Bloomberg Law: Time It Takes To Negotiate First Contracts Has Gone From 409 To 465 Days

From 2021 to 2022, the time it takes to negotiate a first-time contract has increased 54 days, according to a Bloomberg Law legal analyst.

Photo by Donald Teel on Unsplash

In 2021, Bloomberg Law’s legal analyst Robert Combs published an analysis of how long it takes employers and unions to negotiate first-time contracts.

Although it varied by industry (see chart below), in his 2021 analysis, Combs stated, “we can pinpoint the average number of days it takes new union locals and their employers to sign that initial CBA. It’s well over a year: 409 days, to be exact.”

From 2021:

Image Source: Bloomberg Law

Now, however, according to an updated analysis by Bloomberg Law’s Combs, the number of days has increased to 465 days:

Based on our analysis of 391 records of first contracts signed since 2005, the mean number of days it takes newly unionized employers and their newly organized workers to ratify a first contract has grown to 465 days. (The median showed a more moderate increase, from 356 to 374 days.)

From 2022:

Image Source: Bloomberg Law

47% of unions do not have a contract in the first year

Combs also “fact checked” a 2009 Economic Policy Institute paper and found that “53% of the 391 first contracts took a full year or more to sign—virtually matching the 52% figure mentioned in the 2009 paper, incidentally. But only 6% of contracts took three full years or more, not one-third as [U.S. Senator Tim] Kaine and others have said.”

• You can read Bloomberg Law’s full article here.

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