Financialization, Technological Change, and Trade Union Decline

Abstract

Recent research finds that financialization and technological change have had a variety of negative effects on labor, including reducing low-skill workers' wages and increasing income inequality. In this article, I examine the effect on trade unions of one type of financialization, equity market development and one type of technological change, routine-biased technological change. I argue that we should conceptualize trade union strength in two dimensions: (a) the strength of their institutional structures, such as the degree of wage bargaining coordination and the degree to which firms can deviate from collective agreements; (b) the strength of their membership. Using data for 21 OECD countries from 1970 to 2010, I find a negative effect of equity market development on unions' institutional structures, but not on union membership. Contrarily, I find that routine-biased technological change has a negative effect on union density, but an inconsistent relationship with the strength of unions' institutional structures.