Wage Security

Report Outline
Proposals for a Guaranteed Annual Wage
Operation of Wage Security Systems
Wage Security and the National Economy

Proposals for a Guaranteed Annual Wage

Labor demands for a guaranteed annual wage have been advanced with increased frequency, and with steadily increasing force, at recent hearings before the National War Labor Board. Like the depression demand for a 40-hour week, the guaranteed-wage demand is—in essence—a demand for regularized employment. To date the new demand has been put forward chiefly by the mass unions affiliated with the Congress of Industrial Organizations, but it is receiving attention also from the American Federation of Labor as a means of compelling employers to provide steady work. In the recon version period the demand for a guaranteed annual wage may emerge as the leading claim of organized labor upon American industry.

Payment of guaranteed wages the year around is held forth by the supporters of this revolutionary change in the wage system as a realistic way to maintain the national income, to minimize postwar unemployment, and to iron out business fluctuations. By its opponents the guaranteed wage is characterized as a “strait jacket for industry” which would lead to business insolvency, followed by government subsidy and government domination of a large part of the industrial machine.

Union Demands Before National War Labor Board

Four principal unions of the C. I. O.—the United Steel-workers, the United Automobile Workers, the United Electrical Workers, and the United Aluminum Workers—have petitioned the War Labor Board to order industry to guarantee yearly employment and incomes to their members. The demands are substantially the same in each case: they call for “a minimum weekly wage for each week during the life of the contract,” with the amount to be determined by multiplying each employee's hourly wage rate by 40 hours of guaranteed work.