Documents Industrial & Labor Relations Review 230 results

With this article, the authors are the first to analyze and explain the relationship between part-time employment and firm productivity. Using a unique data set on the Dutch pharmacy sector that includes the working hours of all employees and a "hard" physical measure of firm productivity, the authors estimate a production function including heterogeneous employment shares based on working hours. The authors find that firms with a large part-time employment share are more productive than firms with a large share of fulltime workers: a 10% increase in the part-time share is associated with 4.8% higher productivity. Additional data on the timing of labor demand show that this can be explained by a different allocation of part-timers compared with full-timers. This enables firms with large part-time employment shares to allocate their labor force more efficiently across working days.

"It is often asserted that the labor market is characterized by rigidities that make it difficult for older workers to carry out their desired trajectory from work to retirement. One potentially important source of rigidity is the restrictions on hours of work imposed by firms, but such rigidities are difficult to measure directly. The authors explore two variables that may serve as proxies for flexibility in hours at the employer level: the shares of older workers and young women in the employer's work force. The authors use matched worker-firm data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation and the Longitudinal Employer Household Dynamics study for the period 1990–2004 to analyze the effects of these variables on the job separation propensity of workers aged 45–69. Results indicate that older workers employed in firms with greater shares of older workers and young female workers have a lower propensity for job separation. These findings provide indirect but suggestive evidence of the importance of labor market rigidities in shaping employment decisions of older workers."

"The authors estimate inter-industry wage differentials using the Bureau of Labor Statistics's National Compensation Survey (NCS) dataset. The NCS dataset has a number of distinct advantages over household survey datasets typically used for this purpose, in part because its establishment data contain information on job content and more accurate measures of industry and occupation. The authors find that controlling for job functions substantially lowers inter-industry wage variation. To the extent that job function proxies for productivity, a substantial portion of inter-industry wage variation may be explained by worker sorting on (observed) ability."

"It is often assumed that manufacturing workers in developing countries, as recipients of outsourced jobs, would achieve economic benefits and organizational power. The author argues that job growth in developing countries through outsourcing to competing firms has often actually resulted in declining unionization and lower wage rates relative to traditional, integrated manufacturing firms. Using time-series data on union membership from 1980–2003 for Honduras and El Salvador as well as 2004 Household Survey Data for El Salvador, he examines the determinants of unionization rates and wages in the manufacturing sectors. He finds that that competitive outsourcing hurts labor at the plant-level in three ways: 1) it reduces labor's strike leverage by geographically dispersing the production process; 2) it increases the threat of plant mobility by decreasing plant-level investments; and 3) it increases labor costs relative to total costs, which creates an incentive for employers to keep wages low and unions out."

"Using a longitudinal data set covering the period 1987–2000, the authors explore the impact of female employers and gender segregation on wages in Portugal. In the context of Becker's (1957) taste for discrimination theory, they investigate whether the gender of a firm manager affects gender wage differences. They find that females benefit from higher wages in female-led firms than in male-led firms. Further, when females lead, the wage gap between female and male workers is reduced by 1.5%, regardless of the gender composition of the workforce. At the same time, the higher the share of females in a firm, the lower the wages overall for both female and male workers. The authors' results are compatible with the notion that job promotion is an important factor in wage increases. The more females are mentored and promoted, the less men will be. However, as more females in the firm compete for promotion, opportunities for both females and males to be promoted diminish."

"The author analyzes employment contract and labor demand models of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) overtime pay regulation to determine their effects on employers' labor costs. Using National Compensation Survey (NCS) data to obtain a representative sample of U.S. private-industry jobs, he assesses each model's ability to predict either the adjustment of wage rates if overtime is warranted (the employment contract model) or the probability of using overtime to meet labor demands (labor demand model). Using quasi-fixed employment costs as independent variables allows for a better accounting of labor demand. He finds that lower wages go hand-in-hand with jobs requiring more overtime work, which indicates that overtime pay regulation influences the structure of compensation."

"The authors examine job durations of German workers using the Linked Employer–Employee Data of the Institute for Employment Research (LIAB). Results indicate that exit rates are strongly influenced by firm characteristics, such as the existence of works councils and the opportunity for further training. The effects of these characteristics, however, are limited to jobs held by blue-collar workers or by those possessing vocational–educational skills. Changes in coefficients across specifications provide clear evidence for a sorting process whereby workers with expected long job durations are matched to firms offering stable employment and vice versa. An extension of the model to a competing-risks framework shows that both individual-level and firm-level characteristics differ greatly in their effects on worker job exits to unemployment and to new jobs. Evidence suggests that works councils decrease exits to both states, but only for blue-collar workers."

"In contrast to much of the research that treats the official All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) as a monolithic organization, the author argues that there is considerable variation within the ACFTU in terms of local union organizing strategies. Using extensive field research and interviews with regional union officials, grassroots union cadres, shop floor workers, and employers and managers in China during the period 2005–2007, the author contributes to an understanding of contemporary trade union strategies in China. Moreover, his analysis of regional union strategies suggests three patterns of union organizing: the ACFTU pattern, the union association pattern, and the regional, industry-based bargaining pattern, each with vastly different consequences for the future of trade unions and bargaining in China."

"The authors use the British Workplace Employment Relations Survey to assess whether the combination of employee stock ownership (ESO) plans and participation in decision-making positively affect productivity or whether ESO alone affects employee productivity. By assessing the extent to which employees participate in ESOs and the quality of their decision-making, the authors provide a clearer and more nuanced picture of this relationship with productivity. On the one hand, results show that stock plans seem to need other forms of employee involvement and “voice” in the firm to be effective, especially when there is minority participation in the ESO plan. On the other hand, results indicate that a majority participation in the plan has an independent effect on productivity. Overall, the authors' research challenges prevailing views about the complementarity regarding stock ownership and employee involvement practices."

"This study examines the labor cost incentive for capital movement in manufacturing within the European Union, a key aspect of the "social dumping" debate in Western Europe. The authors find that the percentage differences in unit labor costs between the more developed and less developed countries in the Union not only were large in 1980 but actually grew between 1980 and 1986, and separate estimates of compensation and productivity growth rates do not indicate that significant convergence occurred over the remainder of the 1980s. Although these findings apparently confirm that a labor cost incentive for capital mobility does exist, analysis of foreign direct investment data indicates that during the period 1980-88 capital flows to the lower labor cost countries actually were not much larger than capital flows to the higher labor cost countries."