What do unions do now?

Abstract

Since the publication of Freeman and Medoff’s What Do Unions Do? in 1984, labor economists have accumulated a wealth of empirical evidence on the economic effects of trade unions. Unfortunately, these studies tend to be long on description but short on theoretical explanation. Economic models of union behavior are both partial and ethnocentrc, which limit our understanding of what unions do, especially why they do what they do, and the possibilities for trade union revival in the twenty-first century. Conventional assumptions about union behavior should be recast in a broader international comparative context, exploiting new (primary) data-sets through a multior preferably inter-disciplinary theoretical approach.