Word: reuthers
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With economic droop still much on the nation's mind, Big Labor's Walter Reuther and Big Business' Harlow Curtice appeared in a green-carpeted Senate caucus room last week with prescriptions for the ailment. As witnesses before Democrat Estes Kefauver's subcommittee investigating noncompetitive "administered prices," United Auto Workers President Reuther and General Motors President Curtice took predictably opposite stands...
Curtice insisted that carmaking costs had risen faster over the past decade than wholesale prices of G.M. cars. Old Social ist Reuther damned the automakers' pricing policies as "greedy" and "irresponsible," called their profits "fantastic," urged creation of a federal fact-finding agency to decide in advance whether price increases, in or out of the auto industry, are "justified." Equally far apart were the Curtice and Reuther economic prescriptions. Curtice urged federal tax cuts "across the board" to jack up spending by business firms and consumers. Reuther called for big wage raises to boost consumer purchasing power...
From the other members of autodom's Big Three came equally chill words. Chrysler's Lester Lum ("Tex") Colbert sent word that in his view Reuther was proposing to "fight inflation by making a whole series of new inflationary demands." Ford's Board Chairman Ernest Breech, speaking in Nashville, said "giant labor unions, with unprecedented monopoly power." are putting a "steady squeeze on corporate profits and constantly increasing the price for goods and services...
When news of Breech's remarks came to the U.A.W. convention at Detroit's Masonic Temple, Reuther rose and observed that Breech received $565,000 in bonuses in 1955. "If Mr. Breech is entitled to a share of those profits," said Reuther, "then I say the workers are entitled to a share...
...week's end uneasy U.A.W. delegates, after approving the Reuther demands, voted to increase strike assessments for March, April and May from $3 to $5 a man, toward raising the $24 million strike fund to $50 million. They hopefully added a feature Reuther had not asked for: in case a strike does not come off, the extra assessments will be refunded. Though there were optimists who believed that under cover of his distinctly inflationary profit-sharing plan Reuther would be able to bring home some more good old-fashioned inflationary pay raises. Detroit generally believed that, with the auto...