ABSTRACT
Journalists and government officials, mainly following the comments of John Dunlop and others, denoted the bargaining that occurred in 1976 as the beginning of a three-year wage round. The United Steel Workers (USW), only a large but a very diversified union, bargains for workers in a wide range of industries. In the late 1970s one of the major problems for the USW in pattern bargaining appeared to arise not from the inter industry relationships but from intra industry difficulties in basic steel. The Communications Workers of America (CWA) is organized largely around the eighteen different companies in the American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) system. In response to attacks by the chief AT&T economist, who described the CWA's goals as "inflationary," the CWA also analyzed the relation between its recent settlements and productivity. The Phillips curve literature represents a coherent theory of wage determination, coupled with a rigorous quantitative analysis of the determinants of wage change.
