Union Density and Collective Bargaining Coverage: International Comparisons

Union membership varies wildly across high-income countries. In addition, there is a phenomenon of "collective bargaining coverage," often not familiar to American readers, which measures the share of workers who are covered by collective bargaining agreement, even though they are not union members. In the US, union density is almost the same as collective bargaining coverage. But in France, only 7.7% of workers are actual union members while 98% of workers are covered by collective bargaining agreements. Here are some facts on these patterns across high-income countries from the OECD publication called Economic Policy Reforms 2016: Going for Growth.

As a starter, here are figures showing the variation in the share of workers who are covered by a collective bargaining agreement (Panel A) and the share actually belonging to a union (Panel B). Just glancing at the figure should offer two lessons: 1) There's a lot of variation across countries; 2) Many of the coverage rate percentages are substantially higher than the union membership percentages; that is, in a lot of countries a large share of workers will find that their compensation is determined by collective bargaining, even though they are not a union member.

Here are some specific examples of the differences between union density and collective bargaining coverage, drawing from the OECD data:

Union Density and Collective Bargaining Coverage, 2013
Country (abbreviation)	Union Density (%)	Collective Bargaining Coverage (%)
United States (USA)	10.7%	11.9%
Japan (JPN)	17.6%	17.1%
Canada (CAN)	26.4%	29.0%
United Kingdom (GBR)	25.1%	29.5%
Germany (DEU)	18.1%	57.6%
Spain (ESP)	16.9%	77.6%
Italy (ITA)	37.3%	80.0%
Sweden (SWE)	67.3%	89.0%
France (FRA)	7.7%	98.0%

This blog post isn't the place to dissect unionization patterns around the world. But I'd offer a few thoughts:  

1) US levels of union density and collective bargaining coverage are lower, and often considerably lower, than in other high-income countries. 

2) It seems clear that the  rules governing union formation and membership differ widely across countries, as do the rules by which many workers in many countries find that their compensation is collectively bargained. In many countries, union membership and collective bargaining are not at all the same thing. 

3) What people think of when referring a "union" or  a "collective bargaining agreement" will differ across countries, often in quite substantial ways. For example, the idea of not being in a union, but being covered by collective bargaining, seems strange to the Americans, Canadians and British, but common to the French, Spanish, Germans and Swedes. A union or a collective bargaining arrangement that represents a small share of the workforce can focus on its own members, and pay less attention to how its negotiations affect the broader labor force. A union or collective bargaining agreement that represents most workers will need to take a different perspective. The legal and traditional powers of unions vary substantially, too. Whenever referring to unions or collective bargaining, it's useful to be clear on what flavor of these arrangements you are describing. 

4) The OECD countris are the high-income countries of the world, which in turn suggests that an array of union and collective bargaining agreements can be broadly compatible with a high-income economy. Any labor market tradeoffs that arise are from the specific details of the institutional structure and decisions made by these unions and collective bargaining agreements. 

Some Economics for Labor Day

For those who need a dose of economics with their end-of-summer Labor Day family cookout (and really, don't we all need that?), here's a sampling of some previous posts.

1) Origins of Labor Day (September 7, 2015)

The first Labor Day march and celebration almost didn't happen, for lack of a band. Also, was Maguire or McGuire the one who had the idea for such a holiday?

2) Update on US Unions (October 8, 2015)

About 30% of the US workforce belonged to a union back in the early 1950s, compared to barely more than 10% today. Union workers do earn more, but at least in part, this is because their employers how to compete with a mixture of higher-priced labor, fewer jobs, and more capital investment . Are there alternative institutions that might help represent the modern needs of US workers?

3) The Gig Economy and Alternative Jobs

All of the job growth is in "alternative" jobs (April 11, 2016), which are in some sense temporary or on-call jobs without the expectation of a lasting attachment to a an employer. The US government is planning an updated survey of how many in the "gig economy" (February 16, 2016), because the current studies use different definitions and get different answers. There may be a need for new rules for workers in the gig economy (December 9, 2015).

4) Income Inequality

Here's an update on the income share being received by the top 1% in the US economy (July 6, 2016). Here's my argument as to why stock options are a primary reason for the growth of compensation and income inequality at the top of the income distribution (March 25, 2016).  One occasionally hears the argument that greater inequality may lead to slower economic growth, but I'm skeptical  (May 29, 2015).

5) Unemployment is Bottoming Out, So What's Next? (January 26, 2016)

The US unemployment rate has been 5% or lower since October 2015. It's unlikely to fall a lot further. So are we beginning to see the next steps in a healthy labor market, like wage increases and a rise in labor market participation rates?

Max Weber on Inconvenient Facts

This week before Labor Day, news about economics tends to be scarce, while academics and teachers are looking ahead to the next term. In that spirit, I'm going to pass along some thoughts about teaching this week.

With the 2016 election season in full force, here's a timeless thought from Max Weber in his 1918 lecture, "Science as a Vocation" (available various place on the web, like here and here).

“The primary task of a useful teacher is to teach his students to recognize 'inconvenient' facts--I mean facts that are inconvenient for their party opinions. And for every party opinion there are facts that are extremely inconvenient, for my own opinion no less than for others. I believe the teacher accomplishes more than a mere intellectual task if he compels his audience to accustom itself to the existence of such facts. I would be so immodest as even to apply the expression 'moral achievement,' though perhaps this may sound too grandiose for something that should go without saying.”

Harry Berger on Multiple Interpretations

This week before Labor Day, news about economics tends to be scarce, while academics and teachers are looking ahead to the next term. In that spirit, I'm going to pass along some thoughts about teaching this week.

It sometimes seems to me that too much of education is about asking students whether they understand or don't understand, or whether they agree or disagree, both of which can be useful steps, but neither of which pushes a student to interrogate their own understanding more closely. Here's a comment from Harry Berger, a professor of literature and art history, that captures some of my concern on this point:

“The first and most important move every young citizen of the interpretive community should make is to perform the pledge of allegiance to interpretation, and I don’t think it’s a bad idea for students to learn a little piety with the move. So I urge all teachers everywhere to insist that their students begin every day by murmuring in unison, and with expression, dutifully and even prayerfully, the two parts of the primal invocation that will prepare all American children to question both church and state:

Let there be at least one unacceptable interpretation of any text.
Let there be at least two acceptable interpretations of any text.

This little pair of exhortations seems innocuous, but taken together and perused more closely they open up a space between dogmatism and indeterminacy; they establish textual boundaries that can be policed.”

The quotation is from from Berger's 2005 book Situated utterances: texts, bodies, and cultural representations (Fordham University Press, p. 494).

Roxanne Gay on Safe Spaces and Trigger Warnings

This week before Labor Day, news about economics tends to be scarce, while academics and teachers are looking ahead to the next term. In that spirit, I'm going to pass along some thoughts about teaching this week.

In the last year or two, many campuses and classroom have seen arguments that seemed to pit robust debate against "safe spaces." I liked what Roxane Gay, a professor of English at Purdue University, had to say on this subject in a piece written for the New York Times last fall called “The Seduction of Safety, on Campus and Beyond” (November 13, 2015).

“On college campuses, we are having continuing debates about safe spaces. As a teacher, I think carefully about the intellectual space I want to foster in my classroom — a space where debate, dissent and even protest are encouraged. I want to challenge students and be challenged. I don’t want to shape their opinions. I want to shape how they articulate and support those opinions. I do not believe in using trigger warnings because that feels like the unnecessary segregation of students from reality, which is complex and sometimes difficult.

“Rather than use trigger warnings, I try to provide students with the context they will need to engage productively in complicated discussions. I consider my classroom a safe space in that students can come as they are, regardless of their identities or sociopolitical affiliations. They can trust that they might become uncomfortable but they won’t be persecuted or judged. They can trust that they will be challenged but they won’t be tormented.”

I like the definitiveness of Gay's statements that students will be challenged but won't be tormented, and the emphasis that a good class is built on trust.

Montaigne on Students Who Do Not Understand Themselves Yet

This week before Labor Day, news about economics tends to be scarce, while academics and teachers are looking ahead to the next term. In that spirit, I'm going to pass along some thoughts about teaching this week.

Like every teacher, I suppose, I've had more than one talk with a student who said: "I understand it all just fine in my mind, or when you say it or I read the textbook, but when I try to write it down, I just can't seem to say what I mean." One semester I had heard this line often enough that I posted on my door this rejoinder from Montaigne's essay "On the Education of Children, written around 1579-1580.

"I hear some making excuses for not being able to express themselves, and pretending to have their heads full of many fine things, but to be unable to bring them out for lack of eloquence. That is all bluff. Do you know what I think these things are? They are shadows that come to them of some shapeless conceptions, which they cannot untangle and clear up within, and consequently cannot set forth without: they do not understand themselves yet. And just watch them stammer on the point of giving birth; you will conclude that they are laboring not for delivery, but for conception, and that they are only trying to lick into shape this unfinished matter."

The quotation is from "The Complete Works of Montaigne: Essays, Journal, Letters," as translated by Donald M. Frame (Hamish Hamilton; London, p. 125).

Adam Smith on Teaching and Incentives

This week before Labor Day, news about economics tends to be scarce, while academics and teachers are looking ahead to the next term. In that spirit, I'm going to pass along some thoughts about teaching this week. Let's start with some characteristically realistic (or even cynical?) comments from Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations, from his discussion "Of the Expense of Institutions for the Education of Youth" (Book V, Ch. 1, Part III, Art. II).

Smith argues that when teachers don't have incentives to work on their teaching, then teachers will either "neglect it altogether, or ... perform it in as careless and slovenly a manner as that authority will permit." Moveover, if all the teachers come together in a college or university, they will support each other in their disdain for teaching: "In the university of Oxford, the greater part of the public professors have, for these many years, given up altogether even the pretence of teaching." Smith further argues that all the discipline at colleges and universities is aimed at students, not teachers, and includes this comment: "Where the masters, however, really perform their duty, there are no examples, I believe, that the greater part of the students ever neglect theirs. No discipline is ever requisite to force attendance upon lectures which are really worth the attending, as is well known wherever any such lectures are given."

Here are the extended passages from which these snippets are drawn:

"In other universities the teacher is prohibited from receiving any honorary or fee from his pupils, and his salary constitutes the whole of the revenue which he derives from his office. His interest is, in this case, set as directly in opposition to his duty as it is possible to set it. It is the interest of every many to live as much as his ease as he can; and if his emoluments are to be precisely the same, whether he does, or does not perform some very laborious duty, it is certainly his interest, at least as interest is vulgarly understood, either to neglect it altogether, or, if he is subject to some authority which will not suffer him to do this, to perform it in as careless and slovenly a manner as that authority will permit. If he is naturally active and a lover of labour, it is his interest to employ that activity in any way, from which he can derive some advantage, rather than in the performance of his duty, from which he can derive none.

"If the authority to which he is subject resides in the body corporate, the college, or university, of which he himself is a member, and in which the greater part of the other members are, like himself persons who either are, or ought to be teachers; they are likely to make a common cause, to be all very indulgent to one another, and every may to consent that his neighbour may neglect his duty, provided he himself is allowed to neglect his own. In the university of Oxford, the greater part of the public professors have, for these many years, given up altogether even the pretence of teaching. ...

"The discipline of colleges and universities is in general contrived, not for the benefit of the students, but for the interest, or more properly speaking, for the ease of the masters. Its object is, in all cases, to maintain the authority of the master, and whether he neglects or performs his duty, to oblige the students in all cases to behave to him as if he performed it with the greatest diligence and ability. It seems to presume perfect wisdom and virtue in the one order, and the greatest weakness and folly in the other. Where the masters, however, really perform their duty, there are no examples, I believe, that the greater part of the students ever neglect theirs. No discipline is ever requisite to force attendance upon lectures which are really worth the attending, as is well known wherever any such lectures are given."