Premium
The Composition of Union Membership: The Role of Pensioners in Italy
Author(s) -
Chiarini Bruno
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
british journal of industrial relations
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.665
H-Index - 70
eISSN - 1467-8543
pISSN - 0007-1080
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8543.00143
Subject(s) - economics , labour economics , wage , unemployment , externality , monopoly , welfare , pension , moderation , trade union , composition (language) , wage bargaining , collective bargaining , market economy , microeconomics , macroeconomics , psychology , social psychology , linguistics , philosophy , finance
This paper considers changes in the membership composition of the three leading Italian trade union confederations during the last fifteen years. The analysis emphasizes the remarkable growth of membership among pensioners and the drop in active workers. The key issue here is that intergenerational aspects of unions' membership components are taken into account in the bargaining process. Unions internalize unemployment externalities on pension benefits resultant on the wage outcome as they consider the welfare of all their members in the economy. A formulation of the union monopoly model with endogenous membership supports these findings, while the econometric evaluation of the membership component effects shows that unions are forced to pursue wage moderation and improvements in employment conditions.