Unions, incentive systems, and job design

I model the relationship between incentive systems and job design and how unions influence both. The basic idea is that it is easier to monitor worker effort for jobs designed to be routine and inflexible. Pay based on monitoring is used in this scenario rather than incentive pay based on production. Jobs with worker flexibility and autonomy call for incentives based more on output. Unions typically oppose output-based pay, thus inducing job design change. The empirical work supports this view and shows that incentive pay is much less likely for union workers and unions have a clear negative effect on job characteristics that lead to use of incentive pay. In particular, union jobs are more repetitive, have more measurable criteria, and involve less judgmental criteria and less data analysis.