UAW might not get the 46% four-year pay raise, he said - but this demand signals the union's intent to win big wage increases nonetheless. While UAW does have to contend with competition from non-union auto plants, Kochan said the union still has significant leverage. Tom Kochan, professor of work and employment at MIT, said 2023 is shaping up to be a pivotal year for renegotiating wage norms. "Management still has a lot of sources of leverage."
"We're at a stage where worker power is certainly more than it was in the last 20 and 30 years - but it's hardly a revolution," Katz said. Katz predicts UAW will succeed in winning a "solid wage increase" that's aligned with the roughly 3% base pay increase - in addition to a cost of living adjustment - that the union consistently won in negotiations until the 1980s, when concessionary bargaining began.īut he doesn't think UAW is in a position to win pay raises comparable to the Teamsters deal with UPS. "They don't have exceptional leverage because there's a lot of competition," Katz said. But he said these workers face greater threats from competition in the automotive industry, including from factories with non-unionized workforces operating in the American South, which undercuts UAW's bargaining power. Katz said autoworkers on assembly lines can't be easily replaced either, and they have some leverage from solidarity within their union's ranks. "So that's part of their special circumstance." It can't move abroad and outsource production to foreign sources of supply," Katz said. "Those two are cases where capital is not mobile - it can't move to the non-union South and operate as many companies can. Pilots have a specialized skill-set that can't be easily substituted UPS is doing well enough, despite competition, that when the company raises workers' pay and benefits, it doesn't substantially reduce employment. While UPS workers and pilots are seeing major pay raises, not all unions have the same type of leverage, said Harry Katz, professor of collective bargaining at Cornell University.īargaining power for UPS employees and pilots at major airlines stems from the fact that they're not replaceable, Katz said. "A part-timer now would need to make in the ballpark of $25 to have the same buying power." But UAW might not have "exceptional leverage" "I got paid $8 an hour in 1991," Hancock told NPR, referring to what she earned when she was first hired at UPS. Jennifer Hancock, a part-time package sorter at UPS in Richmond, Virginia, said big pay raises are crucial to keep up with inflation. Collectively, the Detroit Three automakers posted a profit of $21 billion in just the first half of this year.īusiness UPS union negotiated a historic contract. UAW is pointing to automakers' recent profits as evidence that these companies can afford to increase workers' wages. Bloomberg Law wage data shows labor contracts ratified in the first quarter of 2023 gave workers an average first-year pay raise of 7% - the highest in a single quarter since at least 2007. Last year marked the start of a notable shift: union contracts ratified in 2022 provided workers with the highest average pay raise in more than three decades, according to Bloomberg Law labor data.
*Deals include "snap-up" provisions to match pay rates set by competitors. Negotiated by the California Nurses Association.Kaiser Permanente nurses in Northern California Negotiated by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.Negotiated by the Air Line Pilots Association.Negotiated by the Allied Pilots Association.Negotiated by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.48% average wage increase over five years
0 kommentar(er)
