Word: woodcocks
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Crusades in Conflict. For both sides, the costly contest was almost a jihad, or holy war. To Leonard Woodcock, the quiet, scholarly leader who took over as president of the U.A.W. last May after Walter Reuther died in an airplane crash, the strike was a call to arms for a younger generation of workers who know nothing of the union battles of the '30s. In meeting after meeting, he has told the men to dig in for a long, bitter siege, warning that they will have to go without strike pay after the union's $120 million...
...Battle. Because of inflation, many workers cannot make ends meet. The average hourly pay of G.M. workers is $4.05, but by Leonard Woodcock's reckoning, they have a great deal of catching up to do. As a result of reductions in overtime work, the auto worker earns 1.7% less than he did a year ago; in addition, inflation has taken a 7.4% cut out of the purchasing power of what he earns. Just to get back to where he was in the spring of 1969, by the U.A.W.'s calculation, the auto worker would have to have...
...impasse be settled? One way might be for G.M. to offer a more liberal cost-of-living allowance in return for a lower wage settlement, figuring that inflation will slow during the next two years. Woodcock has hinted at the possibility of such a deal. In a remarkable statement, he expressed his preference for cost-of-living escalators in place of huge wage increases in the later years of a contract. "I believe that if you bargain wages to anticipate an inflation, then you are guaranteeing that inflation," he said. "I am concerned about constantly escalating future wage increases further...
...there is a strike," says Woodcock, "I think it would be longer, rather than shorter." He has warned the union members that they may have to endure an old-fashioned strike, without strike pay. The union has raised a strike fund of $120 million. That is enough to finance eight weeks of strike benefits ($30 a week for a single person, $40 for a family) for the 375,000 workers who would be involved. But some of the fund is tied up in long-term bonds, which the union could only sell at a loss in today's depressed...
Whether all the loans will be needed depends to a large extent on Woodcock himself. He understands the damaging impact on the economy of either a strike or an inflationary wage increase. His argument for a cost-of-living escalator is that the alternative is worse: unions would be forced to demand more in anticipation of inflation. "I am concerned about constantly escalating future wage increases further distorting the economy and possibly leading to a major recession, if not worse," he said last week. "If you bargain wages to anticipate inflation, then you're guaranteeing that inflation." That caveat...