What Do Unions Do for Mothers? Paid Maternity Leave Use and the Multifaceted Roles of Labor Unions

41 Pages Posted: 8 Jun 2017

See all articles by Tae-Youn Park

Tae-Youn Park

Vanderbilt University - Organizational Behavior

Eun-Suk Lee

College of Business, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)

John W. Budd

University of Minnesota - Twin Cities - Carlson School of Management

Date Written: June 6, 2017

Abstract

The authors present a four-fold conceptual framework of union roles for enhancing workers’ paid maternity leave use, consisting of availability, awareness, affordability, and assurance. Using a panel data set constructed from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, workers represented by unions are found to be at least 16 percent more likely to use paid maternity leave than comparable non-union workers. Additional results suggest that availability, awareness, and affordability contribute to this differential leave-taking. The authors also document a post-leave wage growth penalty for paid leave-takers, but do not find a significant union-nonunion difference.

Keywords: labor unions, maternity leave, family-friendly policies

JEL Classification: J51, J13, J16

Suggested Citation

Park, Tae-Youn and Lee, Eun-Suk and Budd, John W., What Do Unions Do for Mothers? Paid Maternity Leave Use and the Multifaceted Roles of Labor Unions (June 6, 2017). Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management Research Paper No. 2981956, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2981956 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2981956

Tae-Youn Park

Vanderbilt University - Organizational Behavior ( email )

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Eun-Suk Lee

College of Business, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) ( email )

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Korea, Republic of (South Korea)

John W. Budd (Contact Author)

University of Minnesota - Twin Cities - Carlson School of Management ( email )

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