TY  - JOUR
AU  - Pencavel,John H.
TI  - The Trade-Off between Wages and Employment in Trade Union Objectives
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 870
PY  - 1982
Y2  - March 1982
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w0870
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w0870.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
John H. Pencavel
Department of Economics
Landau Economics
Stanford University
Stanford, CA  94305-6072
Tel: 650-723-3981
E-Mail: pencavel@stanford.edu
AB  - This paper demonstrates that, contrary to a widely-held opinion, the determination of the goals of unions is fully amenable to empirical analysis. A characterization of the wage and employment-setting process in unionized markets is adopted and its qualitative implications examined. The first-order condition for this model is fitted to time- series data on the newspaper industry from ten cities. The Inter- national Typographical Union 's objective function reveals very restricted opportunities for substituting wages for employment in response to a change in the slope of the employer's labor demand function. Larger union locals place greater emphasis on wages versus employment than smaller union locals.
ER  -