UNION POWER, COST OF JOB LOSS, AND WORKERS EFFORT

The authors hypothesize that the effectiveness of external threats in raising workers' effort is mediated by, among other labor market condi tions, the presence or absence of a powerful union. In particular, the y argue that because powerful unions reduce the potency of the externa l threat of job loss (by making it more difficult for employers to dis miss workers), the pace of work is less responsive to such a threat in strongly unionized plants than in weakly unionized plants. The result s of an analysis of data from the 1990 Workplace Industrial Relations Survey in Britain support this hypothesis. The analysis also yields ev idence that effort is increased where workers are rewarded individuall y according to results, and where there are various communication chan nels between workers and management.