Union membership varies wildly across high-income countries. In addition, there is a phenomenon of \”collective bargaining coverage,\” often not familiar to American readers, which measures the share of workers who are covered by collective bargaining agreement, even though they are not union members. In the US, union density is almost the same as collective bargaining coverage. But in France, only 7.7% of workers are actual union members while 98% of workers are covered by collective bargaining agreements. Here are some facts on these patterns across high-income countries from the OECD publication called Economic Policy Reforms 2016: Going for Growth.
As a starter, here are figures showing the variation in the share of workers who are covered by a collective bargaining agreement (Panel A) and the share actually belonging to a union (Panel B). Just glancing at the figure should offer two lessons: 1) There\’s a lot of variation across countries; 2) Many of the coverage rate percentages are substantially higher than the union membership percentages; that is, in a lot of countries a large share of workers will find that their compensation is determined by collective bargaining, even though they are not a union member.
Here are some specific examples of the differences between union density and collective bargaining coverage, drawing from the OECD data:
Union Density and Collective Bargaining Coverage, 2013
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Country
(abbreviation)
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Union
Density (%)
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Collective
Bargaining
Coverage (%)
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United States (USA)
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10.7%
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11.9%
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Japan (JPN)
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17.6%
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17.1%
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Canada (CAN)
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26.4%
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29.0%
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United Kingdom (GBR)
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25.1%
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29.5%
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Germany (DEU)
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18.1%
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57.6%
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Spain (ESP)
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16.9%
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77.6%
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Italy (ITA)
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37.3%
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80.0%
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Sweden (SWE)
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67.3%
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89.0%
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France (FRA)
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7.7%
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98.0%
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