IMPACTS OF UNIONIZATION ON QUALITY AND PRODUCTIVITY: REGRESSION DISCONTINUITY EVIDENCE FROM NURSING HOMES

• Published in: Industrial & labor relations review Vol. 68; no. 4; pp. 771 - 806
• Main Authors: SOJOURNER, AARON J., FRANDSEN, BRIGHAM R., TOWN, ROBERT J., GRABOWSKI, DAVID C., CHEN, MIN M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.08.2015; SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
• Subjects: Density; Discontinuity; Economic models; Employment; Home health care; Labor; Labor economics; Labor productivity; Labor relations; Labor unions; Markets; Nursing homes; Productivity; Professional identity; Quality of care; Service industries; Staffing; Unionization; Wages & salaries; Workforce; labor unions; trade unions; NLRB; employment; staffing; OSCAR; wages; earnings; Census; productivity; FMCS; nursing homes; health care
• ISSN: 0019-7939; 2162-271X
• DOI: 10.1177/0019793915586380

Using a regression discontinuity design, the authors of this article examine the effects of nursing home unionization on several labor, establishment, and consumer outcomes. They find negative effects of unionization on staffing levels and no decline in care quality, suggesting positive labor productivity effects. Some evidence suggests that nursing homes in less competitive local product markets and those with lower union density at the time of election experienced stronger union employment effects. Unionization appears to raise wages for a given worker while also shifting the composition of the workforce away from higher-earning workers. By combining credible identification of union effects and firm- and worker-level outcomes over time with measures of market-level characteristics, this study provides important new evidence on many controversial questions in the economics of unions. It also generates evidence from the service sector, which has grown in importance and where evidence has been thin.