ANALYSIS: Is a 36% Raise Too High? It Wasn’t for These 23 CBAs

The striking United Auto Workers’ demand that the Big 3 automakers provide a 36% wage increase over four years sounds like an order that could be too big to fill. But a raise that size isn’t unheard of in the current supercharged atmosphere of union wage negotiations.

An analysis of Bloomberg Law’s database of negotiated wage and benefit changes has identified 23 collective bargaining agreements in the past 12 months alone that boosted workers’ pay by more than than 36% from start to finish (with lump-sum payments included).

The highest overall pay increase on the list belongs to Teamsters-represented pilots at Horizon Air, who last September secured a 74%–85% first-year wage increase, followed by two annual increases of 1.5%.

Ironically, the contract at the bottom of the list was ratified just a month ago by the UAW and electric car battery maker Ultium Cells LLC, which is co-owned by General Motors. With lump sums included—a negotiation practice well-used by the UAW and Big 3 in past contracts—the Ultium contract gives the newly organized Ohio factory workers a one-year increase of 36.2%.

The list is dominated by university students and other education-based workers, along with hospitality workers, entertainers, and pilots. One important thing that these workers all have in common is that they’re not year-round full-time employees.

Auto workers, on the other hand, are. And that adds up. Tacking 36% onto every hour worked would cost a lot more for an automaker than, say, an airline. Additionally, the Big 3 contracts will cover some 145,000 workers—about twice as many as all 23 of these contracts put together.

So, yes, a 36% raise is a tall order. But as this list shows, it’s far from unprecedented.

And here’s one more thing to consider: The UAW’s demand comes out to a 9% average raise per year. In this labor market, 9% isn’t rare air at all. In fact, 85 contracts in the past 12 months have provided a higher annual average—a list too long to include here.

Bloomberg Law subscribers can find negotiated wage and benefit changes other labor data and content on our Labor Relations & Collective Bargaining resource.

Bloomberg Law subscribers can track, search, and run reports on negotiated wage and benefit changes in union contracts by using our Labor PLUS resource.

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