Data Exploration - Collective Bargaining Power
When he’s not in the classroom, Emerson professor Barry Marshall doubles as the president of the college’s part-time faculty union. And he doesn’t treat it as a hobby — as the son of a longshoreman, he says he knows firsthand how important collective action can be.
“My father, one of the early things he did when he was 16 and working on the docks, was that [the union] refused to load armaments on the ships bound for the fascists in the Spanish Civil War,” he said. “The owners hired a bunch of thugs to come beat them up, and [the workers] fought it out and beat them back.”
The story was recounted often in his working-class household, Marshall said, as a valuable lesson to his brothers and sisters: as a worker, you will have to fight for what is right, and what is fair. Otherwise, he said, you’ll find it hard to live with yourself.
“That’s the kind of s–t I came from,” he said, laughing.
The story may be dramatic, Marshall conceded, but it has shaped his philosophy towards union organizing and bargaining at the college. If he can do a good job of firmly representing his colleagues through the union, he reasons that he can make work, and life, easier for everyone — without coming to blows with them, physical or otherwise.
“Collective bargaining is probably the most important aspect of the whole thing,” he said. “It really is what establishes any kind of leverage for a worker with an owner.”
Marshall concedes that bargaining in the United States is not what it once was. According to data from the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, only 12.1 percent of American workers were represented by collective bargaining agreements in 2019 — a steep decline from the time of Marshall’s father.
“When I was growing up, 40 percent of the workforce was unionized,” he said. “That's the middle class right there. Not only was [the United States] the strongest economy in the world, it was the fastest growing economy in the world. And the unions actually helped make the growth happen.”
The decline of unionization has culminated over the last two decades, according to OECD data; several developed countries have seen their collective bargaining rate — which includes all workers, union or not, covered by collective agreements — fall significantly.
And, according to the numbers, this is not a good thing for workers. Not only for their experience in the workplace, but for their overall quality of life.
Collective Bargaining – Where It Works, and Where It Doesn’t
The OECD measures collective bargaining rates for all 38 of its member states – which include North America and most of the European Union, as well as several countries in East Asia and Oceania. The amount of workers covered by CBA agreements vary widely from member state to member state, and from year to year.
Bargaining rates for workers in North America, for example, are relatively low. Since the OECD began collecting data in 2000, the amount of workers covered by bargaining agreements in the United States has only fallen (from 14.9 percent in 2000 to 12.0 percent in 2020). Even Canada, which leads the region with its strong labor regulations, has fallen from 32.4 percent (albeit by just a single percentage point).
“On all the grand-scale social metrics, America is way below all its peer nations,” said Jonathan Sudbury. “Pick the metric, we're down near the bottom of the advanced industrial world.”
Sudbury is an organizer with the Boston chapter of the International Workers of the World — one of the few labor unions to exist across national borders. The IWW has chapters in many OECD countries, including European social democracies that, he says, have far stronger protections for workers.
“It seems clear to me, as an objective fact, that the nations, the cultures, the societies that have strong collective bargaining structures in place are just better,” said Jonathan Sudbury. “I mean, the metrics just show that.”
Those nations and societies include many — but pointedly, not all — E.U. member states. According to the OECD’s data, there are several countries that not only have exceptionally high rates of bargaining coverage, but rates that are consistent over time. Over the two decade span from 2000 to 2020, Italy, France, Belgium, Austria have maintained bargaining rates greater than 95 percent. In other words, nearly all of their workforces have the right to collective bargaining with their employers.
The data also demonstrates, for certain countries, a steep decline in collective bargaining coverage over time. Greece maintained a rate of 100 percent coverage for over a decade until 2012, when that number fell to 51 percent.
This sharp cliff for Greek workers may be explained by historical context. In 2012, the Greek government accepted a relief package from the so-called “Troika” (the E.U., the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund).
The condition of this loan? A ruthless cut in legal protection for organized labor in the country.
Collective bargaining and its effects on wages
What the OECD data also makes clear is that collective bargaining protection is closely linked with higher wages. An analysis of the hourly wages of OECD member states (adjusted by purchasing power parity), measured over a similar period, clearly establishes this correlation.
Interestingly, the very strong correlation between wages and collective bargaining coverage only increases after the global recession of 2008. In 2007, the correlation (as measured by P-Value, where less than 0.05 is considered “very strong”) stood at approximately 0.35. In 2010, when the recession was at its worst, it was at 0.0005.
Why would the correlation strengthen? One reason, perhaps, would be that workers in countries with higher levels of collective bargaining have more leverage against, and protection from, pay cuts. Workers in countries with low bargaining rates do not have such a recourse; they have the choice of accepting a slashed wage or accepting termination.
This may be why the values on the right side of the visualization (those countries with more bargaining power) remain scattered over a relatively wide range — their unions can resist any drastic pay cuts. On the other hand, the values on the left side (those countries with less bargaining power) generally become packed closer together, while falling on the wages axis.
Collective bargaining and job strain
The data also bears out the fact that collective bargaining is closely correlated with how strenuous workers see their jobs. In an agglomeration of OECD surveys where workers were asked to self-report various “strains” on their workplace experience — from long and inflexible working hours to high intensity and/or physically taxing jobs — it's clear that countries with more bargaining power, in general, have better working conditions.
Even beyond this apparent correlation, the data shows that, even through the economic turmoil and uncertainty of the 2008 recession, certain countries with high bargaining rates actually reported a decrease in self-reported job strain. Workers in Spain and Portugal, for example, had an average ten-year bargaining rate of 78 percent — and their job strain rates both fell over ten percentage points over the same period, to around 34 percent.
Meanwhile, workers in Greece — which, as noted earlier, experienced sharp de-unionization in the early 2010s — faced a relatively constant (and high) level of strain over that same period
Sudbury said that the strength of collective bargaining is that it doesn’t only apply during contract negotiations. Instead, it allows workers to use their leverage to better their working conditions at any point of a contract — including and especially during periods of economic hardship.
“It’s not just about the contract,” he said. “It's about trying to make the workplace better by showing solidarity and strength… [collective bargaining] can fix a situation where schedules are a complete mess, and that's ruining everybody's life, or where a shop is understaffed, and that's ruining everybody's life. I've seen all those kinds of situations.”
Collective bargaining and quality of life
When work overflows into one’s day-to-day or causes added stress, it can have a plethora of negative effects on the human psyche. Collective bargaining and unions don’t just stop at creating a stronger foothold for employees but a better quality of life.
“There’s all kinds of benefits to quality of life,” Marshall said.
Marshall says that, while unions do foster a “stronger identity as a worker,” they also promote all sorts of “intangibles” — namely, better self-image and well being.
Life is complicated and finding an average of the overall living conditions isn’t easy to quantify. The OECD asked individuals to answer surveys regarding how well they would attribute specific factors each year and also a collection of general national statistics. These could be emotional like self-reported depression or an external factor such as road deaths.
As detailed earlier, collective bargaining helped Europe recover from the economic crisis of 2008. In Hungary, Fiscal factors and job security increased due to forming of unions, and in doing so emotional indicators also improved.
Sydney Mazur, an industrial psychology researcher at the University of Central Florida, said that, despite its oftentimes confrontational nature, collective bargaining does provide for a healthier relationship between employers and employees.
“Let's say someone's negotiating benefits at work, or their pay or what have you,” she said. “There is a mutual respect shown, or at least underlying, those expressions.”
Research shows that to be true, Mazur said, even when both parties are skeptical of the other’s intentions.
“Even if [workers] think that [vocalized respect] is just BS, it basically gives them a big head,” she said. “They love it. And that actually makes them perform even better.”
Workplace environment factors were also tracked by the OECD from 1995-2015 and the graph below displays a list of countries and their survey responses.
Mazur also spoke about how satisfaction in the workplace is transferred into the personal lives of workers.
“Satisfaction, like dissatisfaction, is transmitted so easily in the workplace,” she said. “So at home, absolutely those [interpersonal] relationships will be stronger. You come home from a day at work after feeling appreciated there, and you have more energy to give to your family members, your friends, and everyone in your social life. Because you feel respected outside of the home, you don't have to seek that in your personal life.
The inverse is also true, Mazur said, for workers experiencing unhealthy and imbalanced relationships in the workplace — which are more likely to occur in non-bargaining environments.
“If you don't have respect at all at work, you can be very drained when you come home,” she said. “You're not going to be able to really have any sort of energy, or expend proper attention.”
It is without question that the relationship between collective bargaining and quality of life in the office and the household are intertwined. However, it isn’t always about the finances or the job, but being a part of a group.
“I think the sense of community is so important,” Mazur remarked. “I can’t express it enough.”
