What Do Workers Want? The Shortfall in Employee Participation at the European Workplace

40 Pages Posted: 14 May 2018

See all articles by John T. Addison

John T. Addison

University of South Carolina - Moore School of Business - Department of Economics; IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Paulino Teixeira

Universidade de Coimbra - Faculdade de Economia; Center for European Economic Research (ZEW)

Abstract

A shortfall in employee voice attendant upon union decline has long been forewarned. Data from the third European Company Survey is used to establish perceived shortfalls in employee involvement based on the responses of employee representatives in establishments where formal workplace employee representation is practiced. Among the main findings is that the desire for greater involvement in decision making is smaller where representation is via a works council-type apparatus rather than through the agency of a union body.Similar, albeit more pronounced marginal effects are associated with information provision, most notably where employee representatives are (a) 'satisfactorily' informed on a variety of establishment issues or (b) are asked to give their opinions/involved in joint decisions in the event of some major human resource decision. The latter results are robust to subsets of the data based on variations in trust between the parties and the perceived quality of the industrial relations climate, where there is an overwhelming desire for more participation in those circumstances in which management is adjudged uncooperative and untrustworthy. On net, it remains the case that a shortfall in employee participation is observed across all types of establishments in the sample and, by extension, it would appear to those without any workplace representation at all.

Keywords: formal workplace employee representation, works councils, union agencies, information/consultation/participation deficits, union density, country heterogeneity, industrial relations quality

JEL Classification: J53, J58, J83

Suggested Citation

Addison, John T. and Teixeira, Paulino, What Do Workers Want? The Shortfall in Employee Participation at the European Workplace. IZA Discussion Paper No. 11506, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3177382 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3177382

John T. Addison (Contact Author)

University of South Carolina - Moore School of Business - Department of Economics ( email )

The Francis M. Hipp Building
1705 College Street
Columbia, SC 29208
United States
803-777-7400 (Phone)
803-777-6876 (Fax)

HOME PAGE: http://mooreschool.sc.edu/moore/economics/profiles/addison.htm

IZA Institute of Labor Economics

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

Paulino Teixeira

Universidade de Coimbra - Faculdade de Economia ( email )

Av. Dias da Silva, 165
Coimbra, 3004-512
Portugal

Center for European Economic Research (ZEW) ( email )

P.O. Box 10 34 43
L 7,1 D-68161 Mannheim
Germany

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
79
Abstract Views
413
Rank
555,299
PlumX Metrics