstacles, and delays upon persons who would like to make the U.S. their permanent home. The number of people in the queue for legal permanent residence (LPR) is, however, difficult to ascertain. This paper estimates the number of highly skilled foreign-born persons waiting for LPR via the three main employment-based categories, separately by whether they are living in the United States or abroad, as well as the number of family members. We find that as of the end of FY 2006 there were about half a million employment-based principals awaiting LPR in the United States, together with over half a million family members, plus over 125 thousand principals and family members waiting abroad. These numbers dwarf the visas available annually – 120,120 plus any not used in the family preferences – suggesting that the long delays in gaining legal permanent residence are a visa number problem, not an administrative processing problem, as many believe. The backlog thus cannot be eliminated without a large change in public policy. The delay in gaining legal permanent residence could contribute to the decision of many highly skilled foreign-born to leave the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the impact of unionization on closures of firms, business lines, and establishments. Analyzing data from two major data sets—one (from the COMPUSTAT files) on the union status of solvent and insolvent enterprises and business lines, and one (obtained by matching files from the Current Population Survey) on the union status of workers who have lost their jobs due to permanent plant closures or business failures—the authors find little support for the hypothesis that unionization increases the insolvency of firms. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that unions behave in an economically rational manner, pushing wages to the point where union firms may expand less rapidly than nonunion firms, but not to the point where the firm, plant, or business line closes down.

This study of workers' attitudes compares data from International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) surveys for former communist countries in Europe with ISSP data for Western countries over the period 1987–93, which covers the beginning of the transition to a market economy for the former communist countries. Consistent with their hypothesis that communist-run economies left an attitudinal “legacy,” the authors find that the citizens of former communist countries evinced a greater desire for egalitarianism, less satisfaction with their Jobs, and more support for strong trade unions and state intervention in the Job market and economy than did Westerners. Over the course of the period studied, however, residents of the former communist European countries perceived sizable increases in occupational earnings differentials, and they adjusted their views of the differentials that “ought to#x201D; exist in their economies in the direction of greater inequality.

For the past four years, many members of the NBER's Program in Labor Studies have been examining how labor markets and income maintenance systems work in the major developed countries: the United States and its trading partners and competitors in the world economy. The "Working Under Different Rules" project, funded largely by a grant from the Ford Foundation, has focused on: the determination of wages and the inequality of wages in different countries (directed by Lawrence F. Katz and me); training of workers (directed by Lisa M. Lynch); income maintenance programs (directed by Rebecca M. Blank); works council modes of worker representation (directed by Joel Rogers and Wolfgang Streeck); and extreme poverty (directed by David E. Bloom). An additonal related project, culminating in the book described later in this NBER Reporter, contrasted labor markets in Canada and the United States (directed by David Card and me). On May 7, 1993, the project's leaders presented summaries of the work of their research teams at a conference in Washington, DC. These summaries will be published in a volume titled Working Under Different Rules. Also, the research papers written for each of the projects will be published by the University of Chicago Press. My intention in this report is to provide just a brief overview of the entire project. WHY LOOK AT FOREIGN LABOR MARKETS? We conceived this project in response to the difficult time that many American workers have had in the past two decades. Real wages have fallen for the less-educated worker. Inequality in earnings and employment opportunities among workers with different characteristics has increased. Unionism in the private sector has declined. And, poverty has increased for large segments of the population, although not among the elderly. Of course, the 1980s were difficult for workers in much of Europe and in Canada as well. In those countries, unemployment went from below to above U.S. levels. Perhaps even more important, unlike in the United States, unemployed people remained jobless (albeit with relatively generous benefits that partially induced the longer unemployment spells) for several years. For instance, 6 percent of the unemployed in the United States in 1991 were out of work for a year or more, compared to 37 percent in France, and 51 percent in Spain. The contrasting unemployment experiences of the United States and Europe in the 1980s generated widespread discussion of the American jobs miracle, and of the virtues of "flexibility American style." Some observers thought that the United States had all the "answers" to the economic problems of the 1980s, and that Europe had much to learn from us, while we had nothing to learn from them. The basic premise of our project was more measured: that while the United States had some positive outcomes in the labor market in the 1980s, it also had some negative ones. Thus, perhaps there was something Americans could learn from the labor market experiences and the social programs of Europe, Japan, and Canada. FINDINGS Wage Inequality Is the U.S. pattern of rising wage differentials and wage inequality among workers with different levels of education a universal development in advanced capitalist economies? Or, have some countries not experienced huge increases in wage inequality? The evidence collected for the 1980s shows that increases in wage inequality were most substantial in the United States and Great Britain. Because the increased inequality in Britain occurred while real wages were rising, low-paid British workers actually realized modest increases in their real wages over the decade. By contrast, low-paid American workers had sizable decreases in their real wages. Wage inequality rose, but by much less, in Canada, Japan, and in continental Europe. Inequality barely changed in France and Italy, fell in the Netherlands, and rose much less in Sweden and Germany than in the United States. …

This study examines the effect of trade unionism on the dispersion of wages among male wage and salary workers in the private sector in the United States. It finds that the application of union wage policies designed to standardize rates within and across establishments significantly reduces wage dispersion among workers covered by union contracts and that unions further reduce wage dispersion by narrowing the white-collar/blue-collar differential within establishments. These effects dominate the more widely studied impact of unionism on the dispersion of average wages across industries, so that on net unionism appears to reduce rather than increase wage dispersion or inequality in the United States.

This article reports on a study which attempts to estimate the extent to which current and previous criminal activity reduces the employment of inner city black male youths from high poverty neighborhoods. The study finds a significant trade-off between employment and crime, with crime associated with a 10 to 12 percent reduction in employment of these youths. The policy implication is that increased criminal deterrence, as well as other programs, has a role to play in efforts to resolve the employment crisis for disadvantaged youths.

Examines the changes in the employment pattern of African-American faculties in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Factors affecting the increase in demand for African-American faculty members; Comparison of income and characteristics between African-American and White American faculty members; Impact of academic qualifications on income. (Abstract copyright EBSCO.)

This study analyzes the impact of unionism on fringes paid to production workers, using data on individual establishments. It compares fringe expenditures in establishments having the same level of compensation per hour and finds that unionism raises the share of compensation allotted to fringes, particularly to pensions, vacation pay, and life, accident, and health insurance. In addition, since unionism also raises the straight-time wage rate, itself a prime determinant of expenditures on fringes, unionism has a very sizeable impact on total fringe expenditures, as well as on the fringe share of compensation. The union fringe effect exceeds, in percentage terms, the union wage effect and is sufficiently large to suggest that standard union wage studies understate the union effect on total compensation. The study also compares the fringe expenditures of production and non-production workers within the same establishment, controlling for within-establishment pay policies. The findings suggest that the presence of a union among production workers in an establishment may have a sizeable spillover effect on the fringes paid nonproduction workers in that establishment.

Estimates the extent of unionism in the United States. Prerequisite for analysis of the economic effects of trade unions; Membership rates for occupational groups and geographical areas; Information on a principal establishment survey; Purpose of data derived from household surveys; Importance of membership data provided by unions. (Abstract copyright EBSCO.)