Word: labor
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...course meets in 25 different groups mostly at the home of each group's leader. Though the leaders are largely affiliated with SDS's New Left caucus, some members of the Workers-Student Alliance caucus are leading sections. The reading for the course includes the Progressive Labor Party's Trade Union Program and their position papers on Black Liberation...
...make matters worse, wages are rising much more rapidly than workers' productivity, as measured by the Commerce Department. As a result, labor costs per unit of output are climbing steadily. Manufacturers are compensating by raising the prices of their products. Thus, even large pay raises have yielded little if anything in added purchasing power. During the last three years, in fact, the purchasing power of the average U.S. worker has done no better than hold steady. Union leaders now feel that they must push for giant wage and benefit increases to keep their members ahead of price boosts...
Even the most Blimpish British opponent of the Labor government's nationalization of industry would not dispute its goals. But even some stalwart Laborites are sorely embarrassed by the failure of state-owned industries to achieve any of those goals. Far from stimulating Britain to rising peaks of employment, technological progress and exports, the government enterprises have dragged the economy down...
Political Roadblocks. When the Labor government took over steel in 1967, officials proclaimed efficiency to be their primary objective. They argued that the fragmented private industry, which earned 1.9% on investment in 1966, could not acquire the capital to build the modern mills needed to compete with Japan and the U.S. The Laborites induced Lord Melchett, a Tory banker and philosophical opponent of nationalization, to accept the chairmanship of BSC on the promise that he would be allowed to run it in a strictly businesslike fashion. He quickly ran into political roadblocks...
Despite BSC's troubles, the ardor of Labor's left wing for more nationalization has not dimmed. Last month a party committee recommended that the government take control of drug manufacturing and movie theaters, either by starting new companies or nationalizing existing ones. Such proposals stand small chance of adoption, but there is equally small chance that steel will soon be returned to private hands. To buy BSC, which has assets of $3.3 billion, an enormous investment by any private group would be required. The government's policies hardly promise enough profit to justify such an investment...