Word: wage
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...reserves, as enormous amounts of consumer goods had to be imported, but it had by no means exhausted them. Relative to France's GNP or her international trade, they were still adequate in comparison with those of other nations, even the U.S. and other western European nations. True, the wage increases conceded last spring had triggered an eleven per cent increase in prices that would certainly affect France's balance of payments. But it was far from obvious that it would plunge France, consistently a surplus-runner, into a balance of payments deficit...
...decision to grant massive wage increases, without applying pressure on French businessmen sufficient to keep prices reasonably stable, was political cowardice. The French government should have taken the steps necessary to insure that an increase in wages would result in a roughly equal increase in real income to labor. Or conversely, it should have had the guts to deal with labor, admitting that it lacked either the power or the resolve to curb French business, and refuse to peddle an illusion. Selling the illusion of an increase in income to French labor may have bought DeGaulle political elbow room...
...inexorably as surf beating upon sand, prolonged payments deficits erode confidence in the value of currencies. France's current difficulties spring from soaring wage rates, the price of quelling last June's student-worker uprising. Whatever their specific cause, enduring payments deficits expose a weakness that political leaders are understandably loath to recognize: lack of economic selfdiscipline...
...only does the current international monetary crisis reinforce cliches about national character; it also reveals that Germany is even stronger and France is weaker than many observers had previously believed. The French government is paying the price for giving in last spring to striking workers' demands for big wage increases. Those demands had been caused largely by the De Gaulle government's past policies of creating prosperity by holding down wages and skimping on social needs. In addition, France has long suffered from the tendency of many of its people to distrust their own currency, to put profit...
...industry, the government has channeled millions over the past three years into expanding power and water supplies, building roads and clearing factory sites. School graduates who would have followed family tradition by going into clerking or shopkeeping are being urged to train as technicians and engineers. To preserve responsible wage scales, the government this year passed laws trimming certain fringe benefits and reducing the unions' voice in management. It did so with the cooperation of labor, which realizes that Singapore could never survive with British-style union practices...