Word: wages
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...unions have welshed on the deal. One major union after another won pay raises of 30% and more; during the past twelve months, average weekly wage rates for manual workers rose 32.6%, leapfrogging ahead of the 25% inflation rate for the same period. Last week, after inflation had worsened and the pound sterling had hit a new low, Wilson and his Cabinet took a deep breath and finally scrapped the tattered social contract. Chancellor of the Exchequer Denis Healey announced that beginning with the September round of pay negotiations no wage increases above 10% will be allowed...
...emergency Cabinet meeting, Healey presented a proposal for a wage-restraint policy backed by legal sanctions. Instead of waiting to hear the consensus of his Cabinet as he usually does, Wilson promptly backed Healey. He won the decisive approval of the Cabinet. The only holdout was Employment Minister Michael Foot, the silver-tongued tribune of the unions. Foot was given a face-saving week to try to obtain union agreement. But the Cabinet made it clear that the proposal would be introduced in Parliament whether or not the union leaders accepted...
...leading firm of London stockbrokers calculated last week that Healey's plan will involve a record reduction in real wages of 4% or 5% over the year for British workers. The government is not committing the mistake of its predecessors in making the guidelines enforceable against individual workers or union leaders. Instead, the government will forbid private firms to pass on in higher prices any wage settlement costs above 10%-in effect, they will have to go along or face bankruptcy. Nationalized firms will be allowed to increase their total wage bill...
...Service trades account for an increasing share of sales and jobs?54% of all employment in the U.S.?and it is tough for service businesses to offset wage increases by improving productivity. So they keep on raising prices...
...longer term, however, fiscal and monetary policies must be supplemented by other measures to contain inflation and ease recession. The two most hotly disputed issues are whether the U.S. should adopt some form of wage and price restraints and whether it should move to some form of economic planning. Economists and other experts are sharply divided on these huge questions, but there is widespread agreement that Washington should adopt at least two other strategies...