Recently, I plumbed Bloomberg Law’s labor databases to find out how long it takes to negotiate a first contract—the initial collective bargaining agreement that newly unionized employers must reach with their newly organized workers. (The answer was 409 days, on average.)
Now I’ve decided to dive a little deeper. Most of the 330 first contract records I had analyzed, dating back to 2004, also contained data on the initial wage increases that were negotiated in those contracts. After removing a 2012 outlier contract that called for a 53% first-year pay raise (don’t ask), I was left with 219 first ...