Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

Previous studies of union wage effects in higher education have examined faculty salaries, but not staff salaries. This study, using data from a 1997–98 survey conducted by the Association of Higher Education Facilities Officers and other sources, investigates how union coverage affected staff salaries at 163 U.S. colleges and universities. The authors estimate a union salary premium of 9–11%, with variation from near zero for some of the 47 occupations in their sample to 13–16% for others, such as the skilled building trades. The union/nonunion differential appears to be larger in 2-year than in 4-year institutions, but does not vary between the public and private sectors. Where faculty members are covered by a collective bargaining agreement, unionized staff members appear to enjoy an additional salary gain of 2–3%.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Ashraf

Javed

. 1997. “The Effect of Unions on Professors' Salaries: The Evidence over Twenty Years.” Journal of Labor Research, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Summer), pp. 439–50.

Barbezat

Debra

. 1989. “The Effect of Collective Bargaining on Salaries in Higher Education.” Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Vol. 42, No. 3 (April), pp. 443–55.

Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. 1994. A Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. Princeton, N.J.

Ehrenberg

Ronald G.

Goldstein

Gerald S.

, 1975. “A Model of Public Sector Wage Determination.” Journal of Urban Economics, Vol. 1 (June), pp. 223–45.

Freeman

Richard B.

Medoff

James L.

, 1984. What Do Unions Do? New York: Basic Books.

“Harvard Panel Recommends Wage Parity: Raises Coming to Cambridge?”

Chronicle of Higher Education, January 11, 2002, p. A34.

Heckman

James J.

1979. “Sample Selection Bias as a Specification Error.” Econometrica, Vol. 47, No. 1 (January), pp. 153–61.

Kesselring

Randall

. 1991. “The Economic Effects of Faculty Unions.” Journal of Labor Research, Vol. 12, No. 1 (Winter), pp. 61–72.

Lee

Lung-Fei

. 1978. “Unionism and Wage Rates: A Simultaneous Equations Model with Qualitative and Limited Dependent Variables.” International Economic Review, Vol. 19, No. 2 (June), pp. 415–33.

10.

Monks

James

. 2000. “Unionization and Faculty Salaries: New Evidence from the 1990s.” Journal of Labor Research, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Spring), pp. 305–14.

11.

Rees

Daniel I.

1993. “The Effects of Unionization on Faculty Salaries and Compensation: Estimates from the 1980s.” Journal of Labor Research, Vol. 14, No. 4 (Fall), pp. 399–422.

12.

Rees

Daniel I.

, 1994. “Does Unionization Increase Faculty Retention?” Industrial Relations, Vol. 33, No. 3 (July/August), pp. 297–321.

13.

“Sit-ins over Staff Wages Have Different Outcomes at Harvard and U. Connecticut.”

Chronicle of Higher Education, March 25, 2001, p. A41.

14.

Van Der Werf

Martin

. 2001. “How Much Should Colleges Pay Their Janitors? Student Protests Force Administrators to Consider Issues of Social Justice and Practicality.” Chronicle of Higher Education, Aug. 3, p. A27.

15.

Zellner

Arnold

. 1962. “An Efficient Method of Estimating Seemingly Unrelated Regressions and Testing for Aggregation Bias.” Journal of the American Statistical Association, Vol. 67 (June), pp. 348–65.

Collective Bargaining and Staff Salaries in American Colleges and Universities

Abstract

Get full access to this article

References