Do workers perceive high wage settlements of craft unions as fair?

ABSTRACT

In recent years, Germany has experienced an increasing impact of craft unions that negotiate high wage increases for the occupations they represent. This article analyses under which conditions workers perceive such over-proportional wage increases for occupational groups represented by craft unions as (rather) fair. We use a vignette approach, asking respondents for their fairness perceptions of several hypothetical scenarios. The results show that perceptions depend on the burdens of the occupational group, the size of the wage increase, information policies and potential consequences for other groups. These findings are in line with social and organizational justice theories about equity and informational justice.

KEYWORDS:

• Craft unions
• collective contracts
• wage increases
• vignette study
• fairness perceptions

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• J31
• J51

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Hans-Böckler-Foundation under the Grant 2011-462-2. The authors did not receive any direct financial benefits from applications of the research. The data used can be accessed through the Research Data Centre (FDZ) of the Institute for Employment Research (IAB). A subset of the data has also been used in a sociological German language paper (Dütsch, Stephan, and Struck forthcoming).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Hans-Böckler-Foundation [2011-462-2].