In Reply to: Re: BA reaches pension deal with unions posted by BrianR on 08 January 2007 at 08:50:05:
: Brian, Is there any way that you could draw an objective comparison of pension and pension fund degradation over recent years between the IBM countries with effective employee representation and those without it?
BrianR,
That would be too much of a challenge, I think. It is possible to draw up lists of those trying to slow the "race-to-the-bottom" in IBM pensions: some are linked from the AMIPP links page and the onward links. But trying to find somebody in each place to give a sound assessment of achievement is a daunting notion.
This is a case where one might have to rely on general principles and examples rather than measurement. There isn't much doubt that unions have an upward effect on wages in comparison with the absence of unions. Research nowadays (see http://www.psi.org.uk/docs/2003/research/emp-union-wage-premium-us-uk.pdf) is not questioning the existence of this "union membership wage premium", it is trying to track whether the premium is going down along with the unionised proportion of the workforce. If there is a union-wage-premium then general priciples would suggest a union-pension-premium since pensions are delayed wages.
As for examples, here is a recent one.