Fringe Benefits and Wage Stabilization

Report Outline
Prince Benefits in Wage Control Struggle
Pension and Welfare Plans in Industry
Productivity and Other Special Benefits

Prince Benefits in Wage Control Struggle

New Steel Demands; C.I.O. Protests on Wage Policy

Demands for wage increases in the nation's steel industry, in excess of what can be granted under the formula laid down by the Wage Stabilization Board, present the most serious challenge yet offered to the government's efforts to hold inflation in check on the side of labor costs. Although there is leeway under the W.S.B. formula for a steel wage increase of no more than five cents an hour, the wage policy committee of the United Steel workers made it clear, at the close of a meeting at Atlantic City on Nov. 15, that the union would seek an unspecified but substantially larger increase. Existing labor contracts in the steel industry expire on Dec. 31. Failure to reach by that date an agreement which the W.S.B. will sanction may precipitate an industry-wide strike.

Refusal of the steelworkers to be bound by stabilization formulas in drawing up their new demands was foreshadowed at the C.I.O. convention in New York the first week in November. Despite pleas for moderation voiced by Economic Stabilization Administrator Johnston, Price Stabilizer DiSalle, and other administration spokesmen, the convention on Nov. 7 unanimously adopted a resolution declaring that it would “never submit to discriminatory wage freezes or unfair policies of any other kind which will threaten the standard of living and the hard-won collective bargaining advances of free American labor.” On the same day C.I.O. President Murray, who is president also of the United Steelworkers, said his union would “endure all hazards to produce for our people a little more bread and butter and clothing and medicine and better homes to live in.” And he warned that “It may be that the workers will be forced into strike situations through no fault of their own.”

Murray denounced recent amendments to the Defense Production Act which permitted increases in prices and profits while wages were still held down. “The working population of America,” he declared, “is in no mood to accept a one-sided, discriminatory form of regulation that operates solely against those who work for a living.” It was evident from the remarks of Murray and other C.I.O. speakers that failure to impose more effective price controls has convinced labor that the principle of “equality of sacrifice in the defense mobilization program,” called for by President Truman on Labor Day, has been abandoned. Hence the incipient C.I.O. rebellion on wage control.