The Exit-Voice Tradeoff in the Labor Market: Unionism, Job Tenure, Quits, and Separations
Author(s)
Freeman, Richard B.
Abstract
What do unions do? Much of the economics literature on unions has focused on their effects on wages and benefits; it is clear that unions, on average, increase worker compensation. This classic article demonstrates that unions have an additional, independent effect on labor relations: they reduce the rate at which workers leave their jobs, and hence increase average job tenure. It seems likely that this occurs because union members have an institutionalized opportunity to voice their discontents and to attempt to change their conditions of work. The article first elaborates this argument in theory, and then tests it empirically on four large sets of data on individual U.S. workers in the late 1960s and the 1970s.
