Word: wage
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Beset by demands from the left for an escalator wage bill and denunciations from the right for daring to consider it, Faure staked his three-week-old government on a characteristic Gallic compromise-an escalator with a built-in landing. If the cost of living jumps more than 5%, the government would have one month to try to bring it down, before being forced to raise wages. On a procedural question, Faure won by 17 votes. But nobody cried Vive l'Aust...
...Manhattan last week, Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp.'s Chairman Ben Moreell stood up before a special Wage Stabilization Board panel which is trying to decide if 650,000 of the nation's steelworkers are entitled to another wage boost. Said Admiral Moreell (ret.): the union's demand for an 18½? raise plus fringe benefits which are estimated to bring the total raise up to 50? an hour would set off such a wave of rising prices that it would probably cost Jones & Laughlin $95 million a year, $10 million more than all of its 1951 earnings...
...mock alarm at the inflationary consequences of wage boosts, Murray pointed out that Jones & Laughlin Vice President Charles L. Austin, who was made President two weeks ago, recently was raised from $55,000 to $70,000. How did Moreell justify this raise under the circumstances? "Phil," cried Moreell, who is personally fond of Murray, "that is one of the best things I have done!" Snapped Murray: "If it's good for Mr. Austin, why isn't it good for Joe Doakes? . . . Now Admiral, do you think that Mrs. Celinsky, over on the South Side, gets any more groceries...
Over the weeks, Murray had argued the union's case. Not wages but "profiteering, speculation, hoarding" had driven up prices, he insisted. Wages rose only 7.6% nine months after Korea, said Murray, while the wholesale prices of semi-finished goods rose 26.3%. Since 1945, Big Steel's profits after taxes had risen 209%, while wages rose 58%. Moreover, the industry, which has already raised its prices 80% in the same period, did not need another price boost to meet the wage demands. It could pay them from profits...
...union also wanted the union shop, eight paid holidays a year, paid vacations ranging up to four weeks after 15 years, and a guaranteed annual wage, i.e., 30 hours' work a week for 52 weeks for workers with three or more years of service. The 650,000 steelworkers were not demanding "a larger share of the economic pie," but only what they considered a fair share. Where 47? of each $1 of steel sales went for wages five years ago, labor's share is now but 39?. Said Murray: "It has been whittled down crumb by crumb like...