This paper presents data on airline mechanics at eight of the
largest U.S. airlines and describes the impact of the 1978 Airline
Deregulation Act on their wage rates and employment levels. The major
findings are: (1) up to 1983, real and relative wage rates of airline
mechanics remained more or less constant across firms and over time; (2)
the independence of mechanics’ wage rates from firm-specific employment
conditions after 1978 is consistent with pre-deregulatory experiences;
(3) deregulation contributed to an existing trend of declining
employment; and (4) deregulation did not bring about any systematic
increase in mechanics’ productivity.

This paper presents new evidence on the relevance of nominal
contracting models for employment determination in long term union
contracts. A key aspect of these contracts, much emphasized in the
macroeconomics literature, is the predetermined nature of nominal
wages. Real wage rates therefore contain unanticipated components
that reflect unexpected changes in prices and the degree of
indexation in the contract. The empirical analysis, based on a
sample of 1300 indexed and non-indexed contracts from the Canadian
manufacturing sector, indicates that unexpected real wage changes are
associated with systematic employment responses in the opposite
direction. I conclude that nominal contracting provisions play a
potentially important role in the cyclical properties and persistence
of employment in the union sector.

This paper presents data on airline mechanics at eight of the
largest U.S. airlines and describes the impact of the 1978 Airline
Deregulation Act on their wage rates and employment levels. The major
findings are: (1) up to 1983, real and relative wage rates of airline
mechanics remained more or less constant across firms and over time; (2)
the independence of mechanics’ wage rates from firm-specific employment
conditions after 1978 is consistent with pre-deregulatory experiences;
(3) deregulation contributed to an existing trend of declining
employment; and (4) deregulation did not bring about any systematic
increase in mechanics’ productivity.