Word: wage
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Behind him in the U.S., the economy was still in recession-unemployment up to 3,000,000, steel production down to 70% of capacity, automobile production down in the light of falling sales (see BUSINESS). Big Labor was getting set to press new wage demands in next year's collective bargaining. And at the Pentagon the mess in missilery and the mis-organization of command, as shown up by the Johnson Preparedness Investigating Subcommittee hearings, was such as to raise serious questions as to whether Commander in Chief Dwight D. Eisenhower had done his homework as a military administrator...
...from it. What Reuther and his fellow A.F.L.-C.I.O. leaders called for as labor's 1958 platform was 1) higher wages, plus 2) "increased leisure" through shorter work weeks with no pay reduction, plus 3) bigger health, welfare and unemployment-benefit programs. In short: more pay, less work. When the economy was booming, Reuther had called for wage boosts to catch up with higher prices. Now, with the economy slumping, he called for wage boosts as the cure for a recession caused-in the official A.F.L.C.I.O. view-by a lack of purchasing power...
...A.F.L.-C.I.O. summoned up its chief economist, Stanley Ruttenberg, and he called the Gray idea "ridiculous." Federation President George Meany accused Gray of adopting the "big business" thesis that wage boosts cause inflation, added that the wage-freeze idea is irrelevant to the current economic picture, because inflation has halted and a downturn has set in. Following the line of A.F.L.-C.I.O. economic orthodoxy, Meany argued that deflation is caused by a shortage of consumer purchasing power, and that therefore wage boosts are needed to combat the downturn...
Despite all the ridicule heaped on it at Atlantic City, Gray's basic idea-that it is to labor's interest to show moderation in wage demands-made considerable economic sense. The nation's laws give Big Labor what amounts to a monopoly power. Using that power, labor can force wage increases that outrun increases in productivity (real output per man-hour). And wage increases that outpace productivity tend to push prices up, whether the economy is inflating or deflating...
...Parliament to outline what he called a bold program to bolster "confidence and prosperity." He cut 100,000 taxpayers from the rolls entirely, gave his most substantial reductions to the 70% of Canadians whose taxable incomes are $2,000 a year or less; e.g., a $5,000-a-year wage earner with two children will save $64. Even though the Tories had earlier poured $150 million into higher old-age pensions and pay boosts for the armed forces and civil service, Fleming still came out in the black (predicted surplus: $80 million). For this he could thank the ousted Liberal...