| Summary |
The purpose of this study is to study the impact of the Reagan administration along with the National Labor Relations Board and the Supreme Court on the labor movement in this country. The density of unionization has declined steadily throughout the 1980s and the political atmosphere of the New Right has created broad justification for wage concessions and givebacks on the part of workers. Not since the 1920s have as many concessionary agreements been made as there were in the 1980s. From Reagan's crushing of PATCO to the Phelps Dodge assault on workers in Arizona, unionbusting has become a favorite sport. Large-scale employer offensives have not been as widespread since the unionization of mass production industries by the CIO in the late 1930's and early 1940's. The shrinking perimeter of unionism is exemplified by reverse bargaining on company-wide and, ultimately industry-wide levels. It was the three successive waves of wage and benefit concessions at Chrysler from 1979 to 1981, for example, that opened the floodgates to reverse bargaining. During the first half of 1982, almost sixty per cent of unions engaged in bargaining had to accept real wage freezes or reductions in their new contract, while the overall trend of wage increases decelerated for the first time in forty years. The extent of concessionary agreements in the 1980s was unprecedented. The only decade that remotely parallels the 1980s was the 1920s. In the 1920s, concessionary agreements were made in good times as well as bad times. Before the 1920s concessionary agreements tended to be made only in bad times, and wages and benefits restored during good times. Like the 1920s, concessionary agreements were made in the 1980s when the economy was in a recession and again once the economy recovered. The New Right, the NLRB and the Supreme Court favored this type of concessionary bargaining. |
