Abstract
Important changes are occurring in the Canadian unions’ political and economic environments. This paper argues that such changes may be detrimental to Canadian trade unions, given their structural and institutional situation. To support this argument, private-sector union and nonunion firms in Alberta are compared. This comparison uncovers some structural (union members’ employment patterns and union firm characteristics) and institutional (union services) attributes of unions. Combined with the politico-economic environments that Alberta unions have faced since the early 1980s, these attributes have led to a decline in union membership. Because these attributes are shared by many other Canadian unions, those unions may increasingly confront some of the same hardships currently plaguing their Alberta counterparts.
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I am indebted to Brian Bemmels, Alan Murray, and John G. Fricke for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper, and to Mike Jones for his research assistance.
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Reshef, Y. Union decline: A view from Canada. Journal of Labor Research 11, 25–39 (1990). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02685418
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02685418