Collective Bargaining Agreements: Not Always UP

The general feeling of many Hollywood workers is that, when union contracts are negotiated, wages and benefits always go up. But it ain't always so... Take this snippet from tomorrow's Wall Street Journal: DELTA REACHED a tentative contract agreement with its pilots union that averts a strike and could accelerate the airline's bankruptcy restructuring. Pilots agreed to roughly $280 million to $290 million in annual concessions, including a 14% pay cut. The airline pilots made a billion dollars worth of concessions in 2004. And now more concessions in '06. When an entire industry is in a tail spin (which, let's be clear, the entertainment business clearly isn't), the unions in that industry twirl down with it. Market forces -- both good and bad -- always prevail.