Word: wages
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...nation's work force far behind in the race with inflation. During the past three years, living costs have soared 27.3%, but the average weekly pay of non-farm workers has risen only 18.8%. Unions thus are in a painful dilemma: they have a case for catch-up wage increases to restore lost purchasing power but little opportunity to win any. This year's bargaining calendar is relatively light; fewer leading unions have contracts coming up for renegotiation than last year. Those that do-including unions representing airline, utility, maritime and some construction workers-are finding that...
Although a few unions have managed to negotiate double-digit increases (settlements in the first quarter averaged 12.5%), WJ. (Bill) Usery, director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, says that "wage settlements seem to be moderating." The average 1975 raise, he predicts, will be under the 10% average provided for in the first year of contracts negotiated during 1974. That may be an understatement. Some groups of workers are even accepting pay cuts or other economic adjustments in order to prevent further layoffs and spread the available work...
Chicago warehouse workers, for example, have agreed to a six-month extension of their old contract with no wage increase. Operating engineers in Ohio and Pennsylvania, construction workers in Pittsburgh, and heavy-equipment operators in Arkansas have accepted pay reductions of $1.50 to $3.50 an hour. In Santa Barbara, Calif., painters have okayed...
...negotiations covering 600,000 postal workers, whose contract with the Government-owned U.S. Postal Service expires July 21, union leaders insisted on higher pay increases and a stronger cost-of-living escalator clause to protect their members against future inflation. Five railway unions have rejected a hefty 41% wage and benefit boost offered by management, forcing the Ford Administration to order a 60-day postponement of a threatened nationwide rail strike...
...chronicle of better-known trends and events. One is struck by the modern spirit of protest expressed by individual early American women. Women's progress from having "no legal individuality" through the gradual reversals in the courts (the acquisition of voting rights, educational opportunities, divorce and child-custody rights, wage and hour standards in working situations, to the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court abortion decision) are traced...