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Trade Union Membership and Dismissals

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  • Laszlo Goerke
  • Markus Pannenberg

Abstract

In Germany, there is no trade union membership wage premium, while the membership fee amounts to 1% of the gross wage. Therefore, prima facie, there are strong incentives to free-ride on the benefits of trade unionism. We establish empirical evidence for a private gain from trade union membership which has hitherto not been documented: in West Germany, union members are less likely to lose their jobs than non-members. In particular, using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel we can show that roughly 50% of the observed raw differential in individual dismissal rates can be explained by the estimated average partial effect of union membership.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by CESifo Group Munich in its series CESifo Working Paper Series with number 3196.

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Date of creation: 2010
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Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_3196

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Keywords: dismissal; free-riding; trade union membership; survey data;

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References

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Cited by:
  1. Goerke, Laszlo & Pannenberg, Markus, 2012. "Trade Union Membership and Sickness Absence: Evidence from a Sick Pay Reform," IZA Discussion Papers 6777, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  2. Faccini, Renato & Rosazza Bondibene, Chiara, 2012. "Labour market institutions and unemployment volatility: evidence from OECD countries," Bank of England working papers 461, Bank of England.
  3. Fitzenberger, Bernd & Beck, Martin, 2003. "Changes in Union Membership Over Time: A Panel Analysis for West Germany," ZEW Discussion Papers 03-42, ZEW - Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung / Center for European Economic Research.
  4. Haggeney, Isabelle & Fitzenberger, Bernd & Ernst, Michaela, 1998. "Wer ist noch Mitglied in den Gewerkschaften? Eine Panelanalyse für Westdeutschland," ZEW Discussion Papers 98-11, ZEW - Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung / Center for European Economic Research.

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