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- Title
WHO 'WINS' IN WAGE BARGAINING?
- Authors
Hamermesh, Daniel S.
- Abstract
The article discusses the generalized theory of collective bargaining. Researcher John Hicks's model suggests that the final outcome of the collective bargaining process usually lies somewhere closer to the employer's initial offer than to the union's initial demand. Cross links uncertainty concerning the opponent's rate of concession to the bargainers' own rate of concession and thus explicitly introduces into the theory the possibility that mistaken expectations on either side can produce a strike or lockout. If both sides in the negotiations have identical utility functions and there is no bluffing, the outcome of bargaining will be to "split the difference" between the extreme points of the core. Any empirical test is likely to be confounded both by the existence of asymmetries in bluffing and by the possibility that the utility functions of the parties differ in makeup and are not linear with respect to observable monetary quantities. Generally, public employee unions only receive approximately one fourth of the difference between their wage demands and the amounts public employers offer them. In this superficial sense, public management might be said to "win" in collective negotiations.
- Subjects
COLLECTIVE bargaining; BUSINESS negotiation; WAGE bargaining; INDUSTRIAL relations; LABOR unions; STRIKES &; lockouts
- Publication
ILR Review, 1973, Vol 26, Issue 4, p1146
- ISSN
0019-7939
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1177/001979397302600407