Prior research suggests that individuals react negatively when they perceive they are underpaid. Moreover, individuals frequently select pay referents who share their race and gender, suggesting that demographic similarity affects one’s knowledge of pay differences. Leveraging these insights, the authors examine whether the gender and racial composition of a work unit shapes individuals’ reactions

This article introduces the special issue on New Theories in Employment Relations. The authors summarize the history of employment relations theory and reflect on the implications of recent disruptive changes in the economy and society for new theory development. Three sets of changes are identified: the growing complexity of actors in the employment relationship, an increased emphasis on identity

ILR Review invited leading scholars to present short comments on paired articles in the preceding Special Issue on New Theories in Employment Relations. They identify key contributions, suggest extensions, and offer broader thoughts on the direction of future theory in employment relations.

Labor standards are not just enforced; they are enacted, and often in ways that are different from their stated intention. This distinction creates an opening to consider the ways that frontline workers extend and repurpose enforcement practices. Drawing on qualitative research in two US cities, the authors focus on Latino immigrant construction workers to identify the strategies they use to rework

Although women earn approximately 50% of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) bachelor’s degrees, more than 70% of scientists and engineers are men. The authors explore a potential determinant of this STEM gender gap using newly collected data on the career trajectories of United States Air Force Academy students. Specifically, they examine the effects of being assigned female math and

For much of the 20th century, a sizeable proportion of the workforce in the United States had access to a combination of dispute resolution and voice options through the union grievance process. The vast majority of today’s workforce, however, no longer does. The focus of this article is the proliferation of alternative relational exchange models developed in non-union firms. The author develops a

This article uses ethnographic and interview data about four cases in two work settings in India to examine identification as a factor in workers’ reactions to workplace change. Novel technology and management practices are frequently introduced into work settings as the world of work changes. Workers tend to cooperate more with some workplace changes than with others. The previous employment relations

For more than 50 years, Daniel S. Hamermesh has been one of the most prolific and influential economists in the world. He has made seminal contributions in the areas of labor demand, wage determination, time use, labor and macroeconomics, research methodology, and many other subjects in labor economics. He has won many prestigious awards, including but not limited to the IZA Prize in Labor Economics

This article examines the effect of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) dependent coverage mandate on health insurance and labor supply. The author applies three research designs—difference-in-differences, regression discontinuity, and regression kink designs—and conducts extensive robustness checks and falsification tests, along with a formal test for the location of discontinuity and kink. The author finds

The authors use data from the British Skills and Employment Surveys to document and to try to account for sustained work intensification between 2001 and 2017. They estimate the determinants of work intensity, first using four waves of the pooled cross-section data, then using a constructed pseudo-panel of occupation–industry cells. The latter approach suggests biases in cross-section models of work

Understanding hiring difficulties and the nature of hiring frictions that employers face is important for the promotion of economic growth and the individual success of both firms and workers. This study sheds light on this issue by presenting evidence from an original, nationally representative survey of information technology (IT) helpdesks that contains detailed measurements of skill requirements

This article compares how the United States and Germany deregulated labor markets between the 1980s and 2010s in response to the rise of neoliberalism. Building on literature with a focus on ideas and national knowledge regimes, the authors argue that the trajectories of labor market deregulation across the two countries are explained by the distinct social organization of ideas. The latter refers

The authors use the occurrence of a large and geographically varying inflow of more than 2.5 million Syrian migrants to Turkey between 2012 and 2015 to study the effect of migration on local economies. They do not find adverse employment or wage effects for native-born Turkish workers overall or for those without a high school degree. These results are robust to a range of strategies to construct reliable

This article explores why many public school teachers work substantially more hours than required by contract, given that the elasticity of their earnings with respect to their hours is close to zero. The author introduces a theoretical framework for public-sector employees in which high levels of effort can indicate either altruism (for intrinsically motivated employees) or low productivity (for low-ability

This study investigates the relationship between ownership form and human resource (HR) practices in a franchise system. Using data from a unique establishment-level survey of a US-based limited service hotel chain, the author examines how HR practices vary between franchisee- and company-owned hotels, and among franchisees with diverse ownership structures. Consistent with agency theory predictions

Customer abuse of frontline service workers is widespread. Yet despite growing recognition of this problem, we know very little about the role that service companies play in potentially enabling customers’ abusive behaviors. This phenomenon deserves attention because one of the recent trends in service management is giving customers a direct role in managing and evaluating workers’ performance. In

The misclassification of employees as independent contractors has been the focus of recent attention as a result of the implementation of that employment model by ride-share and other gig employers. But the practice long predates the emergence of the gig economy, particularly in the construction industry. This article traces the history of misclassification in construction and the subsequent emergence

A central assumption in industrial relations theory is that conflict is rooted in an enduring difference between the interests of labor and management. In recent years, the reality of work has changed for many, and scholarship has called attention to overlooked dimensions of conflict that depart from this assumption. The authors account for these developments with the concepts of multiplicity and distance

In recent years, labor and civil rights groups have successfully pushed for local regulation raising the minimum wage, creating new parenting and sick leave policies, and broadening anti-discrimination protections to address sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination. This article examines the viability of this worker-protective regulation at the local level in the face of current legal

When jobs offered by different employers are not perfect substitutes, employers gain wage-setting power; the extent of this power can be captured by the elasticity of labor supply to the firm. The authors collect 1,320 estimates of this parameter from 53 studies. Findings show a prominent discrepancy between estimates of direct elasticity of labor supply to changes in wage (smaller) and the estimates

For decades, direct employment relationships have been increasingly displaced by indirect employment relationships through networks of firms and layers of managerial control. The firm strategies driving these changes are organizational, geographic, and technological in nature and are facilitated by state policies. The resulting weakening of traditional forms of collective bargaining and worker power

The authors evaluate a 2011 Italian law that installed a step-wise increase in gender quota that remains effective for three consecutive board renewals of listed limited liability firms. They link firm-level information on board membership and board election dates with detailed employment and earnings records from the Social Security registers. Exploiting the staggered introduction of the gender quota

Using data from a national sample of American workers, the authors develop measures for “prosocial unionism”—the belief that unions contribute to the common good—and use regression analysis to determine its impact on public support for unions and on workers’ likelihood of supporting a union in a representation election in their workplace. Results show that the public’s support for unions is stronger

Recent evidence documents an increased interest among American workers in joining a union. At the same time, there is revived debate among labor scholars, union leaders, politicians, and activists over what forms of labor representation are best suited to meet the needs of the contemporary workforce. Yet little is known about what contemporary workers have to say about these debates. This article draws

The authors examine the effect of labor unions on workplace safety. For identification, they exploit the timing and outcome of union elections, using establishments in which elections narrowly fail as a comparison group for establishments in which elections narrowly pass. Data on elections come from the National Labor Relations Board, and data on workplace safety come from the Occupational Safety and

German labor market regulation and institutions have been a focal point of labor economics and industrial relations research for decades. Their unique features have allowed companies to be internationally competitive and workers to prosper as well. But radical disruptions—from the reunification of East and West Germany in 1990 to the European impact of the 2008 financial crisis—have challenged the

We study how union certification affects the enforcement of workplace-safety laws. To generate credible causal estimates, a regression discontinuity design compares outcomes in establishments where unions barely won representation elections to outcomes in establishments where union barely lost such elections. The study combines two main datasets: the census of National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)

The authors explore the educational response to fracking—a recent technological breakthrough in the oil and gas industry—by taking advantage of the timing of its diffusion and spatial variation in ...

The increasing variety of contingent work raises the question of how employers choose between various types of contractual arrangements. The authors review relevant Employment Relations and Strateg...

In recent decades, much of the authority to regulate the workplace has shifted from national-level labor law to state-level employment law. What contributions, if any, did labor unions make to this...

Using a 20-month qualitative study of four US states that implemented career pathways spanning from high schools to colleges to employers, the authors illustrate the potential for state government ...

In many ways, Like Family gives an important and unsettling account of domestic work. The first half could have been more systematic in structure and more sociological in content; for example, the author dedicates only one page to the working conditions (p. 10) of domestic workers before turning to the (often degrading) terms used for domestic workers over time. And although Jansen is open and self-critical

Power and dependence in economic exchange shape industry structure. When a focal industry faces powerful suppliers or buyers, this can reduce industry rents. The authors argue that these dynamics a...

As we write this introductory essay on private regulation in global supply chains, we are in the midst of a pandemic caused by COVID-19. Beyond the health care crisis, the economic disruption is devastating. Millions of workers in global supply chains are losing their jobs as companies cut production in response to declining demand. This trend is especially true of the apparel supply chain, which is

This study examines the effect of safety enforcement on workplace injuries and worker productivity in coal mines. The author exploits the introduction of a “flagrant” violation standard—with penalt...

The authors investigate what determines differences in change in pay between men and women executives who move to new employers. Using proprietary data of 2,034 executive placements from a global s...

The authors analyze the effect of technological innovation on employment and job quality using a difference-in-differences matching model and a unique matched data set of French firms (the Communit...

Using data from the Current Population Survey’s Merged Outgoing Rotation Groups, the authors examine whether greater Medicaid generosity encourages people to switch toward better quality occupation...

How do public and private labor governance regimes intersect in global supply chains and with what effects? Based on fieldwork in Bangladesh, including interviews with garment industry stakeholders, this article examines the main public and private regulatory reforms instituted in post-Rana Plaza Bangladesh: the Sustainability Compact and the Bangladesh Accord, respectively. Despite the Accord’s substantial

Income inequality has been lower in periods when trade unionism has been strong. Using observations on wages by occupation, by geography, and by gender in collective bargaining contracts from the 1940s to the 1970s, patterns in movements of wage differentials are revealed. As wages increased, some contracts maintained relative wage differentials constant, some maintained absolute differences in wages

Researchers’ interest in monopsony has increased in recent years. This article reviews the accumulating evidence that employers have considerable monopsony power. It summarizes the application of t...

Activism seeking to improve labor conditions in global supply chains has led many transnational corporations to adopt codes of conduct and to monitor suppliers for compliance. Drawing on thousands of audits conducted by a major social auditor, the authors identify structural contingencies in the institutional environment and program design under which codes and monitoring are more likely to be associated

The authors use three distinct methods to investigate the influence of industrial relations on firm wage premia in Germany. First, ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions for the firm effects from a two-way fixed-effects decomposition of workers’ wages reveal that average premia are larger in firms bound by collective agreements and in firms with a works council, holding constant firm performance

Using a six-year study of Better Work Lesotho (BWL), this article examines whether the ILO’s Better Work initiative leads to improvements in labor standards compliance. Data include 55 focus group discussions conducted with 426 workers during four waves of data collection between 2011 and 2017. In-depth qualitative research with workers before, during, and after BWL reveals the root causes underlying

This article presents data from a novel survey of 1,256 employment plaintiff attorneys to test whether employee rights and remedies are affected by mandatory employment arbitration. By surveying at...

Estimates of union wage effects have been challenged due to concerns over unobserved worker heterogeneity and endogenous job changes. Many believe that union wage premiums lead to business failures and other forms of worker displacement. In this paper, displacement rates and union wage gaps are examined using the 1994-2018 biennial Displaced Worker Survey (DWS) supplements to the monthly Current Population

Previous empirical studies investigating the employment impact of technological change have relied on cross-sectional measures of occupational tasks. Here, the author links microdata on individual ...

The authors evaluate the exemption of long-term unemployed job seekers from Germany’s national minimum wage. Using linked survey and administrative micro data, they rely on a regression discontinuity design to identify the effects of the policy by comparing hiring rates, employment stability, and entry wages around the administrative threshold between short-term and long-term unemployment. They find

In 1996, Germany introduced the Altersteilzeit (ATZ) policy, which provided incentives for partial retirement. Using linked establishment survey and administrative employment data, the authors estimate changes in part-time employment rates and retirement after ATZ. Among men, part-time work increased and retirements were postponed by at least 0.6 years without any displacement of full-time work. For

Although firms in diverse industries increasingly adopt private regulation of labor standards for workers in their global supply chains, growing scholarly evidence suggests that this approach has not generated sustainable improvements in working conditions for those workers. The authors draw on recent developments in institutional theory regarding the development of opaque institutional fields that

Over the past 30 years, state intervention to reshape employment relations has become a generalized feature of contemporary capitalism. A broad neoliberal reconstruction of the market order has gon...

Information technology’s ubiquitous presence in American life has spurred academics and journalists alike to fill a gaping void in a critical understanding of how technology is being developed and deployed, and with what impacts. Silicon Valley has promulgated accounts of technology as positively disruptive, as enabling new forms of entrepreneurism, as smoothly functioning systems, and as the inevitable

This article provides the first large-scale evidence on transgender status, gender identity, and socioeconomic outcomes in the United States, using representative data from 35 states in the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), which asked identical questions about transgender status and gender identity during at least one year from 2014 to 2017. More than 2,100 respondents, aged 18 to

Using 2009 to 2015 American Community Survey (ACS) data, this article estimates the effect of the prevalence of long hours and short hours of work in a husband’s field of work, as defined by his un...

This article reports the findings of a correspondence audit study that examines how online bachelor’s degrees affect labor market outcomes. The study involves sending 1,891 applications for real jo...

The authors examine the impact of ethnic bias based on public employment officers’ decisions when choosing whom to recommend for participation in a labor market program. On the basis of an experime...

The authors study connections in academic hiring in a sample of finance doctoral graduates. Departments hire PhD graduates with school connections to other recently hired faculty at a significantly...

Using qualitative data from interviews with multiple respondents in 45 garment brands and retailers, as well as respondents from unions and other stakeholders, the authors analyze the emergence of the Action Collaboration Transformation (ACT) living wages initiative. They ask how the inter-firm coordination and firm–union cooperation demanded by a multi-firm transnational industrial relations agreement

This paper examines effects of the U.S. Immigration Act of 1990 on STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) degree completion and labor market outcomes for native-born Americans. The Act increased the in-flow and stock of foreign STEM workers in the U.S., both by increasing green card allotments and by expanding temporary work visas via the H-1B visa program. These policy changes potentially

Do purchasing practices support or undermine the regulation of labor standards in global supply chains? This study offers the first analysis of the full range of supply chain regulatory efforts, integrating records of factory labor audits with purchase order microdata. Studying an apparel and equipment retailer with a strong reputation for addressing labor conditions in its suppliers, the authors show