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Journal article

The wage impact of trade unions in the UK public and private sectors


There is a growing gap in the union membership wage premium between public and private-sector workers in the United Kingdom. Using the Labour Force Surveys of 1993-2006, the gap between the membership premium in the public and private sectors closes with the addition of three-digit occupational controls, although significant wage premia remain in both sectors. However, using the Workplace Employment Relations Survey of 2004, the public-sector union membership wage premium remains roughly twice the size of the private-sector membership premium, having accounted for workplace fixed effects and workers' occupations, job characteristics, qualifications and demographics.


David Blanchflower and Alex Bryson

1 January 2010


Economica 77(305) , pp.92-109, 2010


DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0335.2008.00726.x

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1468-0335.2008.00726.x

This Journal article is published under the centre's Labour markets programme.

This publication comes under the following theme: Labour market institutions and policies