CIRHR Director Rafael Gomez (PhD 2000) and CIRHR alumna Dr. Danielle Lamb (PhD 2012) were awarded the 2018 Best Paper Competition LERA/ILR Review Special Series in Employment Relations for their article, "Unions and Non-Standard Work: Union Representation and Wage Premiums across Non-Standard Work Arrangements in Canada, 1997–2014," which was published in ILR Review June, 2019.
The award is a partnership between Labor and Employment Relations Association (LERA) and the ILR Review. Submitted papers undergo an initial review by LERA’s editorial committee and a subset of papers are selected to go through ILR Review’s peer review editorial process. The other winner of the 2018 Best Paper Competition was "Internal and External Hiring" by Jed DeVaro, Antti Kauhanen, and Nelli Valmari.
Abstract
The authors examine the association between unionization and non-standard work in terms of coverage and wages. They use data from the master files of Canada’s Labour Force Survey (LFS) between 1997–98 and 2013–14 to define and measure non-standard work and to provide a continuum of vulnerability across work arrangements. The estimated probability of being employed in some form of non-permanent job increased 2.9 percentage points from 1997 to 2014. During that same period, the estimated probability of being in a non-full-time, non-permanent job—another way of capturing non-standard work—increased 2.5 percentage points. Although estimated union wage premiums declined rather precipitously for all groups, the union wage advantage remained highest among non-standard workers. Further, the authors find the union wage premium is largest for the most vulnerable of non-standard workers. In terms of estimates that look across the earnings distribution, the union wage premium among non-standard workers is larger for workers higher up the earnings profile.