This dissertation consists of three essays on firms' behaviors under staggered treatment adoption. The first essay draws information from a micro-lender and a credit bureau to identify the causal effects of small loans on the financial health of a group of small U.S. business owners. To achieve this, we exploit temporal variations in the loan disbursements and use an estimation strategy that controls for potential biases due to treatment effect heterogeneity. The results suggest that even small loans are effective in generating lasting positive impacts on widely accepted financial health indicators, such as Vantage Score (Credit Score), Debt-to-Income Ratio, and Credit Utilization Ratio. We obtain similar robust results for subprime and startup borrowers, who are known to face difficulties in securing credit. The second essay combines unionization data from the National Labor Relations Board and financial data from Compustat to examine the causal effects of unionization on the financing decisions of publicly traded firms in the United States. In this essay, I exploit temporal variations in the election date of unionization across firms and use a dynamic difference-in- difference estimation strategy to identify the effects of unionization on a range of financial indicators, including the Debt-to-Equity ratio, market leverage, book leverage, long-term book leverage, net leverage and cash to asset ratio. I find that unionization negatively affect firms' financing decisions. For example, after unionization, firms rely less on leverage to raise capital. At the same time, unionization offers incentive to firms to hold more cash in hand. My analysis also suggests that the effects of unionization vary according to the political and institutional structure of the states in which firms operate. For instance, the impacts on the outcome variables are more pronounced for the firms in democrat-led states and for firms which operate in states without right-to-work laws. The effects of unionization are also more noticeable for multi-establishment firms versus one-establishment firms. In addition, we find that the effects vary according to the margin of support for unionization within a firm. The third essay examines the causal effects of unionization on innovation activities of publicly traded firms in the United States. As in the case of chapters 1 and 2, the analysis uses a dynamic difference-in-difference estimation strategy on a dataset that is compiled using information on unionization data from the National Labor Relations Board, financial data from Compustat and KPSS patent data. My analysis encompasses a wide range of innovation indicators, including the number of patents, number of forward citations, market value of patents, average citations, number of patents to RandD expenditures ratio, number of citations to RandD expenditures ratio, number of patents per 1000 employees, capital expenditures to sales ratio and RandD expenditures to sales ratio. The findings suggest a small positive impact of unionization on most of these innovation indicators, with the exception of market value of patents and number of patents to RandD expenditures ratio. I also find that the effects of unionization vary according to political orientations of states, industry type, firm size and firm age. The results demonstrate that the effects on innovation are more pronounced for smaller and younger firms and for firms operating in democrat-led states as well as manufacturing firms. / Doctor of Philosophy / This thesis is a collection of three self-contained essays that examine the firms' behaviors in contexts where not all the units received the treatment at the same point in time. In the first essay, we investigate how small loans affect the financial health of small business owners. By analyzing data from a lender and credit bureau, we identify the causal effects of receiving loans on the financial health of borrowers. The results indicate that even small loans have a positive and lasting impact on credit scores, debt-to-income ratios, and credit utilization ratios. This research also sheds light on the effects of loans on borrowers with less favorable credit status or those starting a new business, who often face challenges in accessing credit. In the second essay, the focus shifts to the impact of unionization on the financing decisions of publicly traded firms in the United States. We examine the causal effects of unionization on various financial indicators. The findings reveal a negative effect of unionization on metrics such as debt-to-equity ratio, market leverage, and book leverage. However, cash holdings experience an increase. Furthermore, the effects of unionization vary based on the political and institutional structure of the states where firms operate, as well as the margin of support for unionization within a firm. The impact of unionization is more pronounced in democrat- led/without right-to-work law states, multi-establishment firms and when the support for unionization is stronger among employees. In the third essay, we investigate the effects of unionization on innovation activities within publicly traded firms in the United States. By analyzing unionization data, financial data, and patent data, the study examines the causal effects of unionization on various innovation indicators. The results reveal a small positive impact of unionization on most innovation indicators, such as the number of citations, number of patents per 1000 employees as well as ratio of number of citations to RandD expenditures. However, the effects on market value of patents and number of patent-to-RandD expenditure ratios are not statistically significant. Moreover, the analysis considers factors like political orientations of states in which the firms operate, industry type, firm size and firm age. The findings indicate that the effects on innovation outcomes are more pronounced for smaller firms, younger firms, firms operating in democrat-led states and manufacturing firms.

In 1987, the Supreme Court of Canada rejected arguments that the freedom of association in section 2(d) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (hereafter, the Charter) protected a positive right to bargain collectively over working conditions. Between 1987 and 2007, the Supreme Court's jurisprudence on freedom of association was marked by certain tensions. In particular, the Court rejected arguments that freedom of association could have a collective dimension. In addition, the Court adopted a so-called negative approach to freedom of association, stating that section 2(d) of the Charter could not be used to create obligations for the state. The idea that freedom of association conferred negative (as opposed to positive) individual protection against state interference is typical of a liberal view of rights and freedoms. However, in 2007, in Health Services, the Supreme Court relied on underlying Charter values (specifically autonomy, liberty, equality, democracy and dignity) to extend constitutional protection to the right to collective bargaining. In 2015, this constitutional protection was extended to the right to strike. The use of moral values in constitutional adjudication is widespread. In Canada, Charter values are used both to interpret Charter provisions and to weigh competing rights, notably in the proportionality exercise under section 1 of the Charter. Using moral reconstruction as a methodological approach, this thesis examines the use of the values identified in Health Services throughout the Supreme Court's body of case law. From these values, the thesis develops a so-called republican reconstruction of freedom of association. While liberalism emphasises the freedom of the individual from the state, republicanism aims to ensure non-domination in both the private and public spheres. Equality, when considered from a republican perspective, becomes relational equality. Republicanism is particularly relevant to labour law, which is based on a relationship of subordination identified by republican theorists as a relationship of domination. The final chapter of the thesis explores alternative models for protecting republican freedom in the workplace.

For decades, union membership and activity has been declining in North America; employers have demanded greater flexibility and have successfully weakened workplace and worker protections. Modern workers increasingly use alternative strategies to negotiate conditions of employment with managers who have limited their discretionary power. Negotiated order theory provides a useful tool for analyzing the mesostructural arrangements of bargaining parties during labor disputes. This thesis applies negotiated order theory to explore how and why the National Football League (NFL) players have twice decertified their union and sought court intervention to challenge the legitimacy of the League's highly restrictive reserve system. An outcome-focused content analysis was designed as a preliminary investigation to ascertain why an alternative strategy was sought and if the strategy proved more effective in securing the players' preferred ends than conventional collective bargaining. The NFL case offers a fixed market from which to formulate a negotiation context of the interorganizational structures and bargaining interactions of its members.

This study examined the legal issues of public employee labor relations in the United States. Included in this study is a review of relevant case law as it pertains to collective bargaining in the public sector. In addition to reviewing the case law, this study researched the statutory language of each state for public sector collective bargaining. The study includes a review, analysis, and summary of the state and federal laws for public sector collective bargaining. The collective bargaining process in the United States is designed to resolve disputes between two parties, the employer and the employee. The resolution of these disputes often depends on the relative bargaining power of each party. The private sector has a collective bargaining process that has been well established since the passage of the National Labor Relations Act in 1935 and the Labor-Management Relations Act of 1947. The federal laws that have been implemented in the last fifty years, to include the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972, the American with Disabilities Act of 1990, among others, cover the scope of almost all of the private sector collective bargaining (Oberer, 1994). The public sector contains 50 different state laws and several federal laws defining the scope of collective bargaining for public employees. The bargaining process in the public sector takes place in the context of the political arena. This political influence, which is unique in each state and at each level of government, provides additional steps to the bargaining process that further differentiate public sector bargaining from private (Valletta, 1985). This study provides conclusions on certain aspects of public sector collective bargaining that lead to dispute resolution and contract negotiation to include fact-finding procedures, mediation, arbitration, and strike policies, in the current state of the law. Recommendations are made to public officials, policy makers, and other stakeholders for the future of public employee labor relations in the United States.

The COVID-19 crisis in Ontario’s long-term care (LTC) sector has brought unprecedented public attention to long-established systematic weaknesses in funding, staffing, and working conditions that have rendered both workers and residents highly vulnerable to infection. This study seeks to understand why unions have been unable to better protect long- term care workers from vulnerability to COVID-19 by exploring the effectiveness and limitations of unionization and assessing the challenges that unions have faced in safeguarding workers. Eight union representatives amongst SEIU, CUPE, and OPSEU were selected as participants for hour-long semi-structured interviews. Interviews were thematically analyzed for challenges to union power as well as workplace attributes related to COVID protection. Twelve collective agreements were examined to assess the relative strength and weakness of clauses relating to health and safety, paid sick leave, disability benefits, wages, and job security in relation to part-time PSWs. Collective agreements offered limited and varying degrees of protection to workers as unions faced constraints in bargaining within a largely privatized sector under the arbitration- based Hospital Labour Disputes Arbitration Act. The ubiquity of precarious, part-time PSW positions was identified as a major risk factor of COVID vulnerability. Unions also faced four challenges to their effectiveness: the structure of bargaining; challenges in member engagement; the neglect of long-term care and privatization of health-care; and labour relations with the Ford government. In addition to legislative reform concerning staffing and funding, this study suggests that unions engage in deeper forms of worker organizing to develop and exercise labour power beyond the legal confines of the strike-prohibiting HLDAA, as job action elsewhere by feminized healthcare workers has been met with public support and contributed to changes in conditions of care and work. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

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The purpose of this study was to determine if significant variances exist among the attitudes of educational leaders in West Virginia toward collective bargaining and what influences certain demographic variables might have as predictors of attitudes. Eight categories of educational leaders were included in this study, with membership determined by employment or organizational position held. Twenty-one items concerning demographic information were included to gather pertinent background material. Data were collected by mail survey using a Likert Scale. The data were analyzed as follows: differences across categories of leaders were tested using the one-way analysis of variance, and predictors of attitudes were sought with a multiple regression and a Scheffe test. The results indicated that there were significant differences between groups in relation to attitudes toward collective bargaining and certain demographic variables at the .05 level of significance. / Ed. D. / incomplete_metadata

The purpose of this study was to determine if two-year colleges with faculty unions differ from two-year colleges without unions in terms of selected institutional characteristics. The objectives of the study were to determine the relationship between union and non-union colleges with respect to: 1) the percentage of Education and General (E & G) expenditures allocated to instruction; 2) the percentage of their revenue by source; 3) E & G expenditures per FTE student; 4) the FTE student to full-time faculty ratio; 5) average full-time faculty salary; and 6) the possibility of one or more of the variables serving as a predictor of membership in one of the two groups. The population for the study consisted of 163 institutions with faculty bargaining and 115 institutions without bargaining. Data on the institutions were obtained from the Higher Education General Information Survey CHEGIS) 1979-80 Tapes. The data were classified and summarized by two Statistical Analysis System (SAS) procedures: general descriptive statistics, and cross-tabulation. A Stepwise Regression was used to analyze the relationship between the dependent variable and twelve independent variables. Institutions with faculty collective bargaining, men there was no control for the possible effects of institutional size and state governance, had a significantly higher average faculty salary than institutions without faculty bargaining. Institutions with faculty bargaining received greater mean percentages of their income from tuition and fees and local governmental appropriations, mile institutions without faculty bargaining obtained a greater mean percentage of revenue from state appropriations. When institutions were matched by size (as measured by FTE students and total current fund revenue) and by state, there were no significant differences between the two sets of institutions. / Ed. D.

The organization of this dissertation is a topical one, thereby permitting the reader to locate the information relevant to a specific academic bargaining issue in a single chapter. Chapters one and two contain respectively an introduction to problem and a review of the literature of academic collective bargaining. Chapters three through seven deal separately and sequentially with the following topics: jurisdiction, bargaining unit scope, bargaining unit determinations, ancillary support personnel and unfair labor practices. Each of these chapters begins "with a short introduction to the subject area followed by descriptive briefs of the related, landmark cases heard by the National Labor Relations Board. Following the briefs, there is an analysis that examines the ramifications of each specific case and attempts to relate the cases to each other and detail the parallels and paradoxes between them. / Ph. D.