PRIVATE-SECTOR UNION DECLINE AND STRUCTURAL EMPLOYMENT CHANGE, 1970-1988

Studies of the large decline in private sector unionism during the 1970s and 1980s focus on explanations particular to those decades and attribute an inconsequential role to the employment shift from goods-producing to service-producing industries. Using an adapted version of the Ashenfelter-Pencavel model, this research finds stable parameter estimates between the two decades and the earlier post-Wagner Act years. Not only are decade-specific explanations found to be unnecessary in understanding membership decline, but the pivotal relationship in the decline is the relative shift in the employment distribution away from the traditionally strongly unionized industries.