Word: wage
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...lips. It flatly refused-as it has since negotiations began a month ago-to make any counteroffers to Murray's demands, variously estimated at 30? to 50?-an-hour increase per worker.* Instead, Steel ducked tidily for cover behind the steelmen's laws of economics: any major wage increase would mean an automatic increase in the price of steel, the basic commodity of both phases of a guns & butter economy. Said U.S. Steel'^ President Ben Fairless: "The nation cannot now afford another general round of substantial wage increases and the higher prices which must inevitably result. . . There...
Mediator Ching listened for eight hours to the spokesmen of both sides-Phil Murray and U.S. Steel's Vice President John A. Stephens-then turned it all over to Harry Truman. The President bucked it on to the Wage Stabilization Board, and asked both sides to keep production going until the board hands down its recommendations. Said Harry Truman in a voice whetted to cut Phil Murray's bonds: "The immediate obligation on the steelworkers is to decide to remain at work . . . The union members and their leaders, and the managers of the steel companies, have a responsibility...
...Phil Murray does not believe in the escalator clause (which links pay scales to the cost of living) because it can go both ways. If he did, steelworkers would have got an automatic wage boost along with 1,250,000 railroad workers, last week, when the cost of living shot to an alltime high. It was up .8% in November to 189.3% of the 1935-39 period...
...reason was that the Administration was more worried by a presidential campaign in 1952 than a world war. It tried to run the arms program in a way to inconvenience no one-worker, employer or consumer. "Business as usual" was the prevailing slogan. Unions gave up none of their wage demands or strike privileges; businessmen, in the words of one top executive, "too often moved heaven & earth, politically and otherwise, to keep civilian production going on as usual...
...inflationary gap" of about $12 billion. Last year's high saving was abnormal, and such trends are quickly reversed. A return to normal could start prices climbing as hard goods grow scarce. Moreover, the price climb will be accelerated if the present uneasy balance between prices & wages is upset by a big new round of wage boosts...