Word: norcal
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Dates: during 1987-1987
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...easy to work up a sweat inside the frost-coated chambers of the Norcal vegetable-freezing plant in Watsonville, Calif. Even so, the company's 700 employees are perspiring heavily these days. The workers have stepped up their productivity 10% over the level of two years ago without any major improvement in the food-processing equipment at their disposal. Yet for all their labors, the workers are not getting more pay but less. Last March they accepted wage cuts of 17%, from $7.06 an hour to $5.85 for most packers. They had little choice: the new arrangement saved their jobs...
...Norcal's packers are not alone in working harder for the same or lower pay. For the first sustained period since World War II, the same frustrating experience is affecting millions of American workers, from steelworkers to grocery clerks, airline pilots to meat-packers. A prime reason: over the span of the 1980s, wages have been lagging slightly behind inflation, even at today's comparatively mild pace of about 5%. Between 1980 and June of this year, for example, the average weekly earnings for U.S. workers increased from $235 a week to $309. But after adjustment for inflation, including...