Timothy D. Chandler

Cities, unions, and the privatization of sanitation services

We analyzed 740 cities to determine whether they considered or adopted the contracting out of their sanitation collection service. The presence of a municipal sanitation union reduces the likelihood that a city considers the contracting-out option and the likelihood of adoption of the privatization alternative, but only in those cities which have cooperative relations with the union.

Sanitation privatization and sanitation employees’ wages

Despite the considerable attention recently given to privatization, important questions remain about its impact on public sector unions and collective bargaining. This study examines how the threat of sanitation contracting affects the wages of union and nonunion public sanitation employees. Results indicate that increases in the threat of sanitation contracting reduce sanitation employees’ union-nonunion wage differential.

Protective service unions’ political activities and department expenditures

This paper examines how police and firefighter unions’ political activities influence departmental expenditures. Unlike prior research, we measure unions’ political activity independently of union bargaining power. Results indicate that a protective service union’s electoral activities positively affect departmental expenditures, and these effects are attributable to union political power rather than multilateral collective bargaining power.

Determinants of management’s organizational structure in the public sector

A model is developed to identify factors that are important in determining whether a municipality employs a labor relations specialist as chief negotiator and, if not, whether a municipality has a labor relations specialist on its collective bargaining team. Results indicate that municipal organizational structure for collective bargaining is influenced by the economic and legal environments within which collective bargaining occurs, the complexity of municipal collective bargaining, and various other demographic characteristics of the municipality.

Card-Check Laws and Public-Sector Union Membership in the States

We examine the impact of state card-check legislation on public-sector union membership. Based on an empirical analysis of data from 2000 to 2009, a time during which eight states enacted card-check legislation for public employees, we find significantly higher levels of public-sector union membership for states that passed card-check legislation in years after the laws were enacted relative to states that did not pass such laws. Moreover, average public-sector union membership increased for the states that passed card-check legislation after the laws were passed relative to their precard-check law union-membership levels.

Understanding Card-Check Organizing: The Public Sector Experience

The use of “card checks” as a method of union organizing has recently garnered considerable attention, much of it surrounding the proposed Employee Free Choice Act. The proposed legislation seeks to amend the National Labor Relations Act by requiring employers to recognize a union when the employer is presented with evidence of majority support for union recognition via card checks. Despite this recent interest in card checks, there is little empirical research on the topic due, in part, to the lack of available data. Although card-check organizing in the private sector is not rare, such organizing is voluntary, and does not require government approval. Thus, there is little data chronicling the frequency of such events. However, card-check legislation has become increasingly common among public employees at the state and local levels. In this article, we draw upon the public sector experience to help fill the gap in our understanding of card-check organizing. In particular, the article explores card-check organizing by public sector employees in Illinois which has allowed card-check organizing since 1983, but which in 2003 amended its statute to require employers to recognize unions on the basis of card checks, and Ohio which also has allowed card-check recognition to occur since 1983, but has not passed legislation requiring card-check recognition. An analysis of public sector organizing activity in Illinois before and after the law was changed, allows us to identify the effects of changes in the law and to explore the possible implications in other contexts. Moreover, by comparing the Illinois’ experience to that of Ohio, we can more fully understand the extent to which both the presence and absence of card check legislation may have affected organizing activity. The experience of these two states provides us with a natural experiment on the effects of public sector card check legislation on organizing activity. We use data collected from state labor relations agencies in Illinois and Ohio to examine the overall levels and patterns of organizing activity in both states during the period under study (1998-2008), as well as specific contextual conditions associated with organizing activity in the two states. Our data show that in Ohio, where card-check recognition is voluntary, elections run by the state labor agency have been the predominant means of organizing new members. That was also the case in Illinois until 2003, when mandatory card-check legislation was enacted. Since then, the overwhelming majority of organizing has occurred via the mandatory card-check provision. Moreover, cross-sectional (i.e., Illinois and Ohio) and time-series (i.e., pre and post card check legislation in Illinois) comparisons of various contextual characteristics associated with organizing activity provide a more complete picture of the effects of the Illinois’ legislation. For part of our analysis, we use a methodological technique known as Qualitative Comparative Analysis (“QCA”) to identify combinations of conditions that are distinctively associated with the use of either card-checks or elections. We find that the Illinois’ legislation not only facilitated the ability of unions to organize, but also that unions responded by shifting to card checks as their primary means of organizing under certain contextual conditions and by expanding their organizing activity into different contexts.