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Two-tier pay plans, under which new hires are paid on a lower pay scale than existing employees, have been used with increasing frequency in union-management contracts. The two-tier phenomenon appears to be associated with the wider concession bargaining movement that began in the early 1980s. In this study, management attitudes toward and forecasts about two-tier pay plans are explored by means of a questionnaire survey. In general, the management community is found to be optimistic about the spread and utility of two-tier pay plans in the near term. Managers in firms that actually have two-tier plans are more enthusiastic about their impacts than other managers. Over a longer term, however, the managers surveyed tend to believe that separate wage scales under two-tier plans will eventually be merged into a unified scale.
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A Pioneering Pact Promises Jobs for LifeLifetime Employment, Lower Pay for New Hires Accepted Under IUE Pact at GM Packard Plant
  • John Hoerr
  • Dan Cook
Two-Tiered Wages: More Jobs vs. More Worker AlienationEmployers Win Big in the Move to Two-Tier Contracts
  • Jane Seaberry
The New Look in Wage Policy and Employee Relations
  • Audrey Freedman
The Double Standard That’s Setting Worker Against Worker A representative of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union argued that workers in the lower tier would “feel sold out before they even became union membersTwo-Tier Pay Plans Stir Debate
  • Aaron Bernstein
  • Zachery Schiller
The Two-Tier Wage System is DamagingMore Concerns Set Two-Tier Pacts with Unions, Penalizing New Hires
  • Archer Cole
  • J Roy
  • Jr Harris
Earnings and Other Characteristics of Organized Workers
  • U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
Employers Win Big in the Move to Two-Tier Contracts
  • Jane Seaberry
A representative of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union argued that workers in the lower tier would “feel sold out before they even became union members.” See Beth Brophy, “Two-Tier Pay Plans Stir Debate
  • Aaron Bernstein
  • Zachery Schiller
meetings of the Industrial Relations Research Association; Oral presentation of Marc Rosenblum, chief economist, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, at the same meetings; Steven Flax, “Pay Cuts Before the Job Even Begins
  • H Malcolm
  • Liggett