You Can't Always Get What You Want? Collective Bargaining Demands and Outcomes

ABSTRACT

Trade union demands are a key input for collective bargaining negotiations (CBNs). However, there is little quantitative evidence on these demands and how they shape CBN outcomes. We digitize novel data on union demands for wages and non‐wage amenities to examine the relationship between demands and outcomes in German CBNs from 1993 to 2019. We find CBNs cover a rich set of non‐wage amenities in addition to wages. We show how these objectives are traded off against each other in the demands made by unions and in the outcomes of CBNs. We further investigate how CBNs reflect macroeconomic and labor market conditions.