Word: wage
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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When Congress passed the Defense Production Act, which provides for wage & price controls, the farm bloc built high food prices into the law by exempting farm products from price control until they sell at parity* or above. As additional protection, ceilings on farm products must be set at parity or the highest price in the month before the Korean invasion, whichever is higher...
What Washington was finally realizing was that the nation is on an inflationary merry-go-round that can't be stopped under the present law. As food rises, the cost of living rises. Since a million non-farm workers have wage rates tied directly to the cost-of-living index, they automatically get wage increases as the cost of living goes up. That, in turn, boosts the cost of manufactured goods, and is bound in time to force up even mandatory ceilings, if the companies are to remain in business. But when manufactured goods go up, parity goes...
Angry automen accepted the Government's mandatory freeze; they had no other choice. G.M. loudly damned the order as "discriminatory . . . ill-considered," if not actually illegal. Said G.M.: "We doubt that this arbitrary action complies with the letter or intent of the price and wage stabilization act." If auto prices were frozen, asked the automen, what about the price of raw materials? And what about wage contracts, which in the auto industry are directly tied to the rising cost of living...
...Irreparable Damage." The U.A.W.'s Walter Reuther, fearing a wage freeze, promptly sided with the industry against "pinpoint" price fixing. If Valentine's order meant that cost-of-living boosts were also outlawed, then the auto industry's long-term contracts with the U.A.W. might be voided, he said, and "irreparable damage" done to the "morale of all American industrial workers." To all these questions and criticisms, Valentine's office replied with a vague statement that it was studying the situation...
...Cadillac dealers stopping sales, until further notice, of new cars shipped after the rollback order. G.M. did not say how long the freeze would last. But it looked as if it was done in hopes of getting the rollback rescinded or persuading Washington to roll back raw materials and wages as well. A price freeze, said G.M., would require an "equally arbitrary wage freeze" under the Defense Production...