THE MEASUREMENT OF WORKERS' 'MILITANCY' OVER TIME.

There exists a considerable body of opinion subscribing to the view that workers' militancy plays a major role in the genesis of inflation. Concomitant with this view is the search for a suitable index of union militancy. This search has necessarily been concentrated on measures of union activity and several activity measures have been put forward as measures of union militancy. The aim of this article is to analyse the relationships between the most commonly used proxies for union aggressiveness and to see whether it is possible to separate some common measure of "militancy" or "activity" from the alternative measures proposed. It is argued that all the commonly used proxy variables should be analysed simultaneously because it is unlikely that a single variable can capture all the effects of workers' pushfulness. This involves a multivariate approach which recognizes the interdependence between the various measures rather than treating each one as an alternative independent measure. The general conclusion is therefore that a single variable will not capture all the different variations in union activity, let alone militancy.