Word: blough
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Inland Steel Chairman Joseph Block, industry's pruning of its steel inventories is a "natural reaction" to tight money, high interest rates, and the knowledge that steel is easy to reorder. Big Steel Chairman Roger Blough does not completely agree. He thinks that many corporations have changed their inventory policy, confident of a quick and sure supply at a time when one-third of steel's capacity is idle. Stockpiles of steel among users now total about 16 million tons. Blough and other industry leaders are convinced that users cannot reduce their inventories much below 15 million tons...
...call this an average year - but the best average year we've ever had." With this wry preface, Chairman Roger Blough last week announced that U.S. Steel sales of $1,187,554,615 for the first three months of 1960 had set a first-quarter record, disclosed that Big Steel's output (94.1% of capacity) had set a record for any quarter...
...Blough's words were a pointed comment on the gloomy state of mind of many U.S. businessmen, though of course Steel's first quarter reflected pent-up buyer demands after 1959's nearly 17-week-long strike. But for many other companies, business had never been so good - or at least, so big. With first-quarter reports from some 400 of the biggest U.S. companies in by last week, earnings on the average were up 6%. Seldom had there been so much discontent with good news, or such readiness to emphasize the weak spots...
...Blough and fellow steel executives charge that the steel industry's average basic wage rate of $3.10 quoted by the Government does not include such important fringe benefits as vacation pay, sickness and hospital insurance and unemployment benefits-all of which add "a startling 65%" to Big Steel's basic wage rate. "Until Government data fully recognize all fringe costs, their use for measuring the cost of wage settlements, or for making interindustry cost comparisons, is not only inappropriate but may result in misleading conclusions...
...prices "eventually" will have to be increased, it was taken by many as a softening preparation for future industry price hikes. Big Steel denounced the "pyramiding of employment costs," warned that unless it is checked, "a cost-covering increase in the general level of prices must follow." But Roger Blough repeated his earlier assurances that the nation's biggest steel producer plans no price hikes "for the present...