Autori: Cappellari, Lorenzo, Bryson, Alex, Lucifora, Claudio
Titolo: Why so unhappy? The effect of union membership on job satisfaction.
Periodico: Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale 'A. Avogadro' : Facoltà di Economia - Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Metodi Quantitativi "SEMEQ" - Quaderni
Anno: 2002 - Volume: 02 - Fascicolo: 33 - Pagina iniziale: 1 - Pagina finale: 34

We investigate the effect of union membership on job satisfaction. Whilst it is common to study the effects of union status on satisfaction treating individual membership as given, in this paper, we account for the endogenous selection induced by the sorting of workers into unionised jobs. In particular we use different methodologies to address the question of how the membership decision related to overall job satisfaction and to satisfaction with pay. We analyse linked employer-employee data from the 1998 British Workplace Employee Relations Survey (WERS) using propensity Score Matching (PSM) and Instrumental Variables (IV) techniques. We argue that most previous studies, due to either data deficiencies or estimation problems, suffer from severe limitations that are dealt with in the present paper. Our main finding is that once the endogeneity of membership is accounted for by appropriate matching of workers, unhappiness falls significantly. Residual dissatisfaction has a strong element which is due to thè "voice" effect union members have to convey to management in the bargaining process. When pay is considered, union dissatisfaction disappears, as is consistent with wage differentials in favour of members.





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