Calendrier du 19 janvier 2021
Applied Economics Lunch Seminar
Du 19/01/2021 de 12:30 à 13:30
ANDREESCU Marie (PSE)
Labor facing capital in the workplace: the fate of worker representatives
écrit avec with Jérôme Bourdieu, Vladimir Pecheu
The paper studies how the personal career of union (or worker) representatives is tied to the conditions in which revenues are shared between labor and capital at the firm-level. We argue that employers can have a strategic interest in either favoring or discriminating against union representatives in order to lower workers’ bargaining power. The first strategy (favoritism) amounts to “buying the social peace” and can only be implemented with willing representatives. The second (discrimination) is a way to stigmatize vindictive representatives and curb their demands, notably by discouraging other workers to join the union. The behavior of union representatives during firm negotiations and the stake of those negotiations will influence employers’ willingness to use one or the other of those strategies. This is confirmed by data for France in 2017: for example, union representatives that are most active during their mandate or represent the most campaigning unions have much worse careers than their colleagues, while those that do not participate in strikes experience a large wage premium. Workers are also more likely not to join a union because they fear for their career in firms where union representatives are penalized. Based on the theory and the results, we conclude that the employer ability to substantially affect representatives’ careers can seriously impair the quality of workers’ representation and workers’ ability to organize collectively in order to take effectively part in the firm decision-making process.