Chapter 8.
National Compensation Measures

Work Stoppages
The Bureau currently compiles data on work stoppages involving 1,000 or more workers for at least a full day or shift. Data for this series, major work stoppages, is uninterrupted and dates back to 1947. The information includes monthly listings of companies or governments involved in a work stoppage, along with the name of the union involved in the dispute, the location of the stoppage, the NAICS code, the beginning and ending dates of the dispute, the number of workers idled by the stoppage, days of idleness during the reference month, and days of idleness from the beginning of the work stoppage.

Definitions and methods
A work stoppage is a strike or lockout. Because of the complexity of most labor-management disputes, BLS makes no attempt to distinguish between strikes and lockouts in its statistics. A strike is a temporary stoppage of work by a group of employees (not necessarily members of a union) to express a grievance or enforce a demand. A lockout is a temporary withholding or denial of employment by management during a labor dispute to enforce terms of employment on a group of employees.

Workers involved include those who initiate the strike as well as others in the establishment who honor picket lines or are idled because the plant is closed down. Other branches or plants of the struck employer also may be affected.

The number of days idle includes all workers made idle for one shift or longer in establishments directly involved in a stoppage. This number does not account for secondary idleness, that is, the effects of a stoppage on other establishments or industries whose employees may be made idle as a result of material or service shortages. The figure does, however, include idleness at other plants or facilities of the establishment struck.

Estimated working time lost is computed by multiplying the number of workers idled during the period by the number of workdays lost based on a 5-day workweek, excluding Federal holidays.

Sources of information. Information on the actual or probable existence of a work stoppage is collected from numerous sources. They include weekly reports of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, State Bureau of Employment Security reports, union newspapers and periodicals, and clippings of labor disputes obtained from a number of major daily and weekly newspapers.

Next: Analysis and Presentation of NCS Compensation and Work Stoppage Data