Word: automen
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...despite the approach of the contract deadline, the automakers stoutly deny reports that they have been reducing their steel purchases as a hedge against a shutdown. Brushing aside all strike talk, top automen confidently predict high sales for 1961-3 fourth quarter -partly because of buyer concern that the Berlin crisis may divert next year's auto steel to defense. And for 1962, Detroit seers happily foresee more than 6,500,000 car sales-roughly equivalent to booming 1960 and second only to 1955's record 7,200,000 sales...
...auto companies insist that they are prepared to grant only such benefits as can be paid for out of the industry's average 2½% increase in productivity each year. This would amount to about 7? more an hour, a settlement the industry would consider noninflationary. The automen are dead set against a shorter work week and against putting all workers on salaries. The industry opposes continuance of the annual "improvement-factor" automatic wage increases and the escalator clause that adjusts auto wages to rises in the Consumer Price Index. Snaps Reuther: "I have made it clear that both...
Studying those figures as time for the annual model changeover approached, automen totted up the hits and misses among...
...Automen nonetheless hoped for an upturn. Edward N. Cole, general manager of G.M.'s Chevrolet division, reported a rise in Chevrolet car and truck sales, noted that the improvement in trucks was "particularly significant as an indication of general economic improvement in the months ahead, because it shows underlying confidence by the business community." But Detroit would not really know whether a strong spring surge is coming until it had a few weeks of good weather to bring out potential customers...
...buyers out. After a grim initial ten days in February, auto sales for the second third of the month rose 11%, jumped another 13% in the final third. Even so, auto sales through mid-February are still trailing the same period last year by an unhappy 23%. Talking optimistically, automen hope February's rousing finish is the start of a spring surge. But Detroit is taking no production gambles. For the first two months of 1961, production was down 42% from 1960's January-February output of about 1,300,000 cars. Automakers are still braking the assembly...