TO CUT OR NOT TO CUT - A CROSS-NATIONAL COMPARISON OF ATTITUDES TOWARD WAGE FLEXIBILITY

This article provides an empirical assessment of the social psychologi cal underpinnings of arguments that link labor market security to wage flexibility. We employ data from two surveys of blue-collar manufactu ring workers, one from Canada and the other from Sweden, that were con ducted by the respective national statistics agencies. The dependent v ariable is a dichotomy tapping respondents' willingness to rake a wage cut to save their jobs. Independent variables index a variety of obje ctive and subjective labor market conditions and experiences. We test two hypotheses. The first, that Canadians should be more willing than Swedes to accept a pay cut is amply supported The second, that observe d differences between Swedes and Canadians should be due to higher lev els of anxiety about labor marker prospects among the latter found no support whatsoever in our logistic regression analyses. We conclude wi th speculative alternative explanations and suggestions for additional comparative research.