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The employment of temporary agency workers in the UK – with or against the trade unions?

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  • René Böheim
  • Martina Zweimüller

Abstract

A firm's decision to employ agency workers may be perceived as a replace- ment of directly employed workers or as way to curb union power, which trade unions would oppose. Alternatively, trade unions may encourage the (tem- porary) employment of agency workers in a firm, if they manage to bargain higher wages for their members. We estimate the relationship between hir- ing agency workers and trade union activity at the workplace, in particular, the type of collective bargaining agreements. We use British data from the Workplace Employment Relations Surveys (WERS) of 1998 and 2004. The empirical association between the employment of agency workers and union strength is weak, but positive. Furthermore, workplaces with collective bar- gaining have lower wages in the presence of agency workers, suggesting that agency workers are hired against the unions.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by The Austrian Center for Labor Economics and the Analysis of the Welfare State, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria in its series NRN working papers with number 2009-21.

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Length: 25 pages
Date of creation: Oct 2009
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:jku:nrnwps:2009_21

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Related research

Keywords: temporary work agency; collective bargaining; flexibility; Workplace Employment Relations Survey;

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  7. Booth,Alison L., 1994. "The Economics of the Trade Union," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521464673.
  8. Arulampalam, Wiji & Booth, Alison L. & Bryan, Mark L., 2003. "Training in Europe," IZA Discussion Papers 933, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  9. David H. Autor, 2000. "Why Do Temporary Help Firms Provide Free General Skills Training?," NBER Working Papers 7637, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  10. Katharine G. Abraham & Susan K. Taylor, 1993. "Firms' Use of Outside Contractors: Theory and Evidence," NBER Working Papers 4468, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  11. Alex Bryson & P Willman, 2007. "Union Organization in Great Britain," CEP Discussion Papers dp0774, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
  12. Barth, Erling & Zweimuller, Josef, 1995. " Relative Wages under Decentralized and Corporatist Bargaining Systems," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 97(3), pages 369-84, September.
  13. Heywood, John S. & Siebert, W. Stanley & Wei, Xiangdong, 2006. "Examining the Determinants of Agency Work: Do Family Friendly Practices Play a Role?," IZA Discussion Papers 2413, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
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