Labor Relations Commons^™

Still A Coordinated Model? Market Liberalization And The Transformation Of Employment Relations In The German Telecommunications Industry, Virginia Doellgast

Virginia Doellgast

This paper examines recent changes in collective bargaining and employer strategies in the German telecommunications industry following market liberalization in the late 1990s. Germany’s distinctive co-determination and vocational training institutions encouraged large firms to adopt employment systems in technician and call center workplaces that relied on high levels of worker skill and discretion. However, organizational restructuring is undermining these gains, as firms use outsourcing and the creation of subsidiaries to escape or weaken company-level collective agreements. These trends have substantially weakened unions and contributed to the further disorganization of coordinated bargaining structures. Findings are based on interviews with union and …

Identity Work: Sustaining Transnational Collective Action At General Motors Europe, Ian Greer

Ian Greer

What are the conditions under which transnational collective action is initiated and sustained? This paper presents a case study of General Motors Europe, where labor leaders have mobilized the workforce and bargained with management at the transnational level repeatedly over more than a decade as a response to management whipsawing and threats of plant closures. In contrast to structuralist interest-based theories of union behavior, we identify a process of “identity work‟ that was necessary to sustain transnational worker cooperation.

Effects Of Unionization On Graduate Student Employees: Faculty-Student Relations, Academic Freedom, And Pay, Sean Rogers, Adrienne E. Eaton, Paula B. Voos

Sean Edmund Rogers

In cases involving unionization of graduate student research and teaching assistants at private U.S. universities, the National Labor Relations Board has, at times, denied collective bargaining rights on the presumption that unionization would harm faculty-student relations and academic freedom. Using survey data collected from PhD students in five academic disciplines across eight public U.S. universities, the authors compare represented and non-represented graduate student employees in terms of faculty-student relations, academic freedom, and pay. Unionization does not have the presumed negative effect on student outcomes, and in some cases has a positive effect. Union-represented graduate student employees report higher levels of …

Boom & Bust: The Perils Of Guaranteed Long Term Contracts. Evidence From Ops100 Performance Over The Contract Cycle, Heather M. O'Neill

Business and Economics Faculty Publications

This study focuses on panel data of 256 MLB free agent hitters under the 2006-2011 Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) to demonstrate that hitters, on average, increase their offensive production, measured by OPS100, during the last year of their contract and subsequently underperform the first year of the newly signed long term contract. The contract year phenomenon arises from the incentive to land a lucrative guaranteed contract for players not intending to retire. Signing a long term guaranteed contract creates an incentive to shirk (underperform) the first year of the new contract because performance and pay become unlinked and the need …

New York State Teacher Salary Report, Alexander Colvin, Sally Klingel, Simon Boehme, Susanne Donovan

Alexander Colvin

Teachers are central to the success of any education system and the salaries paid to teachers are among the most important issues for both school districts and the unions that represent teachers. For school districts, teacher salaries are a major com- ponent of district budgets. Teacher salary levels are also a crucial factor in attracting and retaining quality educators. This report presents data on teacher salary levels based on teacher contracts throughout New York State. In addition to reporting overall statewide salary levels, it also documents the wide variation in teacher salary levels across New York State. This New York …

Do Mlb Hitters Boost Performance In Their Contract Year?, Heather M. O'Neill

Business and Economics Faculty Publications

This study focuses on 256 MLB free agent hitters playing under the 2006-2011 CBA to determine whether they boost their offensive performance in their contract year. Prior studies’ results are mixed, depending on the econometric technique used and the choice of the offensive performance measure.

Having multiple year observations per player, one can incorporate the unobserved traits of the players (ability, risk aversion, work ethic, etc.) by using Fixed Effects (FE) estimation. Since these unmeasured player traits are likely to be correlated with observed predictors of performance (games played, playoff contention, age, etc.), traditionally used Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and …

Telecommunications: Collective Bargaining In An Era Of Industry Reconsolidation, Jeffrey Keefe, Rosemary Batt

Rosemary Batt

[Excerpt] In this paper, we examine the reconsolidation of the industry, between 1995 and 2001, focusing on the merger, acquisition, and business strategies of the major corporate players; union responses to those strategies; and the resulting evolution of union-management relations and collective bargaining outcomes. We argue that the nature of the industry and technology, coupled with its institutional legacy, provides incentives for consolidation and recentralization of the ownership structure. In this process over the last decade, former Bell affiliates have sought union support before regulatory commissions, and the unions have leveraged their political power to make important gains in collective …

Employee Voice, Human Resource Practices, And Quit Rates: Evidence From The Telecommunications Industry, Rosemary Batt, Alexander J.S. Colvin, Jeffrey Keefe

Alexander Colvin

The authors draw on strategic human resource and industrial relations theories to identify the sets of employee voice mechanisms and human resource practices that are likely to predict firm-level quit rates, then empirically evaluate the predictive power of these variables using data from a 1998 establishment level survey in the telecommunications industry. With respect to alternative voice mechanisms, they find that union representation predicts lower quit rates, even after they control for compensation and a wide range of other human resource practices that may be affected by collective bargaining. Also predicting lower quit rates is employee participation in offline problem-solving …

International Labor Standards, Soft Regulation, And National Government Roles, Sarosh C. Kuruvilla, Anil Verma

Sarosh Kuruvilla

[Excerpt] In this article, we briefly describe the different approaches to the regulation of international labor standards, and then argue for a new role for national governments based on soft rather than hard regulation approaches. We argue that this new role shows potential for significantly enhancing progress in international labor standards, since it enables governments to articulate a position without having to deal with the enforcement issues that hard regulation mandates. We justify this new role for governments based on the increasing use of soft regulation in the international arena. Of course, this approach is not without its own problems, …