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De-Unionization and macro performance: What Freeman and Medoff didn’t do

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Abstract

Most, if not all, unions have monopoly power, which they can use to raise wages above competitive levels.-Freeman and Medoff (1984: 6) The inequality of bargaining power between employees who do not possess full freedom of association or actual liberty of contract and employers who are organized in the corporate or other forms of ownership association substantially burdens and affects the flow of commerce, and tends to aggravate recurrent business depressions, by depressing wage rates and the purchasing power of wage earners in industry and by preventing the stabilization of competitive wage rates and working conditions within and between industries.-Preamble to the Wagner Act of 1935

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of California, 90095, Los Angeles, CA

    Daniel J. B. Mitchell & Christopher L. Erickson

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  1. Daniel J. B. Mitchell
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Mitchell, D.J.B., Erickson, C.L. De-Unionization and macro performance: What Freeman and Medoff didn’t do. J Labor Res 26, 183–208 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12122-005-1022-4

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