Works council introductions: Do they reflect workers' voice?

Arbeitspapier

Using a large linked employer-employee dataset from Germany, the author investigates workers' decision to introduce a works council as an exit-voice consideration. Thereby, the author explores the collective voice face of introductions, while previous studies focus on the monopoly aspect. Controlling for unobserved plant heterogeneity, council introductions are more likely if workers have high plant-specific human capital or earn high wages, whereas no association between the labor market situation and introductions shows up. The findings on human capital and wages are consistent with the idea that workers trade off introducing a council against exit as well as with workers trying to protect an existing distribution of rents. Redoing the analysis for a sample of plants in which it is less relevant for workers to protect themselves against management decisions yields similar results supporting the voice interpretation.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: Diskussionspapiere ; No. 83

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Labor-Management Relations; Industrial Jurisprudence
• Subject: co-determination ; works councils ; works council introductions ; workers' voice

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Oberfichtner, Michael
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Lehrstuhl für Arbeitsmarkt- und Regionalpolitik
• (where): Nürnberg
• (when): 2013

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/75279
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET