Endogenous scope of bargaining in a union-oligopoly model: when will firms and unions bargain over employment?

The scope of firm-union bargaining is shown to be endogenously determined in a union-oligopoly model with decentralized negotiations. If the unions' power is sufficiently high, all bargaining units choose to negotiate over wages alone, i.e., universal right-to-manage bargaining emerges in equilibrium. Otherwise, wage/employment bargaining and right-to-manage bargaining coexist in the same industry. In equilibrium, some firm-union pairs will always choose to bargain over employment as well, since the firms become Stackelberg leaders in the market by committing to a particular output during the negotiations. The firms and their unions both benefit from the additional Stackelberg rents, provided that the unions' power is small enough. Our analysis suggests that there is not necessarily a negative relationship between unions' power and sectoral employment rates. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. JEL classification: J50; J53; L13.