Word: wernick
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...fairly into its many parts. A reader must pick out what soothes or jostles his prejudice, which in reading Audience is his whim. I liked best a story about the aforementioned blueberries, suitably titled "The Blueberries," written by Bankson Means; another story, "A Tom Go For Terry," by Robert Wernick; a poem called "Birthday Letter," by Allen Grossman; another poem, "Suicide," by Arthur Freeman; and some drawings of some sad old houses by Janet Doub. The magazine costs six bits and that means that each of these things cost 15 cents but are worth a good deal more...
...some city people. Two resourceful farmers, who like blueberries quite a bit, become rivals for the patch and expend considerable effort in attempts to acquire the blueberries. Means writes with economy in this piece, and he never lets his smooth style get away from him. It's funny. Wernick's story also is amusing, perhaps extraneous at times, but on the whole a dryly wise comment on how life she is lived in the U.S.A., where we learn love is a faith and marriage a chapel. "Birthday Letter" finds Allen Grossman, who teaches at Brandeis, composing in the night...
...reason for this disparity, says Wernick, is the vast increase in so-called "nonproduction" workers, which corporations often fail to take into account. Between 1947 and 1957, nonproduction workers increased by 1,400,000, or 55%, v. only a 125,000, or 1%, increase in production-line workers. Salary payments jumped even faster (see chart...
...much money they should get. On the standard measures, it often appears that white-collar employees drag productivity down. If only production-line workers are counted, productivity increased at an annual rate of 3.7% since 1947; if all workers are counted, the gain drops to 2.9%. Actually, says Wernick, the reverse may be true, since technical experts often make possible productivity increases. Moreover, how can industry measure the work of scientists who design a new machine or a new product that does not show up in the output figures for months...
...immediate future, the big increase in white-collar workers saddles industry with high fixed costs that reduce corporate flexibility. The payoff, says Wernick, will come in the future: "Industry hired its salaried professionals to keep pace with technology, to cut future cost and increase productivity. For the long term, such workers give industry a solid investment base to reduce future costs as it produces future products. It will be able to pick up very rapidly without increasing costs much...