Globalisation and union opposition to technological change

Can deunionization lead to international outsourcing?

“…However, that would not nullify the mechanisms we have highlighted here, but would introduce an effect that run counter to the effects we have studied. 26 Finally, let us briefly make some comments about the efficiency properties of the model. A central result in our analysis is is that strong unions can protect an economy from outsourcing of jobs, and even more so in high-tech industries.…”

Unionisation structures, productivity and firm performance: New insights from a heterogeneous firm model

“…The result also holds, for instance, in an efficient bargaining setting where firms and unions bargain over employment and wages (results for that case are available from the author upon request). Moreover, Lommerud et al (2006) show in the context of an international duopoly model that unions increase their wage demands in response to a labour-saving innovation (which corresponds to a decrease in c in my model). The authors do not only consider rentmaximising unions, as I do, but allow for more general union preferences of the following form: w− À w ½ λ E (where λ N 0 captures the relative importance of wages over employment).…”

The bargaining position of low-skilled and high-skilled workers in a globalising world

“…E.g. Lommerud et al (2009) and Bognetti and Santoni (2010) suggest that offshoring may depend on the power and preference of unions whereas Menezes-Filho et al (1998) and Lommerud et al (2006), among many others, consider the impact of unions on the investment of firms in R&D and in (labour-saving) technology respectively. …”