Word: coste
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Restyling is widespread (at a total cost of $750 million). Main points: The fins win; they stay, flaring upward and outward. Chrome will be a little less glittering, and hung on cars stretching wider, lower and longer than any before. ¶ The horsepower race is apparently over; increases will be generally small. ¶ That much talked about "Detroit small car?" At least a year away, though there may be a push on six-cylinder economy models...
...automatic annual pay boosts came under increasing fire. In this recession year, more than 4,000,000 U.S. industrial workers will pocket automatic increases averaging 8? an hour under contracts signed during the boom years of 1955-56-57; some 4,300,000 U.S. workers will also take home cost-of-living raises averaging 3? to 4? an hour-while industry's earnings are expected to decrease by about $2.5 billion. Businessmen who championed long contracts as a prerequisite of labor peace now wonder if the game is worth the candle. As one top Government labor expert says: "People...
...other side of the coin is that long-term contracts often cost more than they are worth. Insiders say that General Electric thinks it paid too dearly for the five-year contract that it happily signed with the International Union of Electrical Workers in 1955's boom year, now wants no more long-term pacts. Union Carbide also signed its first long-term contracts in 1955-for three years-and once was enough. Labor costs have jumped most in precisely the areas where profits declined most. Last April, Union Carbide's contracts compelled it to hike wages...
...which started the trend to lengthy contracts by signing the first important five-year pact with the United Auto Workers in 1950, has been burned. In the first half of 1958, when earnings dropped by $147,700,000, its labor bill went up per worker, because of a cost-of-living rise. G.M., U.S. Steel and the other giants can afford such bumps as the price of labor peace. Many a smaller company cannot. Says a spokesman for another automaker: "The ups and downs of the business cycle have a less basic effect on G.M. than on us. We feel...
...altogether. More and more companies now aim at the compromise middle ground of a two-year contract. What U.S. industry also needs is a contract that will give it some of the same protection that U.S. labor gets. Just as labor's wages are often pegged to the cost-of-living escalator, so might they be tied to earnings, with the automatic wage boosts being granted in fat years and withheld in times of temporary recession. In a dynamic economy, the escalators should run in both directions...