UPSE-PCED Seminar on "Too Little, Too Weak? Paid Parental Leaves and Workers’ Bargaining Response"

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Abstract:

When statutory work and family entitlements are deemed insufficient, how do workers respond and compensate? Some evidence suggests that unionization may secure higher benefit entitlements than what is statutorily guaranteed. However, the universality of this “success story” is far from established, particularly in contexts where unions play a less salient role. Bridging this gap, we construct a novel dataset of all private sector collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) in the Philippines from 2016-2021 to: descriptively estimate (i) the prevalence of paid parental leaves (PPLs) in CBAs; (ii) whether having female leaders is associated with a higher probability of PPL inclusion; and (iii) whether wage increase provisions “crowd-out” PPLs. We further estimate the effect of a 2019 maternity leave reform, which increased leave entitlements from 8 to 15 weeks, on the inclusion of PPLs in CBAs using two identification strategies - a pre-post comparison of multi-plant ultimate parent entities (UPEs) and a regression discontinuity in time (RDiT) design. Results suggest that around 65% of CBAs contain reinforcing provisions that merely restate statutory leave entitlements, while only 5% contain augmenting provisions that secure more leaves. Second, neither wage increases nor the 2019 reform crowds out PPL provisions. On the contrary, we find a crowding-in pattern - wage increase provisions at the extensive and intensive margins are associated with a higher probability of PPL inclusion. Unpacking potential mechanisms, semi-structured interviews with union leaders and negotiators support a bounded augmentation hypothesis such that where compliance and enforcement of statutory entitlements are perceived as weak, redundancy is as much of an objective as augmentation is in collective bargaining.

Speaker:

Vincent Ramos is a Research Fellow at the University of Southampton, working on the demographic consequences of employment uncertainty. Concurrently, he is leading projects on concentration, representation, and bargaining in Philippine labor markets and the consequences of restrictive covenants in employment contracts. His work has been published in Work, Employment and Society, the European Journal of Population, and Industrial Relations Journal, among others. He holds a PhD in Public Policy (summa cum laude) from the DYNAMICS Research Training Group, jointly organized by the Hertie School Berlin and the Humboldt University Berlin. His primary areas of interest are labor and economic demography and labor market institutions.

REGISTRATION

Date: 21 February 2025 (Friday)

Time: 4:00 PM (Manila Time)

Location: Judith R. Duavit-Vasquez and Class of 1984 Room (105), UP School of Economics

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