In the first part of this paper a union membership stock-flow growth accounting identity provides detailed descriptions of the impact of 'legal' and 'economic' factors on union density in Canada and the U.S. private sector. In the second part simulations are used to explore the impact of one legal factor - mandatory representation votes on the Canada-US union density gap and union density in Canada. The first simulation shows that mandatory votes explain 17 to 26 percent of the Canada-US union density gap. Differences between Canada and US mandatory vote procedures mean this is a very conservative estimate. The second simulation shows that the increasing use of mandatory votes across Canadian jurisdictions over time has reduced Canadian union density by less than 1 percentage point by 1995. From 1995 to 1998 the percentage of the Canadian labour force covered by mandatory vote legislation increased from 18% to 57%. In the future the negative effect of mandatory votes on Canadian union density will increase.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
file. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: