Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

The legal form of labour conflicts and their time persistence: an empirical analysis with a large firms’ panel

  • Published:
European Journal of Law and Economics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Using a panel of large firms from Spain, we check the relative time persistence of different types of labour conflicts such as strikes, collective conflicts, lockouts and other conflicts with lost working hours but with no specific legal form. The results show that no legal form labour conflicts do not have long-term persistence (only from quarter to quarter), and the other types of conflicts suffer short and long-term persistence of conflicts at the firm level. Strikes have the higher size of both types of persistence. As short and long term persistence of strikes have almost the same size, these results do not support asymmetric information theories of strike.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. The same parametrization is used by other authors in different contexts, as Hernández-Quevedo et al. (2008) for a problem of the persistence of health conditions.

  2. Firms with at least 1 worker are included, but self-employed workers (i.e., ‘firms’ without wage and salaried workers) are excluded.

  3. When a firm is occasionally below the threshold of 500 employees, it is maintained in our stratum and it is only eliminated when the firm does not recover the level of 500 employees during two additional quarters.

  4. We have tried to define a more restricted set of zeros excluding all observations with missing values for lagged values of all dependent variables. However, as a result of this stricter strategy we lost almost all cases with values equal to 1 in collective conflict and lockout estimations.

  5. For a description of all variables (see Tables 3, 4) in the Appendix.

  6. Main descriptive statistics of no conflict observations are shown in Table 4.

  7. The variable for collective agreement at firm level is defined as a dummy variable. The reference group (no collective agreement at firm level) corresponds to collective agreements at above levels (industry, province, regional or national). In Spain, there is not a ‘free’ labour market, and in fact all workers are covered by a collective agreement, and the only difference is the level of this agreement. Only very special cases are out from collective agreements at any level (as managers). On more details on collective agreements at firm level and above levels in Spain, see, for example, García-Serrano and Malo (2002, 2009) or Canal and Rodríguez 2004).

  8. Notice that Fig. 1 shows quarters registering a labour conflict not conflicts lasting 2, 3, etc. consecutive quarters. For example, when a firm has 10 quarters with strikes, they can be of a few hours in the quarter and in not necessarily consecutive quarters from 1993 to 2002.

  9. As we explained in previous sections, according to Card (1990) and McConnell (1990) the GDP growth rate provides a test for the joint costs theory of strikes.

  10. The estimated coefficients for all probit models are available upon request.

  11. A similar result for Spain was found by Jiménez-Martín et al. (1996), but with results of other variables according to the asymmetric information models (variables not included in our database such as wage claims in collective bargaining). The econometric specification used by Jiménez-Martín et al. (1996) to avoid the problem of incidental parameters was a linear probability model (one of the best specification options before Wooldridge 2005).

  12. Although, we want to remark that these theories only consider the case of strikes and not other types of labour conflicts.

  13. And the same would be applicable to collective conflicts, considering this type of labour conflict as a way to obtain information on the other economic agents.

References

  • Ashenfelter, O., & Johnson, G. E. (1969). Bargaining theory, trade unions, and industrial strike activity. American Economic Review, 59(1), 35–49.

    Google Scholar 

  • Canal, J. F., & Rodríguez, C. (2004). Collective bargaining and within-firm wage dispersion in Spain. British Journal of Industrial Relations, 42(3), 481–506.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Card, D. (1988). Longitudinal analysis of strike activity. Journal of Labour Economics, 6(2), 147–176.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Card, D. (1990). Strikes and wages: A test of an asymmetric information model. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 105, 625–659.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cramton, P., & Tracy, J. (1994). The determinants of U. S. labour disputes. Journal of Labour Economics, 12, 180–209.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cramton, P., & Tracy, J. (2003). Unions, bargaining and strikes, international handbook of trade unions. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dahrendorf, F. (1988). The modern social conflict: An essay on the politics of liberty. New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

    Google Scholar 

  • García-Serrano, C., & Malo, M. A. (2002). Worker turnover, job turnover, and collective bargaining in Spain. British Journal of Industrial Relations, 40(1), 69–85.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • García-Serrano, C., & Malo, M. A. (2009). The impact of union direct voice on voluntary and involuntary absenteeism. Journal of Socio-Economics, 38(2), 372–383.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hayes, B. (1984). Unions and strikes with asymmetric information. Journal of Labour Economics, 2(1), 57–83.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hernández-Quevedo, C., Jones, A. M., & Rice, N. (2008). Persistence in health limitations: A European comparative analysis. Journal of Health Economics, 27(6), 1472–1488.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hicks, J. R. (1932). The theory of wages. London: Macmilan Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hicks, J. R. (1963). The theory of wages (2nd ed.). London: Macmilan Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ingram, P., Metcalf, D., & Wadsworth, J. (1993). Strike incidence in British manufacturing in the 1980s. Industrial and Labour Relations Review, 46(4), 704–717.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jiménez-Martín, S. (2006). Strike outcomes and wage settlements in Spain. Labour, 20(4), 673–698.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jiménez-Martín, S., Labeaga, J. M., & Marco, M. (1996). Algunos factores explicativos de la existencia de huelgas durante la negociación colectiva en España. Investigaciones Económicas, XX(2), 217–241.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kennan, J. (1986). The economics of strikes. In O. Ashenfelter & R. Layard (Eds.), Handbook of labour economics (Vol. II). New York: North-Holland.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kennan, J., & Wilson, R. (1993). Strategic bargaining models and interpretation of strike data. Journal of Applied Econometrics, 4, 87–130.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McConnell, S. (1990). Cyclical fluctuations in strike activity. Industrial and Labour Relations Review, 44(1), 131–143.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Milner, S., & Nombela, G. (1995). Trade unions strength, organisation and impact in Spain. London: Centre for Economic Performance, LSE. 258.

    Google Scholar 

  • Reder, M. W., & Neumann, G. R. (1980). Conflict and contract: The case of strikes. Journal of Political Economy, 88, 867–996.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Siebert, W. S., & Adddison, J. T. (1981). Are strikes accidental? Economic Journal, 91(362), 389–404.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tracy, J. S. (1987). An empirical test of an asymmetric information model of strikes. Journal of Labour Economics, 5(2), 149–173.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wooldridge, J. M. (2005). Simple solutions to the initial conditions problem in dynamic, nonlinear panel data models with unobserved heterogeneity. Journal of Applied Econometrics, 20, 39–54.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, Universidad de Salamanca, Edificio FES, Campus ‘Miguel de Unamuno’, 37007, Salamanca, Spain

    Miguel Á. Malo

  2. Universidad de Cantabria, Santander, Spain

    Nuria Sánchez-Sánchez

Authors
  1. Miguel Á. Malo
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Nuria Sánchez-Sánchez
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Miguel Á. Malo.

Additional information

The data used in this study were provided by the Social and Labour Statistics Office from the Spanish Ministry of Employment. We are indebted to Carmen Salido for her assistance with our requests related with the database. Part of this research was developed when Miguel A. Malo was at the NBER as a visiting scholar. This author acknowledges funding provided by the Spanish Ministry of Education for the research stay at the NBER. These institutions are not responsible for our opinions and interpretations of the results.

Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 3 and 4.

Table 3 Descriptive statistics of all variables for the subsamples of observations with labour conflicts by type
Full size table
Table 4 Descriptive statistics of all variables for the subsamples of observations without any type of conflict in each random-effects probit model
Full size table

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Malo, M.Á., Sánchez-Sánchez, N. The legal form of labour conflicts and their time persistence: an empirical analysis with a large firms’ panel. Eur J Law Econ 38, 513–533 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10657-012-9309-4

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10657-012-9309-4

Keywords

JEL Classification

Search

Navigation