Union Decertifications's Impact on Shareholder Wealth

Recent research correlated share price declines in financial markets with union organizing. Investors seemingly anticipate a redistribution of earnings away from shareholder returns toward employee compensation. The markets discount security prices accordingly. But were that the case, union decertification activity should correlate with persistent, abnormally high returns on equity investments. Failure to find returns that are both abnormally high and persistent invites an alternative explanation that is consistent with the data from both studies. This study finds that firms that retained union representation in decertification cases actually outperformed those that ousted the bargaining agent in a partitioned sample comparison.