The puzzles of union density in Norway

Nergaard, Kristine; Stokke, Torgeir Aarvaag

doi:10.1177/102425890701300409

Cited by 12 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…Using micro-data files for 34 countries Blanchflower (2007) found that, prior to 2005, union density rates peaked in midlife maximizing in the mid to late 40s. 3 4 This U-shaped, or hump shaped, pattern was also found subsequently for Norway by Nergaard and Stokke (2007) and Posthuma (2009) in the World Values Survey, 1999. Blanchflower found it made little difference whether controls were included, such as education, gender, race, occupation, location and so on; the probability of being a union member peaked in midlife.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 62%

Union Membership Peaks in Midlife

Blanchflower

Bryson

2020

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Using data from 68 countries on over 8 million respondents over forty years we show union membership peaks in midlife-usually around workers' late 40s or early 50s. In doing so we extend Blanchflower's (2007) earlier study, incorporating a further 39 countries and another decade or so of data. We also found it in every US state and the District of Columbia as well as across industries. The fact that this relationship exists in virtually every country across the world challenges a key precept in industrial relations, namely that institutions matter: they appear to matter little, at least in the case of the hump-shaped relationship between unionization and age. The union membership rates at the age peak in the United States and the United Kingdom have lowered over time, while the age at which the peak has occurred has increased in both countries. In part this is due to increasing union membership rates among those over the age of sixty-five. Declines in membership by birth cohort have lowered union density rates as the older cohorts with historically higher membership rates leave labour markets. Although we have yet to fully understand why union membership peaks in midlife we are able to examine some of the possible explanations. The findings have important implications for our understanding of trade unionism across the world.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 62%

Union Membership Peaks in Midlife

Blanchflower

Bryson

2020

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“…However, this is not the only difference between Norway and the other countries. According to Nergaard and Stokke (2007), the sectoral distribution of trade union density is very similar in Norway, Denmark and Sweden: very high in the public sector, high in manufacturing and low in the private service sector. However, the gap between density levels in the different sectors is much higher in Norway than in other Nordic countries.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Political attitudes and trade union membership in the Nordic countries

Jensen

2017

European Journal of Industrial Relations

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Do political attitudes influence the likelihood of employees being members of a trade union, and to what extent is this the case in the Nordic countries with their high aggregate levels of membership? In this article, I address these questions using European Social Survey data from 2012. The results show that left-wing political attitudes have the most impact on the likelihood of trade union membership in Sweden and to a lesser extent in Denmark. In Norway and Finland, there is no statistically significant impact. I argue that the impact of left-wing political attitudes on unionization in Sweden and Denmark reflects a conception among employees that trade unions are normative organizations.

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“…Schnabel (2013) has shown that the decline in union density between 1980 and 2010 was 27 percentage points lower in countries with a Ghent system; indeed densities actually climbed until the 1990s in the Nordic countries, as Figure 1 shows. All Nordic countries except Norway, which since 1938 has operated a compulsory system (Nergaard and Stokke, 2007), still maintain a Ghent system where insurance against unemployment is based on voluntary UIF membership. It is worth noting that union density in Norway has been steady at round 55 percent for the past 15 years, which is consistent with the argument that declining trade union density in the Nordic Ghent countries is related to institutional changes to unemployment insurance benefits and the institutional arrangements governing the UIFs.…”

Section: The Link Between Uifs Trade Unions and The New Trajectoriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

New trajectories of unionization in the Nordic Ghent countries: Changing labour market and welfare institutions

Høgedahl

Kongshøj

2017

European Journal of Industrial Relations

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Unemployment insurance funds (the 'Ghent system'), subsidized by the state and controlled by the labour movement, have contributed to high trade union densities in the Nordic countries. However, dependence on these funds as a recruiting mechanism makes trade union membership sensitive to institutional changes to unemployment insurance benefits and the institutional setup surrounding and regulating them. In this article, we investigate recent institutional changes in the three Nordic countries following the Ghent model, Finland, Sweden and Denmark, and analyse the consequences for union and fund membership. These countries have witnessed different combinations of two types of reform, less attractive unemployment benefits plus new institutional alternatives to the traditional union-run funds, and this has led to different outcomes in each country. Benefit retrenchment and increased contributions led to a sharp decline in fund membership in Sweden, whereas this trend is less pronounced in Finland and Denmark. Instead, the main trend here has been a shift from union-led to alternative forms of fund membership, but in different ways.

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The puzzles of union density in Norway

Cited by 12 publications

References 14 publications

Union Membership Peaks in Midlife

Union Membership Peaks in Midlife

Political attitudes and trade union membership in the Nordic countries

New trajectories of unionization in the Nordic Ghent countries: Changing labour market and welfare institutions

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