The employment of temporary agency workers in the UK with or against the trade unions?

Arbeitspapier

A firm's decision to employ agency workers may be perceived as a replace- ment of directly employed workers or as way to curb union power, which trade unions would oppose. Alternatively, trade unions may encourage the (tem- porary) employment of agency workers in a firm, if they manage to bargain higher wages for their members. We estimate the relationship between hir- ing agency workers and trade union activity at the workplace, in particular, the type of collective bargaining agreements. We use British data from the Workplace Employment Relations Surveys (WERS) of 1998 and 2004. The empirical association between the employment of agency workers and union strength is weak, but positive. Furthermore, workplaces with collective bar- gaining have lower wages in the presence of agency workers, suggesting that agency workers are hired against the unions.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: Working Paper ; No. 0912

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Firm Behavior: Theory ; Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials ; Particular Labor Markets: General
• Subject: temporary work agency ; collective bargaining ; flexibility ; Workplace Employment Relations Survey ; Leiharbeit ; Arbeitsnachfrage ; Lohnniveau ; Gewerkschaftsmitgliedschaft ; Tarifpolitik ; Arbeitsmarktflexibilität ; Großbritannien

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Böheim, René ; Zweimüller, Martina
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Johannes Kepler University of Linz, Department of Economics
• (where): Linz
• (when): 2009

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/73627
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:42 AM CET