Longitudinal stability in union wage determination: Evidence from the U.S. automobile assembly industry, 1970–1999

This chapter focuses on the following conceptualization of union wage determination: that wage provisions in union contracts manifest significant longitudinal stability, or ‘wage rules’ that hold across bargaining rounds despite differences in industry and company profits and prospects. The contracts between the major U.S. automobile assemblers and the UAW union over the period 1970–1999 are examined and found to provide support for this hypothesis. Particularly notable is the apparent return to a variant of the previous wage rules in the ‘post-concession’ era since the mid-1980s. Possible explanations for the emergence and persistence of such rules and implications for union wage determination, the overall wage structure, and the analysis of other economic aspects of human behavior are also discussed.