Job Market Paper

Management Opposition, Strikes and Union Threat

I estimate management opposition to unions in terms of hiring discrimination with a large-scale field experiment in the German labor market. By sending 13,000 fictitious job applications, revealing union membership in the CV and pro-union sentiment via social media accounts, I provide evidence for hiring discrimination. Callback rates for union members decrease on average by 15%. Discrimination is strongest in the presence of a high sectoral share of union members and large firm size. I further explore variation in regional and sectoral strike intensity and find weak evidence that discrimination increases if a sector is exposed to an intense strike. Yet, strike activities account only for a minor extent of hiring discrimination. My results indicate that hiring discrimination can be explained by union threat effects. Sectors with low collective bargaining coverage have lower hiring discrimination and in the absence of collective agreements sectors are less likely to follow collective agreement wage setting. Taken together, these results provide the first large-scale experimental evidence of management opposition to labor unions.

Link to my Job Market Paper.

Best Paper Award at YEM 2022, Best Paper Award at YEC 2022, Best Poster Award EALE 2022: The Poster