Pattern Bargaining and UAW Wage Determination: An Empirical Examination

Abstract

The bargaining behavior of the UAW is well-known: the pattern set by a target settlement in the automobile industry serves as the union's goal in subsequent UAW contracts in many industries. Two new data sets covering UAW contract outcomes are constructed to estimate the empirical importance of the target outcome for subsequent negotiations in the post-war period up to l979. Conditions determining variations in the amount of uniformity achieved by pattern following in both wage levels and percent increases are analyzed. Bargaining unit size and industry are found to have important influences on. pattern following while measures of firm profitability do not.