This study examines the hypothesis advanced by Wellington and Winter that public sector unions have greater power than private sector unions to raise wages. To test this hypothesis the authors use a unique body of 1974 data on several aspects of residential solid waste collection in 175 cities, 95 with public collection systems and 80 with private systems. In both groups of cities some work forces are unionized and some are not. The authors' analysis shows that unionization raises the wages of sanitation workers in the public sector by considerably more than it raises the wages of such workers in the private sector, thus providing strong support for the Wellington-Winter thesis.
Private sector participation in solid waste collection in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) by involving micro-enterprises