TY  - JOUR
AU  - Brown,Charles
TI  - Standard-Rate Wage Setting, Labor Quality, and Unions
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 1717
PY  - 1985
Y2  - October 1985
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w1717
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w1717.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Charles C. Brown
Department of Economics
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI  48109-1220
Tel: 734/763-3036
Fax: 734/647-1186
E-Mail: charlieb@umich.edu
AB  - "Standard rate" wage policies, under which all workers in a particular job receive the same wage, are common for blue-collar workers, especially those covered by collective bargaining agreements and those who work for large employers.This paper analyzes the impact of standard-rate wage setting.There are two important conclusions. First,a standard-rate rule which leaves the employer free to set the rate can either increase or reduce the quality of labor hired. Given empirically likely distributions of alternative wages for workers, it pushes employers toward the middle of the quality distribution. Second, union standard-rate policies allow union?ununion differences in wages for workers of a given qualityto exist even when union employers are free to alter the quality of their workforces.
ER  -