Sindicatos e produtividade

Unions: good for equity, good for efficiency por Kathy G. no Crooked Timber:

The best research has found that unionized firms are, on average, more productive than their nonunionized counterparts. There are a number of reasons for this.

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One especially interesting finding in the literature is that unionized workplaces have fewer managers. The intuitive assumption may be that more managers leads to more close supervision of workers, which leads to more productivity, but the literature on unions sheds doubt on that thesis.

Getting back to Toyota—it is interesting that so much of their success is due to their having implemented suggestions from ordinary workers. A union setting would tend to provide a far more hospitable environment for soliciting such ideas, since union workers have mechanisms for voicing complaints and suggestions and don’t have to fear for their job security. American workplaces, which tend to be nonunion and overmanaged (the U.S. has one of the highest ratios of managers to workers in the world), would present structural obstacles to adapting Toyota’s decidely non-top-down system.

More workplace democracy, in the form of more unions, fewer managers, and fewer firms organized on top-down principles, is highly desirable from an equity standpoint. But Toyota and the literature on unions provide compelling evidence it would be better for efficiency, as well.

[via Economist's View]