Hisham Said¹ and Aishwarya Mali¹
¹Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, California
Despite the union’s strive for better labor life and work conditions, unionization in the U.S. construction industry has dropped to half of its 2008 levels. Measuring construction unionization, or union market share, is challenging due to the fragmented nature of the construction businesses and the high mobility of the construction workers. This paper provides a comparative assessment of four available market share metrics that have been applied in the unionized electrical construction industry. In addition, a new market share trend metric is proposed to help in developing a better understanding of the construction industry unionization dynamics.
Key Words: Electrical construction, union, labor relations, quantitative metrics