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January/February 1996, Vol. 119, Nos. 1 & 2

Labor-management bargaining in 1995

Michael H. Cimini

T year just ended was a hectic one for organized labor, capped by a leadership battle within the AFL-CIO and the announced merger of the Nation's three largest industrial unions. The actions reflected the labor movement's struggle to reinvent itself to become more relevant to the circumstances faced by a growing fraction of the work force. Also a factor was labor's frustration with its recent failure to block the North American Free Trade Agreement, to persuade Congress to reform labor law or enact a ban against permanent strike replacements, to push through legislation enacting a national health care program, to elect pro-labor representatives to the U.S. Congress, and to attract a more diversified, younger work force to its ranks.

Signs of the waning power of unions and the continued decline in their political and economic fortunes in 1995 included:

• A 300,000 decline in AFL-CIO membership over the preceding 2 years;
• the United Automobile Workers' failed strike at Caterpillar;
• organized labor's reversals in the rubber industry;
• baseball players' return to work without a contract;
• the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees' agreement to terms of a consent decree settling civil racketeering charges that gives a court-appointed monitor oversight and disciplinary powers over the union;
• and the signing of an agreement with the Justice Department by Arthur A. Coia, president of the Laborers' International Union, giving him 90 days to demonstrate his willingness to purge the union of alleged longstanding corruption and organized crime influences, or face a government take over, as happened with the Teamsters union in 1989.

Some other important events affecting collective bargaining in 1995 are described in the sections that follow. The discussion includes information on significant bargaining situations and on administrative decisions and organizational changes that occurred during the year.

This excerpt is from an article published in the January/February 1996 issue of the Monthly Labor Review. The full text of the article is available in Adobe Acrobat's Portable Document Format (PDF). See How to view a PDF file for more information.

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