COMPENSATION, EMPLOYMENT, AND THE POLITICAL ACTIVITY OF PUBLIC-EMPLOYEE UNIONS

It has been hypothesized that because public employee unions are politically influential, they have a bargaining advantage over their private-sector counterparts. Previous studies, however, have not directly measured the political activities of public employee unions and have instead usually used some type of unionization proxy. This paper uses unpublished data from the International City Managers Association to develop a more direct measure of union political activity. Using this measure, it is found that an increase in union political activity leads to higher compensation and employment for public employee union members.