Globalizing Quiescence: Globalization, Union Density and Strikes in 15 Industrialized Countries

Abstract

This study examines the role played by globalization in the decline of strike rates in industrialized countries after the 1980s. Using a pooled, time-series multiple regression analysis of 15 advanced capitalist countries in North America, Western Europe and East Asia from 1952 to 2001, the author finds a relationship between globalization – measured in terms of international trade, investment and loosened international capital controls – and declining strike rates, but finds that the relationship is non-monotonic and that the level and change of union density plays an intermediary role between globalization and labor quiescence. The findings empirically validate earlier work by Tsebelis and Lange and Shalev, who also demonstrated a non-monotonic relationship between macroeconomic phenomena, labor strength and strikes.