Newly certified unions often experience difficulty negotiating a first agreement. To remedy this, the Employee Free Choice Act proposes that the National Labor Relations Act provide for first contract arbitration (FCA). Using a panel of Canadian jurisdictions that have introduced FCA legislation at different times over several decades, the author addresses three questions:
Cross-section time-series analysis of nine Canadian jurisdictions over nineteen years is used to identify the effect of mandatory votes/card check on certification success. The results indicate that mandatory votes reduce certification success rates by approximately 9 percentage points below what they would have been under card check. This result is robust across specifications and significant at above the 99% confidence level.This paper provides empirical evidence on how two alternative union recognition procedures, mandatory votes and card check, affect certification success. 1 Mandatory votes require that to be recognised, a union receive majority support in a secret ballot. In contrast, card check allows recognition based solely on membership evidence collected by the union and does not necessarily require a vote. In Canada, unions are recognised on the basis of either card check or mandatory representation votes. 2 Canada is a federal state consisting of ten provinces and labour law is primarily the responsibility of the provinces. There is considerable variation over time and across jurisdictions in the use of these two forms of union recognition. I conduct an econometric analysis of cross-section time-series data for nine Canadian provinces over the period 1978-96 to identify how the type of union recognition procedure affects union certification success. 3 The empirical results show that mandatory votes reduce certification success rates by approximately 9 percentage points below what they would be under card check. This result is robust across specifications and significant at above the 99% confidence level. The evidence indicates the type of union recognition procedure has a substantial effect on certification success and, therefore, it is likely more difficult for unions to maintain or to expand membership under mandatory representation votes than under card check. This explains why the labour movements in North America and the UK have supported card check recognition procedures while business has preferred mandatory votes. The evidence also provides empirical support for the
This paper looks at changes in hourly wages and hours worked per week of prime-age males in different skill-groups (measured by earnings quintile) in the U.S. and Canada from 1981 to 1997. The analysis reveals that increases in hourly wage inequality are primarily responsible for increases in weekly earnings inequality in both countries. Increases in the dispersion of hours worker per week play a more important part in explaining the increase in earnings in equality in Canada than in the U.S. High-skill workers experienced increases in earnings growth due to increases in hours and, at least for the U.S., increases in wages. In contrast, low-skill workers experienced declines in earnings growth due to decreases in wages and hours. This evidence is consistent with a skill-biased demand shock. In Canada a larger percentage of the reduction in earnings of low-skill workers is accounted for by declining hours. This evidence suggests a higher degree of downward wage rigidity in Canada than in the U.S.
This article provides empirical evidence concerning the impact of mandatory votes on the Canada-U.S. density gap. Simulation analysis reveals (1) that the increasing use of mandatory votes in Canada has narrowed the gap by about 1 percentage point and (2) that differences in recognition procedures between Canada and the United States accounted for at least 3 to 5 percentage points of the gap in 1998.
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