Word: wages
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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There were also a number of things going on in Washington that could bost businessmen billions of dollars, but no one knew for sure how many. Carter signed into law a measure increasing the $2.30 an hour minimum wage to $2.65 in 1978 and, by steps, to $3.35 in 1981. Congress wrangled over a Social Security tax increase that by 1982 could be draining a total of $180 billion a year from workers and their employers. The energy program was being debated by a House-Senate conference committee. With hard bargaining on the energy legislation about to begin this week...
Leyland was originally formed by a jerry-built amalgam of smaller companies, and that is now one reason for its troubles. Its crazy-quilt wage bargaining structure forces management to deal with 58 different bargaining units at its 34 plants; executives are involved in some kind of labor negotiation for nearly nine months of every year. Strikes, many prompted by wage differentials from plant to plant, break out frequently, with or without union authorization. In the first six months of this year, Leyland lost 9.3 million man-hours and production of about 120,000 cars because of strikes, v. losses...
Leyland's car workers voted to replace this chaotic state of affairs with a single companywide labor pact, to be negotiated by November 1979. The centralized agreement is to provide that all Leyland plants pay the same wage for comparable jobs. Negotiating the contract will not be easy: the unskilled production-line workers who belong to the Transport and General Workers Union argue that they ought to be paid as much as the skilled craftsmen represented by the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers, while the A.U.E.W. is determined to maintain the pay differentials. But the vote at least staved...
...eclipse anything seen since we became an industrial power 200 years ago." In his speech last week, Healey optimistically forecast that inflation would fall to a single figure. At present, inflation, though down, is still running at a high annual rate of 16.5%, and some unions are pushing for wage boosts going beyond the government's guideline of 10% a year...
Healey did make a plea for further wage restraint. He tentatively promised more tax cuts and spending increases next spring?but only if unions adhere to the 10% wage guideline. Even if they do, some economists worry, the Labor government in its rush to secure victory at the polls may spur a new round of inflationary consumer spending. Labor Party leaders said at Brighton that Britain ought to spend North Sea revenues to modernize its industry and build new income-producing businesses. By giving most of its goodies to consumers, this minibudget goes in the opposite direction...