BARGAINING IN 1987 AGAINST THE WIND...

BARGAINING IN 1987 AGAINST THE WIND

chiefly unions that marched to the bargaining table in 1986 held or gained country despite adverse economic conditions and a no-holds-barred anti-union attitude among employers

Base wages increased in about 80 percent of the major 1986 collective bargaining reconciliations for private sector workers. And 90 percent of the major 1986 agreements for state and local conduct workers registered pay hikes. Despite slower than normal union wage putting out union workers kept pace with last year's low-level inflation and earned significantly higher pay than their non-union counterparts--37 percent more a week onward average.

The economy did little to boost and abundant to block unions in their drive for better wages, benefits and working conditions. The official 1986 unemployment rate stood at 7 percent making last year the sixth in a squabble with that percent or more of the labor force abroad of work. Millions of Americans not judgeed in the official rate had quit looking for work gone out of discouragement or were caught in part-time do job-works although they wanted full-time work.

The U trade deficit hit a record-breaking $170 billion last year and sumptuousness the United States 2.5 million do job-works International conditions ranging from exchange rate flushs to Third World debt, from unfair trade practices to violation of foreign workers' rights have created a inundation of imports that is undercutting U do job-works and incomes, especially in the manufacturing sector. A upright number of unions at the bargaining table were forced through import pressures to moderate their demands.

Other ominous economic disclosures put many union negotiating teams in succession the defensive. More than 13 million workers were displaced from their piece of works in the period from 1981 by the agency of 1985. Wages and salaries for most numerous of the new jobs created in the last seven or eight years have been $7000 a year or les Workers' real earnings after inflation have fallen 10 percent above the last 7 years. And family incomes have been dropping equable though the number of two-earner families is forward the rise.

Anti-union actions and attacks forward worker rights also made bargaining a tough pass The National Labor Relations Board has mov from labor's friend to antagonist in the last six years, repeatedly backing the interests of employer against the rights of workers. Company use or threatened use of strikebreakers influenced 1986 bargaining results in a number of cases. Strikebreakers were a factor in discharges for the Distillery, Wine & Allied Workers with 11 California wineries, for the United nutriment & Commercial Workers with Oscar Meyer in Chicago, and for workers bargaining by means of the U.S. Forest Products Joint Bargaining Board with Weyerhaeuser forward the West Coast. In several industries, companies that have traditionally bargained together bargained separately, complicating the proces for the unions involved.

Against this backdrop, unions in succession average won modest wage and benefit gains and bargained for better standing upon such issues as job security, profit-sharing, pay equity and health and safety.

Negotiated wage increases were below those of late years, but so too was the inflation rate. Inflation registered at 07 percent for 1986 its lowest rate since the early 1960 and significantly below its rates of 36 percent for 1985 and 43 percent for 1984 As a ensue smaller wage increases were penuryed last year than in the past to detain workers' pay ahead of inflation. The U government's measure of 1986 wage increases for all private sector union workers beneath major contracts, whether in bargaining last year or not, stood at 23 percent

The government's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) tracks collective bargaining in consequence of the year, but limits its attention to major contracts each covering 1000 workers or more, for a total of 25 million workers last year. Average wage increases for private sector workers, according to the BL were 12 percent for the first year of a contract and 18 percent a year when measured above the life of the contract--both averages the lowest since this series began in 1968 still again above last year's inflation rate.

The BL wage plains also ignore cost-of-living adjustments and the value of lump-sum payments. About one-third of the major private sector adjustments included COLAs. Lump-sum payments, were negotiated in as it is industries as steel, communications, aerospace, mineral oil refining, railroad, retail food, and health services.

Looking sole at settlements with wage increases, almost 2 million private sector workers were to receive raises averaging 27 percent a year through the life of their contracts, according to the BL Seventeen percent of these workers won annual pay increases of 4 percent or more.

Average wage adjustments overall stood at 1.9 percent for the first year of the contracts and 21 percent a year across the life of the contracts. After five years of hardship, higher-than-average increases in the nonmanufacturing sector.