[PEN-L:11969] FW: Error Condition Re: FW: Daily Report

[Richardson_D <Richardson_D@xxxxxxx>]

BLS DAILY REPORT, FRIDAY, AUGUST 23, 1997:

Experimental geometric mean version of the CPI continues to conform to
expectations in its pattern of divergence with the official CPI, rising
by 1.9 percent in the year ending in July.  After testing the
experimental measure for the remainder of this year, BLS will announce
how it will change its method of calculating price change at the lowest
level of detail.  No changes will be made in the official CPI until
early 1999 (Daily Labor Report, page A-3; The Wall Street Journal, page
A2).__CPI Division Chief Patrick Jackman was interviewed on National
Public Radio yesterday about changes in the CPI.

Federal Reserve policymakers were united in their decision to leave
interest rates alone last month, as even the central bank's most
outspoken inflation hawks accepted a wait-and-see stance (The Wall
Street Journal, page A2).

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration will launch random
audits in September at about 250 employer sites nationwide to ensure the
accuracy of employee injury and illness records gathered by a recent
survey, says the Daily Labor Report (page A-8).  OSHA's acting
administrator says the audit program, which will run through December,
will help the agency evaluate both the accuracy and the completeness of
the data being submitted.

New claims for unemployment insurance benefits on a seasonally adjusted
basis rose by 20,000 to 337,000 in the week ended August 16, the Labor
Department's Employment and Training Administration reports (Daily Labor
Report, page D-1). __The Wall Street Journal (page A2) said the 337,000
figure is the highest in a month. The Journal's page 1 graph is of
jobless claims February 1997 to date.

Manpower, Inc., said its quarterly survey of employers shows the
strongest fourth-quarter demand for workers since 1978.  The temporary
help firm said 28 percent of the 16,000 businesses it polled plan to add
to their staff in the fourth quarter, while just 7 percent plan
cutbacks.  It said another 60 percent expect no change, and 5  percent
don't know (The Wall Street Journal, page A8).

E. J. Dionne, Jr., writing in The Washington Post (page A23) says the
UPS Teamsters strike was the most important labor battle since President
Reagan took on the air traffic controllers in 1981, but with a very
different result and lesson. The union drove home a few facts:  About 60
percent of UPS jobs are part-time, and the base pay for the workers in
them, $8 an hour, had not gone up since 1982.  More than 30 percent of
the jobs the company has created in recent years are part-time.  But
even if this strike gives labor new openings, the fact remains that only
one private sector worker in 10 has a union card, says Dionne.   The
widening income disparity between skilled and unskilled workers,
underscored by the UPS, is a problem across the economy.  Dionne offers
the ideas of David Ellwood, a Harvard professor and former assistant
secretary of health and human services who says there are four areas
where action is possible:  (1) to ensure a "living wage" (2) to
"increase job availability" (3) to increase "long-run opportunities" and
(4) to encourage "shared rewards and shared burdens" in the new economy.
__Louis Uchitelle, writing in The New York Times (page A21) says "The
new agreement at UPS, hailed by many as an unqualified breakthrough
victory for organized labor, includes a number of unpublicized
concessions by the teamsters that will help the company hold down the
cost of the 5-year contract.  "The labor costs in this new contract, by
themselves, will not drive up the rates that UPS charges to ship
packages, says a company spokesman.  The contract is believed to include
a clause that says if the company's sales volume declines -- because of
a recession, say -- then it is freed of the obligation to create any of
the full-time jobs.  An accompanying Associated Press story from Atlanta
says that some layoffs have started there because of lost revenue.
__The Wall Street Journal (page A16) under an Atlanta dateline says that
among those facing layoffs in the wake of the UPS-Teamsters strike are
staff hired under the firm's welfare-to-work program.