TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Braakmann, Nils
AU  - Hirsch, Boris
        TI  - Unions as Insurance: Employer–Worker Risk Sharing and Workers' Outcomes during COVID-19
        PY  - 2023/Jan/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 15893
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp15893
        AB  - 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.

        KW  - unions
KW  - risk-sharing
KW  - implicit contracts
KW  - insurance effects
KW  - COVID-19
        ER  -