Word: laborism
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Wives & War Bonds. The union's case, argued chiefly by Murray and Labor Economist Robert Nathan, was based mainly on the claim that the workers needed more money. Said Murray: "To the wife of any steelworker the high cost of living is a household reality . . . Savings have been depleted. War bonds have been cashed...
Furthermore, said Nathan, the workers had earned a raise: "The buying power of hourly rates of pay ... in the steel industry increased one-seventh between 1939 and 1949, whereas productivity per man-hour rose by 50% ... In the short run, changes in productivity are more affected by changes in ... labor skill than by technology." (Another labor witness later conceded that "it is almost impossible to separate the contributions made by the worker, the machine, or management to increased productivity...
...their turn, the steel companies bitterly denounced the whole idea of a fact-finding board as an abrogation of collective bargaining. They suspected, with reason, that the Steelworkers had played for a fact-finding board from the start, hoping that their friend Harry Truman would appoint friends of labor to such a board...
Steel had made good profits, the steelmen conceded, but they had been poured into new equipment and modernization programs. This, and not increased labor efficiency, was the reason for higher productivity, they said. Furthermore, the rate of steel production had dropped 15% in the last six months and profits were down. Some small companies, like Lukens Steel Co., insisted that they could not afford to pay increases at the current rate of earnings. Said Lukens' Robert Wolcott: "Wage increases can't be paid out of past profits . . . [In] the four-week . . . period ending July 9, 1949 . . . Lukens . . . showed...
...Other members: David L. Cole, onetime head of New York State's mediation board; Carroll P. Daugherty, labor-minded economics professor from Northwestern University...