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(beginning with the AFL-CIO). A large share of the former number of hits included the
AFL-CIO, or a specific union; most were for two unions that play a prominent role in
organizing local government workers: the American Federation of State, County, and
Municipal employees (AFSCME) and the Service Employees International Union
(SEIU). In a final step, Neumark looks for evidence of union advocacy for living wages
in the material, and cites some such instances of involvement.
His cet. par. analysis uses quarterly data from the CPS ORG files from January 1996
through December 2000. The match is SMSAs for cities, an imperfect fit since suburban
residents may work in the city; it is local government employees for municipal workers,
which is again an imperfect match as some individuals may work for units of government
below state level. The sample is restricted to SMSA individuals aged 16-17 years. The
dependent variables are (a) the share of unionized municipal workers in the city’s labor
force, and (b) the wages of unionized municipal workers. It is expected that living wage
laws reduce the incentive to contract out, thereby raising the city-level employment share
of unionized municipal workers. This is dubbed a ‘strong test’ because the more obvious
result may simply be an increase in union bargaining power, rather than in contracting
behavior. This leads to the second and weaker test, which is that this enhanced bargaining
power only impacts wages. It is anticipated that markets for low-wage unionized workers
- specifically, those earning less than the median wage - will be most impacted. The
methodology is difference-in-differences. Formally, the right-hand-side variables are the
higher of the federal or state minimum wage, and the city living wage, as well as the city
and year (and quarter) dummies. All wage variables are in logs and are converted to
hourly equivalents.
There is no evidence that the share of the workforce made up of unionized municipal
workers - the strong test - is affected by the living wage, irrespective of whether or not a
distinction is drawn between low-wage (i.e. below-median) unionized municipal workers
and independent of the lags on the living wage and minimum wage arguments. However,
for the weaker test, namely, that living wages will boost the wages of unionized
municipal workers, there is evidence that living wages ordinances boost union pay both