Regression Results of the Union Impact on Pay Levels in New Zealand Public Service

<p>International studies almost uniformly conclude that union members receive higher wages than their non-union counterparts. This study investigates differences between collective and individual salaries using the New Zealand State Services Commission's Human Resources Capability Survey 2005. It explores the impact of collective bargaining on pay by controlling for a large number of employee and employer characteristics. As very little research has been carried out on the subject in New Zealand, I focused on the international literature in order to identify the major factors that explain the magnitude of union/non-union wage differential. Major industrial changes, which have shaped the NZ public service bargaining structure and its outcomes are identified. A range of statistical tests are used to examine the pay differences between collective and individual agreements in New Zealand public service. I, first, carry out basic comparisons of the average collective and individual wages across gender, employment type, occupations, ethnicity, age, employer size and tenure, followed by numerous multivariate regressions to work out the true contributing factors to the union/non-union wage differential. Finally, I analyze the results in the unique NZ context to allow new ideas and theory to emerge and compare it to international trends. Looking at the basic comparisons, I found that, in the New Zealand public service, employees on individual agreements earn significantly higher wages then those who are covered by collective agreements. However, multivariate analyses have revealed a different picture. The study found that occupational composition is the largest contributor to the variability in collective/individual pay in NZPS. With the exception of the senior, high skilled and specialised employees, no pay differential was found between collective or individual agreements in the New Zealand public service.</p>

Regression Results of the Union Impact on Pay Levels in New Zealand Public Service

<p>International studies almost uniformly conclude that union members receive higher wages than their non-union counterparts. This study investigates differences between collective and individual salaries using the New Zealand State Services Commission's Human Resources Capability Survey 2005. It explores the impact of collective bargaining on pay by controlling for a large number of employee and employer characteristics. As very little research has been carried out on the subject in New Zealand, I focused on the international literature in order to identify the major factors that explain the magnitude of union/non-union wage differential. Major industrial changes, which have shaped the NZ public service bargaining structure and its outcomes are identified. A range of statistical tests are used to examine the pay differences between collective and individual agreements in New Zealand public service. I, first, carry out basic comparisons of the average collective and individual wages across gender, employment type, occupations, ethnicity, age, employer size and tenure, followed by numerous multivariate regressions to work out the true contributing factors to the union/non-union wage differential. Finally, I analyze the results in the unique NZ context to allow new ideas and theory to emerge and compare it to international trends. Looking at the basic comparisons, I found that, in the New Zealand public service, employees on individual agreements earn significantly higher wages then those who are covered by collective agreements. However, multivariate analyses have revealed a different picture. The study found that occupational composition is the largest contributor to the variability in collective/individual pay in NZPS. With the exception of the senior, high skilled and specialised employees, no pay differential was found between collective or individual agreements in the New Zealand public service.</p>

Assortative Matching or Exclusionary Hiring? The Impact of Employment and Pay Policies on Racial Wage Differences in Brazil

We measure the effects of firm policies on racial pay differences in Brazil. Non-Whites are less likely to be hired by high-wage firms, explaining about 20 percent of the racial wage gap for both genders. Firm-specific pay premiums for non-Whites are also compressed relative to Whites, contributing another 5 percent for that gap. A counterfactual analysis reveals that about two-thirds of the underrepresentation of non-Whites at higher-wage firms is explained by race-neutral skill-based sorting. Non-skill-based sorting and differential wage setting are largest for college-educated workers, suggesting that the allocative costs of discriminatory hiring and pay policies may be relatively large in Brazil. (JEL J15, J24, J31, J41, J46, J71, O15)

An analysis of training and vocational rehabilitation services for individuals with intellectual disability

BACKGROUND: WIOA encourages providers such as Vocational Rehabilitation (VR) to seek higher wages and more than part-time hours for those with disabilities. Previous studies have evaluated the relationship between (VR) and job outcomes for individuals with intellectual disability (ID). OBJECTIVE: The present study evaluated the effect of VR services on wage and hours worked. METHOD: We obtained a national dataset from the Rehabilitation Services Administration to analyze individuals with ID on variables specially related to training and VR services. RESULTS: Results indicated more training resulted in more hours worked, while using more VR services resulted in less hours worked and pay. Differences in hours worked and wage were found within training and VR services. CONCLUSION: Individuals with ID should consider utilizing job counseling with VR agencies and focus on occupational training, as these services may contribute to increased wages and hours worked.

How Do I Compare? The Effect of Work-Unit Demographics on Reactions to Pay Inequality

Prior research suggests that individuals react negatively when they perceive they are underpaid. Moreover, individuals frequently select pay referents who share their race and gender, suggesting that demographic similarity affects one’s knowledge of pay differences. Leveraging these insights, the authors examine whether the gender and racial composition of a work unit shapes individuals’ reactions to pay deprivation. Using field data from a large health care organization, they find that pay deprivation resulting from workers receiving less pay than their same-sex and same-race coworkers prompts a significantly stronger response than does pay deprivation arising from workers receiving less pay than their demographically dissimilar colleagues. A supplemental experiment reveals that this relationship likely results from individuals’ propensity to select same-category others as pay referents, shaping workers’ information about their colleagues’ pay. The study’s findings underscore the need to theoretically and empirically account for how demographically driven social comparison processes affect reactions to pay inequality.

Public Procurement and Transparency in the Private Sector

This chapter begins by considering public procurement in the context of equality duties. The United Kingdom government has not used the Equality Act 2010’s regulation-making powers to impose specific statutory public procurement equality duties in England, but the Welsh and Scottish Ministers have made such regulations. Equality considerations are nonetheless relevant considerations in a public authority’s public procurement decisions as part of the general public sector equality duty in section 149 of the Act. The extent to which equality can (and should) be taken into account in the public procurement process is also, therefore, relevant to private undertakings which might wish to tender for the provision of goods or services to public authorities. The chapter then addresses the provisions in the Act intended to improve transparency in the private sector by prohibiting clauses which prevent employees discussing their pay. The Act introduced, in section 78, a power to make regulations which would impose a requirement on businesses to report on gender pay differences.

What Does It Mean to Be a “Woman Leader” in Academia?

This chapter seeks to determine how patriarchy and capitalism together work to oppress women in academic leadership positions. In today's globalized world, higher education institutions, both state and private, either have strong ties with the corporate world or are run as if they are corporations themselves. Women who work their way up to management positions in academia are forced to accommodate patriarchal and capitalist ways of leading, which undervalue democratic processes such as getting legitimacy from people and deliberation, as well as other ways of “doing things” or “leading” differently. This study aims to discuss the multi-layered forms of gender-based discrimination in regard to civil status, age, ethnicity, class, and pay differences in academic leadership positions.

Trade Shocks, Firm Hierarchies, and Wage Inequality

This paper shows robust effects of trade shocks on within-firm wage inequality through changes in firm hierarchies. It uses two distinct research designs—one considering firm-level shocks to foreign demand and transportation costs, the other analyzing the Muslim boycott of Danish exports after the 2006 “Cartoon Crisis”. Consistent with knowledge-based and incentive-based hierarchy models, trade shocks affect organizational choices through production scale. Adding a hierarchy layer increases inequality throughout the organization, particularly widening the 90-50 wage gap and pay differences between top and bottom layers. Delayering after the boycott leads to wage compression through wage cuts, demotions, and employee turnover.

The Gender Wage Gap in Developing Countries

The labor literature documents a gender wage gap between the earnings of men and women in the developed countries but research on the gap in developing countries is less common and usually focuses on individual countries. Research typically identifies a part of the wage gap that is due to observable characteristics, or endowments, and an unexplained part attributable to differences in gender wage equation coefficients sometimes interpreted as gender bias. The focus of recent gender wage gap research has been on understanding how the gender gap varies along the earnings distribution. In this paper, we investigate the determinants of the gender wage gap across 12 developing countries using data from the World Bank’s STEP (Skills Toward Employment and Productivity) Measurement survey that provides information on household demographic characteristics, education and training, employment, and job skills. We apply the classical Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition and combined with quantile regression and also use decomposition methods based on the recentered influence function to obtain distributional decomposition of the wage gap by covariates and by quantiles. Our results show that there are significant gender pay differences that generally decrease with earnings and are mostly due to differences in the intercepts and a slightly offsetting difference in returns to education that are higher for women. The explained part of the gender wage gap, although much smaller, is attributed almost entirely to lower educational level of women and the motherhood penalty. The main conclusion is that improvements in women’s education and training, as well as child friendly labor policies, remain the most important factors that can help to narrow the gender gap in developing countries, which is consistent with previous work.