ERU Seminar: The Collective Bargaining Wage Premium in Ireland and 14 other EU countries

ERU Seminar: The Collective Bargaining Wage Premium in Ireland and 14 other EU countries

Date: Wednesday November 23rd 2011
Topic: The Collective Bargaining Wage Premium in Ireland and 14 other EU countries
Speaker: Dr Rory O’Farrell, ERU
Venue: INTO Training Centre, 38 Parnell Square, Dublin 1
Time: 4-5:15pm (Tea and coffee from 3:50pm)
Abstract:

This paper measures the collective bargaining pay premium for Ireland and 14 other European countries using data from the 2006 European Structure of Earnings Survey (SES). The European SES is a survey of matched worker-firm data that is gathered in a comparable fashion across the EU and gives an opportunity to measure the collective bargaining pay premium in a consistent cross-country manner.
The paper shows that a significant firm level collective bargaining pay premium is found across Europe, but its size varies widely with regard to country and form of collective bargaining. There is also evidence that firm level bargaining leads to a more compressed wage structure.

JEL: J31, J51, J52
Keywords: Trade unions, Collective Bargaining

9 replies on “ERU Seminar: The Collective Bargaining Wage Premium in Ireland and 14 other EU countries”

bit off thread IMF Speaks on The Conflationist Fallacy

Twas Anglo-Irish wot done in the EuroZone!

Working Paper No. 11/269: The Eurozone Crisis: How Banks and Sovereigns Came to be Joined at the Hip

Author/Editor: Mody, Ashoka ; Sandri, Damiano

Summary: We use the rise and dispersion of sovereign spreads to tell the story of the emergence and escalation of financial tensions within the eurozone. This process evolved through three stages. Following the onset of the Subprime crisis in July 2007, spreads rose but mainly due to common global factors. The rescue of Bear Stearns in March 2008 marked the start of a distinctively European banking crisis. During this key phase, sovereign spreads tended to rise with the growing demand for support by weakening domestic financial sectors, especially in countries with lower growth prospects and higher debt burdens. As the constraint of continued fiscal commitments became clearer, and coinciding with the nationalization of Anglo Irish in January 2009, the separation between the sovereign and the financial sector disappeared.

http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=25363.0

@ David O’Donnell

How Banks and Sovereigns Came to be Joined at the Hip”

Two words Lenihan and Brian.

US companies that I had contact with over the years often said that there were studies in the US indicating than unionised companies paid about 20% more than non-unionised companies. I have no idea where that info came from or how accurate the observation was.
I am however inclined to believe that a 20% premium would be an accurate reflection of reality at the non professional level of the employment spectrum.

@Joseph Ryan

About 8% of the US workforce is unionised. Most research in US Business schools is so rabidly anti-union that unions not even mentioned – something to do with tenure etc and the dominant ‘unitarist’ and ‘individualist’ ideology in vogue … so I take 99% of US research data on trade unionism with a pinch of salt … there is a small minority that I take seriously … and productivity is much more complex than ‘pay’ or whether a firm is ‘unionised’ or not …

Rory, I suspect, knows a bit more ……..

@Robert Browne

Conception preceeds birth – notwithstanding a few alleged theological exceptions which I have no intention of getting into on this blog …

The Birth occured when The Progressive Democrats (PDs) and Fianna Fail (FF) mutually screwed each other into highly dubious conjugal and ideological bliss while high on a diet of the neo-libertine equivalent of heroin for a decade; miraculously, while they then ascended into the glorious heaven of the golden ministerial pensions they somehow managed to pass on all the painful withdrawal symptoms and associated odious costs, lasting at least a generation, to the supine citizen_serfs.

Truly, A Miracle – suggest you read the Neu Four Gospels by St. Mary Harney, St. Mick McDowell, St. Charles McCreevy, and St Bertie Ahern: service at St Jude’s each sunday morning, and donations at the door still gratefully accepted; plenary indulgences for the generously afflicted in the back room and in a sealed brown envelope or direct to non-existant bank accounts in un-nameable places.

or is it ‘proceeds’ in this instance? (-; whichever, the ‘seeds’ were well and truly sown …. (-; ta for the copyediting function; if you could create such an app for this blog I’m sure it would be greatly depreciated.

The ERU, clearly economic research unit. But unit of what, the curious layperson might ask as it appears some crucial information is being obscured or at least being omitted.

It could be part of ESRI, OECD, IMF, Eurostat … something credible at least but why leave out a prestigious parent organisation? Why the INTO training center as a location? Suspicious?

I googled Rory O’Farrell and he crops up on TASC’s groupthink tank website and some European Trade Union Institute. Not much on an Irish ERU though, a surprisingly anonymous organisation for one that feels it can simply go by the name ERU.

Luckily whois told me the domain eru.ie is owned by The Congress Economic Research Unit. A search for that and it’s a unit of ICTU.

I’ll be on tenterhooks until the conference to know whether a trade union economist thinks that collective bargaining is a good or bad thing.

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