Word: wages
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Exchequer Denis Healey announced that leaders of the trade union movement, industry and government will soon begin meeting to work out a program aimed at cutting Britain's 30% inflation by half within the next twelve months. "The key to solving inflation is the level of wage settlements," said Healey-meaning that wage claims would have to be reduced from the current 30% average to below...
...about pension contracts for people already retired or serving in the city government. But it is essential that pensions be renegotiated for new workers coming into the employ of the city. Rather than brutally lopping jobs, it would be more equitable to put a freeze on the 5%-6% wage hike scheduled this year for all city employees. Such a move would save an estimated $400 million, or the equivalent of almost 25,000 jobs. Reducing the work week from five days to 4½ would save $700 million even if the pay increase takes place. A shorter week...
...Replace retiring park laborers, who earn from $14,000 to $17,000 a year, with unemployed youths who will work at the minimum wage of $2.10 an hour...
...stimulus of tariff-free access to the EEC's huge market (nearly 260 million consumers), combined with increased competition from European imports, will help revitalize British industry. The sheer challenge might force Britain to break out of the debilitating cycle of low productivity, low investment and high wage demands that has led to the nation's mounting trade deficit (an estimated $6.2 billion for 1975). But as the Guardian's Economic Columnist Frances Cairncross has pointed out, "If you give a cold shower to a man with a weak heart, sometimes he dies." Complicating the argument...
Indirectly, the large pro-Market vote gives Wilson a popular mandate to take firm measures to tackle Britain's disastrous 25% inflation. Before the referendum, he was handicapped in dealing with the nation's economic problems-particularly with the politically sensitive issue of wage restraint-by the Labor Party divisions over the EEC. Even now Wilson cannot afford to purge the union-backed left, but the referendum has seriously undermined its claim to speak for "the people." (In South Yorkshire, the strongest Labor county in Britain and the scene of the most intensive union-backed antiMarket campaign...