Word: weir
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Steel said the industry could absorb a $1 increase, would find 7½? on the borderline, would have to up its prices if the 10? demand went through. When a threatened strike was postponed for more negotiations, everybody expected management and labor to meet halfway. They reckoned without Mr. Weir...
...steel companies, Weir's National (now No. 5 U.S. producer) could best afford a pay rise. A low-cost producer with a steady market in the auto and canning industries, National made a profit even in 1932, when the four biggest companies lost $109,800,000. Since National has a low exemption under the excess-profits tax, most of what it pays out in higher wages can be saved in lower taxes...
...Weir, who has no contract with C.I.O...
...wants none, knows well that high wages keep union organizers away. So Weir pulled a fast one: he announced a 10? wage rise, retroactive to April...
...save face (by proving it could do as much for its members as anti-union Weir had done unasked for his employes), C.I.O. had to insist on the full 10? rise which it had proposed originally as a barganing point. Other steelmakers had no way out of following Weir's lead. This week not only did Bethlehem, Republic, Otis, Youngstown Sheet & Tube all grant a 10? wage increase, but U.S. Steel ended the fear of a Big Steel strike by settling with C.I.O. on the same basis. This will raise their labor costs around 16%. Their estimates...