%0 Report
        %A Braakmann, Nils
%A Hirsch, Boris
        %T Unions as Insurance: Employer–Worker Risk Sharing and Workers' Outcomes during COVID-19
        %D 2023
        %8 2023 Jan
        %I Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        %C Bonn
        %7 IZA Discussion Paper
        %N 15893
        %U https://www.iza.org/publications/dp15893
        %X We investigate to what extent workplace unionisation protects workers from external shocks as predicted by models of implicit contracts. Using the COVID-19 pandemic as a plausibly exogenous shock hitting the whole economy, we compare workers who worked in unionised and non-unionised workplaces directly before the pandemic in a difference-in-differences framework. We find that unionised workers were substantially more like to remain working for their pre-COVID employer, at their pre-COVID workplace, in their pre-COVID job and to be in employment. This greater employment stability was not traded off against lower working hours or labour income.

        %K unions
%K risk-sharing
%K implicit contracts
%K insurance effects
%K COVID-19