BLS DAILY REPORT, TUESDAY, APRIL 8, 1997 By the middle of this year, BLS plans to release the first publications based on its revamped nationwide program of locality pay surveys, the agency said in its spring issue of Compensation and Working Conditions. BLS has named the new program the National Compensation Survey, reflecting the consolidation of occupational wage and benefits surveys into one program ....(Previously, the effort was called COMP2000.) ....BLS also said it has released a set of three informational pamphlets designed to highlight various aspects of the new program ....(Daily Labor Report, page A-10). BLS announced that it will release on April 10 the first batch of data from its experimental CPI, which uses a geometric-mean method of calculating price change rather than the current arithmetic-mean formula. After publishing the new measure for about a year, the agency has said that it may decide to incorporate its methodology into the official CPI. Such a change would not occur before 1999, officials have said ....(Daily Labor Report, page A-10). Disabled workers' rights and public safety concerns in the transportation industry may be on a collision course. A recent spate of lawsuits brought under the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act is raising concerns in industry circles that some efforts to improve job opportunities for the disabled would make the workplace a riskier place for their co-workers and the public ....(Washington Post, page A1). US workers are finally getting a raise, and Wall Street isn't very happy about it. Investors fear a recent pickup in wage growth is a harbinger of mounting inflationary pressures -- the kind that could squeeze corporate profits and force the Fed to push short-term interest rates sharply higher. Those worries were aggravated Friday, when the Labor Department reported the average hourly wage jumped 5 cents in March to $12.15 ....But those fears also appear inflated, economists say. "We still aren't seeing anything that looks like serious pressure," says Joel Popkin, president of Joel Popkin and Co., a forecasting firm ....One reason for Popkin's optimism: Broader measures of employee compensation continue to give benign readings. The Employment Cost Index, for example, rose just 0.8 percent in the fourth quarter of last year, vs. 0.6 percent in the third ....Gains in productivity -- the measurement of output per hour worked -- are helping offset the inflationary impact of rising wages ....(USA Today, page 4B). The government's employment report suggests that the fulminations over changes in the minimum wage were largely hot air, according to the New York Times (April 6, page E5). Last month's 5.2 percent unemployment rate was the lowest in five months. The new wage is a boon to some working poor. But the wage increase has had little effect elsewhere ....For a full-time worker who earned the old $4.25 the raise in pay to $5.15 this July means a raise of $1,800 a year and an income exceeding $10,000 for the first time. People earning up to $5.15 an hour account for about 10 million of the nation's 129 million workers .... Job pressure is driving many workers to perform unethical or illegal activities in the workplace, according to a survey released by the American Society of Chartered Life Underwriters & Chartered Financial Consultants. Nearly half (48 percent) of the 1,324 responding workers said they had committed one or more unethical or illegal acts in the past year because of job pressure, according to the survey ....Balancing work and family was the leading cause of pressure cited by respondents (52 percent), followed by poor internal communication, work hours/work load, and poor leadership. Unethical actions employees admitted to included "cutting corners on quality control" (cited by 16 percent of respondents, covering up incidents, abusing or lying about sick days, lying to or deceiving customers, etc. ....(Daily Labor Report, page A-4).
