Spurred by sharp declines in unionization rates and growing wage inequality over the last years, there has been growing (public) interest in the effects of non-union employee representation (such as works councils, board-level codetermination, joint consultation committees, or authorized health and safety committees) on the performance of firms, outcomes for workers, and the economy as a whole. Despite this interest, empirical research on the effect of employee representation has been scarce and mostly limited to the case of Germany to date.
The aim of this conference is to bring together researchers analyzing (the effects of different) forms of non-union representation, and to put their findings into international comparative perspective. Possible topics might cover:
- the effects of employee representation on productivity
- the effects of employee representation on employee outcomes
- challenges for employee representation due to globalization/technological change
- the effect of non-union representation on inequality and gender discrimination
- (reasons for) international differences in the incidence of employee representation