Cyclical and institutional determinants of annual trade union growth and decline in Ireland: evidence from the DUES data series

Abstract

Attempts to apply the influential Bain-Elsheikh model to annual trade union growth and decline in Ireland have produced puzzling results. This paper rejects existing interpretations of such results by economists and offers an alternative explanation which is theoretically and empirically more satisfactory. While strong evidence is found that variations in labour market slackness affect opportunity to unionize, there is no evidence that they directly affect employees' or employers' dispositions towards unionization. The paper establishes that the peculiarities of labour market and institutional structure and development in Ireland provide a severe test of models developed on the basis of the experience of the major Western nations.