The Impact of Fire Fighter Unionization on Wages and Working Hours in American Cities
研究了1960-1970年间美国消防员工会化对工资和工作时间的影响，发现工会化对两者有中等程度的影响，不同于以往横截面研究的结论。
O ne of the single most important developments in the public sector during the last two decades has been the growth of public employee unions. The policy implications of the proliferation of these organizations are varied and complicated, especially in the area of governmental expenditures, where personnel expenses comprise a greater proportion of total service/activity costs than in the private sector. While arguments for and against public unionism have been discussed extensively in recent years,2 two of the principal negative arguments remain quite potent. These are that unions will increase the costs of government above the usual incremental increases that we expect and can afford to pay, and that other groups competing for scarce municipal resources will be put at a competitive disadvantage because of employee groups' favored legal status. The argument, then, is that unions will exercise undue over the cities, to the detriment of the general public. A number of researchers have attempted to assess the relationship between unionization and public sector wages and expenditures.3 At single points in time we now know that the wage differential for and non-union government employees is not great-the average union on salary increases is only about 5 percent. This is not only smaller than is popularly supposed, but the likelihood that public employee unions have contributed to the greatly escalated cots of government in recent years is thus placed in doubt.4 As a result of the cross-sectional nature of this research, however, we cannot conclusively say whether public wage demands and associated activities have contributed to the spiral of governmental expenditures. The lack of longitudinal evidence makes it impossible to determine whether wages in unionized governmental units have increased at a rate greater than in non-unionized governments. Simply put, unionized cities may have paid higher wages to begin with. The forces that led to unionization may, in themselves, be responsible for the higher wages in cities. This article will examine the impact of unionization upon municipal employee wages and working hours. For our test, we look at the relationship between changes in firefighter wages and working hours and changes in firefighter unionization from 1960 to 1970. Firefighters constitute an excellent occupational group for use in testing the union power thesis.5 Not only is the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) the third largest all-public employee union, but with little competition from other national organizations for membership, it is an unusually cohesive l A number of studies have been made in recent years on the impact of public employee unions on wages and working hours of employees. These analyses have been cross-sectional in design, however, thus placing the validity of their findings in doubt. The question of whether wages and hours have increased/decreased at a greater rate in unionized cities than in non-unionized cities is still unanswered. This article examines the impact of fire fighter unionization on wages and working hours during the 1960 to 1970 time period. Critical variables assessed are the formation of a local and changes in contracts and dues check-off systems-both indicators of 'strength.' Unlike previous analyses of fire fighter unionization, this article finds that unionization has a moderate impact upon wages and working hours.