The current contract expires next May, and union leaders have vowed to press for a system linking wages more closely to productivity gains.

The Government did agree to an indexing policy that will link wages to future price increases.

So they are listing numerous possible reasons for the breakdown in what once seemed a predictable relationship linking unemployment, wages and inflation.

But Ms. Counihan said she did not like the idea of linking tax breaks and wages because "they're totally different issues."

These complaints were coupled with steadfast opposition to linking wages with gains in productivity.

The Mexican Government has been taken to task for leaving vague its promise to link wages to productivity.

In 1988, for example, Soviet enterprises were ordered to link wages and bonuses to sales, in an effort to force them to satisfy consumers.

The prospective German currency reform would go much deeper, linking wages, prices, productivity and profits.

This documented the discovery of a power law-with an exponent of approximately -0.1 - linking wages to the local unemployment rate.

By that time, a permanent wage formula is to have been worked out firmly linking wages to productivity.