Social policy and construction wage formation: The Alberta experience

A number of social policies affecting the level of construction wage settlements are examined theoretically. Next, the empirical magnitudes of the effects of a subset of these are estimated within a pooled cross-sectional, time-series regression analysis of wage settlements in the unionized construction industry of Alberta over the past two decades. Particularly of note are the reductions in wage settlements due to the legal sanction of centralized collective bargaining and the imposition of wage controls; the increases in wage settlements due to large upswings in government sponsored building activity (with an elasticity coefficient of 0.3); and the neutrality of wage settlements with respect to any short-term increases in government subsidized trades training and the legalization of no strike, no lockout agreements.