Word: labored
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...week after a labor activist group attempting to organize Harvard clerical workers announced formal affiliation with the largest union in the AFL-CIO, labor leaders and the University administration are getting ready for what may be the final battle in their 15 year...
...belongs to the swelling ranks of the U.S. service economy? Such workers are often depicted as a legion of hamburger flippers and computer programmers, but in fact they constitute a huge, diverse group whose members range from cashiers to lumberjacks. The vast majority of the U.S. labor force, more than 76 million workers, belong to the service sector; 25 million others are in goods-producing jobs, and 3 million are in agriculture. The Labor Department defines the goods-producing sector as manufacturing, mining and construction, but the rapidly growing service-producing sector tends to be much broader, encompassing many...
...powerful (President of the U.S.) to humble (janitors), noisy (auctioneers) to quiet (librarians), outdoorsy (hunters and trappers) to indoorsy (accountants and pharmacists). Among the largest job classifications are professionals (13.8 million), executives and managers (12.2 million), sales workers (12.7 million) and secretaries (4 million). In more specific categories, the Labor Department counts 131,000 dentists, 102,000 economists, 84,000 professional athletes, 124,000 messengers, 324,000 bartenders and 126,000 news vendors. The country employs eight times as many hairdressers and cosmetologists (707,000) as it does barbers...
Economic upheaval is to blame. First came the great inflation of the 1970s, which forced businesses to slash service to keep prices from skyrocketing. Then came deregulation, which fostered more price wars and further cutbacks. Meanwhile, service workers became increasingly difficult to hire because of labor shortages in many areas. At the same time, managers found that they could cut costs by replacing human workers with computers and self-service schemes. It all makes perfect bookkeeping sense for businesses, but the trend has left consumers without enough human faces to turn to for guidance in spending their billions of dollars...
Ireland's Fine Gael party has been in a marriage-of-convenience coalition with the smaller Labor Party for four years. While civil divorce is still illegal in Ireland, political divorces are not -- and so last week the two parties split. Prime Minister Garret FitzGerald, the Fine Gael leader, wanted to slash social spending as part of a program to reduce a $2 billion budget deficit. Labor ministers, who preferred to increase taxes instead, promptly resigned...