Strikes, Scabs, and Tread Separations: Labor Strife and the Production of Defective Bridgestone/Firestone Tires

By Alan B. Krueger, Alexandre Mas. Journal of Political Economy, 2004

252 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper provides a case study of the effect of labor relations on product quality. We consider whether a long, contentious strike and the hiring of replacement workers at Bridgestone/Firestone’s Decatur, Illinois, plant in the mid‐1990s contributed to the production of defective tires. Using several independent data sources and looking before and after the strike and across plants, we find that labor strife at the Decatur plant closely coincided with lower product quality. Monthly data suggest that defects were particularly high around the time concessions were demanded and when large numbers of replacement workers and returning strikers worked side by side.

Subfields: General Health Professions, Public Administration, Safety Research

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9c2d17341cca772998581a4a52dd7a37aa8992f4

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Citations in the corpus

Ethnic Divisions and Production in Firms (2014, unknown): “I follow an innovative paper by Krueger and Mas (2004) in exploring worker behavior during conflict, but my focus is on a poor country characterized by frequent, ethnic tensions. While I focus on the effect of conflict on individual behavior, I follow Ksoll, Macchiavello and Morjaria (2010) and Macc”
Homo Reciprocans: Survey Evidence on Behavioural Outcomes (2008, background): “One dramatic example of the damage caused by disgruntled workers is provided by Krueger and Mas (2004).”
Individual and Corporate Social Responsibility (2010, background): “For example, a firm may renege on an implicit contract with its labour or suppliers so as to reduce costs, thereby damaging goodwillFmaking it more difficult to attract motivated workers in the future, or to induce suppliers to make relationship-specific investments (e.g. Krueger and Mas 2004).”
Unions and Productivity, Financial Performance and Investment: International Evidence (2002, background): “A skilful analysis (Krueger and Mas 2002) of the consequences of a major dispute which lasted over 2 years (1994-96) at the Bridgestone/Firestone tyre plant at Decatur, IL, examines this issue.”
Does Transparency Lead to Pay Compression? (2017, background): “Such a response would be consistent with inequality aversion on the part of the public (Fehr and Schmidt 1999).4 There has been speculation in the executive compensation literature that this type of “populist” response to seemingly high levels of compensation has contributed to lower executive pay…”
When Labor Disputes Bring Cities to a Standstill: The Impact of Public Transit Strikes on Traffic, Accidents, Air Pollution, and Health (2017, background): “Krueger and Mas (2004) show that strikes in tire production facilities decreased the quality of tires resulting in an increase of fatal accidents.”
Worker Absence and Productivity: Evidence from Teaching (2012, unknown): “0734-306X/2012/3004-0002$10.00 749 750 Herrmann/Rockoff during labor disputes (Kleiner, Leonard, and Pilarski 2002; Krueger and Mas 2004; Mas 2008), but labor disputes are rare—accounting for just one one-hundredth of a percent of lost work time—and it is unclear how these results generalize to…”
Imperfect Public Monitoring with Costly Punishment - An Experimental Study (2012, unknown): “For empirical evidence for the relevance of costly punishment outside the lab, see Krueger and Mas (2004) and Mas (2008).”