Signs Of Inflation

[BiscayneSunrise]

I am starting this thread so iTulip members can post information regarding inflation. These metrics can be both formal data or anecdotal. To keep it real, we should also post events that either delay or counter inflation.

This idea started because there seemed to be some skepticism about the possibility of wage inflation and the thread was to be about wage inflation only but as Verrocchio (great screen name, by the way) suggested, future posts can also point out all types of inflation.




For starters, here is a news article pointing to a DELAY in wage inflation in the airline industry. In order for unions in the airline industry to strike and therefore pressure their respective companies for pay raises they must receive permission from the federal government. At American the NLRB seems to be in no hurry to allow the unions there to engage in self help. Interesting to note here, the unions are not just asking for pay raises, they are trying to re-capture concessions given back in 2003.



http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcont...r.3cc6a46.html

Legally, there'll be no impasse in American Airlines Inc.'s labor talks until the National Mediation Board decides there's an impasse.

But practically speaking, the talks with American's three major unions are at a virtual stalemate.


•More than three years after the airline and the Allied Pilots Association began negotiations, the two sides have made little substantive progress. Their last talks, overseen by a federal mediator, were in September.

•American and the Transport Workers Union, which started contract talks in November 2007, have reached agreements for none of the union's work groups.

•The Association of Professional Flight Attendants, which began its negotiations in June 2008, put up picket lines at airports in November and conducted a simulated strike to prod the Fort Worth-based airline. The union is talking strike next year, even though no union can walk out until the mediation board says it can.

And it appears that the board is in no rush to declare an impasse and release the parties from mediation, an action that would set the clock ticking for a potential work action in 30 days.

Bill Haug, secretary-treasurer of the Allied Pilots Association, told members last month that the National Mediation Board has put the union's negotiations "on ice." Haug predicted that his union will not be released from mediation for at least a year.

Union president Lloyd Hill said the freeze probably applies to the entire airline industry and no union in particular.