William M. Boal

Testing for Employer Monopsony in Turn-of-the-Century Coal Mining

Isolated company towns are often cited as likely examples of labor monopsony. This article tests for monopsony power by estimating inverse labor supply elasticities using a county-level panel dataset on nonunion West Virginia coal mining from 1897 to 1932. The model specification incorporates dynamics in such a way that an estimate of the gap between marginal revenue product and the wage can easily be computed as a weighted average of short- and long-run inverse elasticities. Modest estimated short-run inverse elasticities and very small long-run inverse elasticities imply that coal operators enjoyed little, if any, monopsony power over their workers.

The Effects of Labor Unions on Employment, Wages, and Days of Operation: Coal Mining in West Virginia

We present a framework for measuring the joint impact of labor unions on wages, employment, and days of work. Our particular application uses county level observations to measure the impact of unionism in West Virginia coal mining from 1897 to 1938. The widespread belief is that union-nonunion wage differentials in coal mining during this period were of the order of 50 percent or more. Our estimates are substantially less. We measure negligible differences in union-nonunion employment, while, in the 1920s, operating days in unionized mines were about 25 percent below those in nonunion mines.

The Effect of Unionism on Accidents in U.S. Coal Mining, 1897–1929

This study estimates the effect of unionism on accident fatalities using two data sets on early twentieth-century coal mininga state-level data set and a mine-level data set. In both data sets, unionism is estimated to have reduced fatalities by about 40 percent. The union effect persists after controlling for state safety regulations, apparently supporting union president John Mitchells claim that union miners supported each other in refusing to work in unsafe places.

Unionism and Productivity in West Virginia Coal Mining.

This study presents econometric estimates of the effects of unionism on productivity in 83 West Virginia coal mines in the early 1920s. The size, detail, and panel structure of the data set permit investigation of many possible links between unionism and productivity, in contrast to the summary measures reported by most studies. The results show that the union effect was not uniform across mines and cannot be represented by a simple shift parameter. Rather, unionism significantly reduced productivity at small mines but not at large mines. Drawing on historical evidence, the author ascribes this differential effect to systematic differences between small and large operations in the quality of management and union leadership.

New Estimates of Paid-up Membership in the United Mine Workers, 1902–29, by State and Province

This report offers new estimates of paid-up membership in the United Mine Workers from 1902 to 1929, derived from the international unions per-capita tax receipts. The estimates represent an improvement because they include more years and more states than previous estimates. More importantly, the new estimates disaggregate the grouped data presented in other sources to the state level. Disaggregation allows researchers to match these estimates to state-level data on the coal industry in other sources.

The Effect of Unionization on Productivity: Evidence from a Long Panel of Coal Mines:

The author measures the effect of unionization on productivity based on a panel of West Virginia coal mines from 1897 to 1928. Output and inputs are measured in physical terms, and most of the mines in the panel changed union status at least once, though not simultaneously, so the panel is close to ideal for measuring the effect of unionization on productivity. Fixed-effects estimates show that the union had little effect on productivity before 1914, but thereafter it had a negative effect of 5 to 10%. This negative effect was not reversed when mines were later deunionized. The author evaluates a variety of possible explanations for these results. Some evidence points to declining investment at union mines relative to nonunion mines, but the evidence is circumstantial and the direction of causality is unclear. The most plausible explanation is a sharp deterioration in labor relations at union mines after the violent Paint Creek-Cabin Creek strike of 1912–1913.

Divergent Paths: Economic Mobility in the New American Labor Market. By Annette Bernhardt, Martina Morris, Mark S. Handcock, and Marc A. Scott. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2001. Pp. x, 267.

Little mentioned in the huge literature on rising wage inequality in the United States is the distinction between permanent and transitory differences across individuals. Transitory differences can perhaps be cushioned by borrowing and saving, but permanent differences cannot, so we should care whether the large increase in measured inequality represents transitory or permanent components. Unfortunately, permanent and transitory components of wages cannot be separated using the cross-sectional data employed by most researchers.

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This fascinating little book recounts a century of labor struggles at the John Morrell and Company meatpacking plant in Ottumwa, a small city in south-central Iowa and the authors hometown. The book is based on a series of articles that appeared in the Annals of Iowa. “Iowas Pride†in the title refers to a trademark once used by Morrell.