Work

Worker Representatives

Year: 2024

Type: report

Abstract: We study the descriptive and substantive representation of workers through worker representatives, focusing on the selection of German works council representatives and their impact on worker outcomes.Becoming a professional representative leads to substantial wage gains for the elected, concentrated among blue-collar workers.Representatives are positively selected in terms of pre-election earnings and person fixed effects.They are more likely to have undergone vocational training, show greater interest in politics, and lean left politically compared to the employees they represent; blue-collar workers are close to proportionally represented among works councilors.Drawing on a retirement-IV strategy and event-study designs around council elections, we find that blue-collar representatives reduce involuntary separations, consistent with blue-collar workers placing stronger emphasis on job security

Source: National Bureau of Economic Research

DOI: 10.3386/w32740

Authors: Julian Budde, Thomas Dohmen, Simon Jäger, Simon Trenkle

Institutions: University of Bonn, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Language: English

Topic: Labor Movements and Unions

Subfield: Public Administration

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDGs: Decent work and economic growth, Reduced inequalities

Open Access status: green

Funder: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft