Word: man-hours
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...PRODUCTIVITY per man-hour advanced 2.7% from fourth quarter of 1957 to this year's first quarter-double the gain of all last year-as companies cut marginal operations and workers hustled to hold jobs...
...benefits, and automatic increases that wages this year are still going up (see State of Business). The belief that rising productivity will make up for wage increases, thus holding prices stable, has also proved false-at least in the short run. In 1957 wages jumped 4.5%, yet output per man-hour rose only 1.8%-and prices jumped 3%. The Government, with its farm subsidy and other aid programs to various sectors of the U.S. economy, also keeps an upward pressure on wages and prices regardless of what happens to employment...
...reason why houses cost so much is that the output per man-hour of carpenters, bricklayers, masons, painters, et al. is skimpy in proportion to the $2-to-$5-an-hour wages they draw. Restrictions designed to spread work and keep output low are written into thousands of building-trades contracts. Most painters insist on using brushes where sprayers would do the job a lot faster. Carpenters resist prefabricated panels, and in some places panels fastened together at the factory are actually taken apart at the building site and nailed together again. Some locals lay down a maximum daily quota...
...broad economic and social responsibilities." Did this declaration mean that Reuther would urge his fellow labor leaders to refrain from pushing wages up during an economic lull, so as to avoid increasing business costs and consumer prices? Did it mean that, since labor's overall output per man-hour has increased very little over the past two years, labor would concentrate on upping productivity rather than wages in the year ahead...
...monopoly power to force wages up but to join in promoting the increased productivity that makes possible higher wages without higher prices. The need for increased productivity is nowhere more obvious than in Richard Gray's featherbedding building trades, which deliberately hold back output per man-hour through restrictive rules; e.g., painters must use brushes, not sprayers...