Was it worth it? The impact of the minimum wages' introduction on union membership of employees
Abstract
This contribution scrutinises how introducing a statutory minimum wage of EUR 8.50 per hour on January 1, 2015, impacted German employees’ decision towards a union membership. Based on representative data from the ‘Panel Labour Market and Social Security’, we apply a logistic difference-in-differences propensity score matching approach on entries in and withdrawals from unions in the German Trade Union Confederation (Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund, DGB). Our results show no separate effect on withdrawals from or entries in unions by the minimum wage introduction for those employees who benefited financially from it, but a significant increase of entries overall. Thus, unions’ campaign for a minimum wage strengthened their position in total but did not reverse the segmentation of union membership patterns.
Simon Ress
Data Science Consultant
I am a PhD candidate at the chairs of Comparative Politics & Social Science Data Analysis, Ruhr-Universität Bochum. My main research interests are labour market policies and their effects on individual health and interest groups and lobbyism. I have published articles on interest groups and prevention policies.
