Unions and the use of flexible staffing in korea: evidence from an establishment survey

Abstract

Using data from the KLI Workplace Survey 2002, this study investigates the effects of unions on the use of flexible staffing arrangements. We find that union representation is positively associated with the employer's use of more flexible forms of employment. This union effect cannot be attributed to the unobserved characteristics of unionized establishments, which may promote the intensive use of flexible staffing arrangements. Our findings cast doubt on the claim that the union effect is a statistical artefact arising from a sorting process in which firms with higher propensities to use flexible staffing arrangements are more likely to be unionized.

Keywords:

• Flexible staffing arrangement
• union
• endogeneity bias

Acknowledgement

The authors wish to thank Jaeryang Nam and ByoungYoo Cheon for their helpful comments.

Notes

¹The core-periphery hypothesis argues that firms protect and insulate from market core workers whose skills and abilities are crucial to the firms and difficult to replace. Because firms do not want to gain flexibility in their workforce at the expense of their core employees, they concentrate the adjustments on a periphery of the workforce consisting of workers less crucial to the organization. The peripheral status of non-core employees is institutionalized via employment on a contingent basis.