Question

Traditionally, Canadian capitalism emphasizes efficiency rather than equity, while American capitalism emphasizes equity rather than efficiency. Therefore, the rate of union membership and the degree of union activism are higher in Canada than in the United States.

Evaluate this statement if it is true, false, or uncertain.

Answer 1

Answer:-

True,Traditionally, Canadian capitalism emphasizes efficiency rather than equity, while American capitalism emphasizes equity rather than efficiency. Therefore, the rate of union membership and the degree of union activism are higher in Canada than in the United States.

Explanation:-

The decline in U.S. union density in the past three decades has attracted considerable attention. This keen interest is certainly appropriate. Whether one believes it to be a good thing, a bad thing, or a bit of both, the substantial fall in union strength in the United States is one of the most significant social phenomena of the postwar period. Not all of the discussion has been about the causes of the decline in union strength-social scientists and others have also debated both the consequences of the decline and the role of public policies (e.g., labor law reform) to deal with consequences believed to be socially harmful (see, for example, Edwards 1986; Strauss, Gallagher, and Fiorito 1991; Weiler 1983, 1984). Nonetheless, a key aspect of any social phenomenon is understanding its origines); accordingly, there has been a good deal of research on the causes of the decline in unions in the United States (e.g. , Dickens and Leonard 1985; Farber 1985, 1990; Freeman 1985, 1989; Neumann and Rissman 1984).

Much of the research initially focused exclusively on the United States. Beginning with Weiler (1983), however, the value of adopting a comparative Canada-U.S. perspective has increasingly been recognized. In particular, the many similarities between the two countries' economies and industrial relations systems may result in a situation with elements similar to a controlled experiment, thus perhaps enabling some explanations of the decline in unions in the United States to be rejected because these explanations cannot account for the observed behavior in Canada. As stated by Richard Freeman (1988, 69): "A persuasive explanation of the decline in union density in the United States should also explain why density did not decline in Canada in the same time period [1970-85]." For this reason, the various explanations examined in this paper are phrased in terms of their potential ability to account for both the decline in union density in the United States and the divergence in the extent of union organization between the United States and Canada. Perhaps the most common explanation has to do with the changing structure of the economy and the labor force. Specifically, most of the employment changes that have occurred in the past three decades-away from manufacturing and toward services; away from blue-collar and toward white-collar; away from male and full-time and toward female and part-time-represent declines in the relative importance of sectors that traditionally have been highly unionized and increases in the relative importance of sectors that traditionally have had low union density. Thus if union density remained constant in each sector or for each type of worker, the economy-wide extent of union organization would decline due to these structural shifts. Another explanation involves changes in the U.S. legal regime (the laws, their interpretation, and their administration and enforcement) relating to unions and collective bargaining during the post-World War II period. Differences between Canada and the United States in such areas as certification and decertification procedures, bankruptcy and succession rights, first contract negotiation, and union security arrangements are argued to be factors contributing to the differential in union coverage. A related view is that the decline in unionization in the United States can largely be attributed to the rise in management opposition, both legal and illegal, to unions (Freeman 1985, 1988). The dramatic rise in unfair labor practices is evidence of a broader attempt by U. S. management to operate in a "union-free environment." The rise in unfair labor practices is not surprising, given the incentives facing employers (Flanagan 1987). Increased management opposition to unions can be attributed in part to a more competitive economic environment and to the substantial union-nonunion wage differential.

A fourth hypothesis is that there has been a reduction in the desire for collective representation because of the growth of substitute services. There are two variants of this view. One is that governments have gradually provided more of the employment protection and nonwage benefits that were originally important factors underlying workers' desire for organizing collectively (Neumann and Rissman 1984). The other is that employers have become increasingly sophisticated in their human resource practices and now provide many of the services (e.g., grievance procedures) that workers previously received only in unionized firms (Kochan, Katz, and McKersie 1986).

A final explanation, which is in many ways the simplest and most pro-found, is that there has been in the United States a reduction in public sympathy toward unions and collective bargaining (Lipset 1986). This shift in attitudes has resulted in a decline in workers' desire for collective forms of representation and a decline in the public support for achieving the goals of the labor movement via the political process. A corollary of this thesis is that the Canada-U. S. differential in union coverage can be attributed to fundamental value differences between the two societies-with Canada being a society that relies more on government, state intervention in the economy, and collective forms of organization and the United States being a society that emphasizes free enterprise and individual rather than collective rights and freedoms (Lipset 1986).

The remainder of the paper assesses these explanations, using the "natural experiment" provided by the differential experience of Canada and the United States. To as great an extent as possible, I attempt to use data and other information that are comparable between the two countries. The analysis begins by examining the extent to which the differential in union coverage can be attributed to differences between Canada and the United States in the demand for unionization versus differences in the supply of unionization.