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The Decline of US Labor Unions and the Role of Trade
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- Book details for The Decline of US Labor Unions and the Role of Trade
- Globalization Balance Sheet
- Robert E. Baldwin (author)
- Paperback, 230 x 153 x 7mm , 150 pp
- 30 Apr 2003
- Institute for International Economics,U.S.
- 0881323411
- 9780881323412
Between 1977 and 1997 in the USA, there was a precipitous decline in the proportion of workers with median education (12 years or less) who were represented by a labour union, from 29 to 14 per cent; unionization proportions declined much less among workers with above-median education (19 to 13 percent). The union wage premium also declined for basically-educated workers, from 58 to 51 per cent, whereas it rose slightly for better educated unionists, from 18 to 19 per cent. Thus, whatever safety net that American unions provided was disproportionately lost by the less-educated workers who arguably needed it most. In this text, Robert E. Baldwin investigates the role of changes in US imports and exports in explaining this dramatic decline. The main analysis (which includes workers in manufacturing as well as service sectors) relates changes in the number of union workers across industries to changes in domestic spending, imports, exports, and the intensity in which labour is used across these industries for both union and non-union workers. Baldwin finds that although globalization (in the sense of increased trade) seems to have contributed only modestly to the general decline in unionization, it has, more importantly, contributed to the decline of unionization among workers with less education. The study concludes with a discussion of the implication of this and the other findings for governmental policy and for the policy position of unions toward globalization.
