Word: wage
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...management-and had it tossed right back (see below). Indeed, there was justification for the idea that labor's basic appetites are inflationary. Said the New York Times this week: "There is a built-in 'political' need for the labor union leader to win a wage increase every year, if at all possible, and to win as good increases for his men as the labor leader in the next union...
Automatically, the new inflation will bring wage increases of one to 6? an hour for 1,300,000 workers in automobile, electrical, farm-equipment and trucking industries whose contracts are geared to wage-cost escalator clauses-thereby automatically creating more inflation...
...Three should cut prices on 1958 models by a specific $100 below prices for 1957 models-or more; 2) the U.A.W. would then give nonspecific "full consideration" to lower company earnings in framing its 1958 demands (reportedly to include the four-day week and a substantial wage increase); and 3) if U.A.W. demands appeared to force the companies to raise prices again, U.A.W. was willing to be "guided" by the findings of a nonpartisan "impartial review panel...
Reuther was obviously asking a lot and offering almost nothing. He was just as obviously taking a line designed to soothe the growing public conviction that immoderate wage demands by big labor add up to a big factor in inflation (TIME, Aug. 5). But the fact remained that he had astutely framed his argument in the terms of inflation and thereby caught a public ear that would likewise be tuned to the answers of the auto companies...
...first half of 1957, absenteeism has more than doubled, to 26 million man-hours lost. To drown their woes, they took to drink at an increasing rate (7.5 liters hard liquor per head per year-30% above 1956). Gomulka warned the workers that he could not raise wages until they produced more; the workers replied that they would not work harder without some real evidence of a better life. They began agitating for wage increases, and-though strikes are forbidden in Gomulka's Workers' State-even staged scattered strikes...