Trade Unions and Productivity

Report Outline
Productivity and Wage Policy
Organized Labor and Technical Advances
Effects of Union Policies on Output
Special Focus

Productivity and Wage Policy

Union Concern with Questions of Productivity

Productivity of industry and of the individual worker has assumed a place of importance in the determination of trade union policy as a result of the declines during the last twelve months of prices, profits, and employment from the boom levels of earlier years. President Truman told Congress in his economic report, Jan. 6, that the country's basic economic problem no longer is to control inflation but rather to increase production, jobs, and purchasing power.

Leading labor organizations are now demanding that gains from higher output per worker be passed on in the form of wage increases, And in some instances unions are showing concern over the threat of unemployment brought by revolutionary advances in technology. Ground for apprehension among all wage earners, organized and unorganized, is raised by the statement of Leon Keyserling, acting chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, that “the economy is on the way to being so productive that we won't have large enough outlets for increasing productivity” unless new markets are found.

A special A. F. L. bulletin on 1950 wage strategy, sent to all affiliated unions on Dec. 26, 1949, expressed willingness to “cooperate with management to reduce production costs.” In demanding “substantial wage increases without price increases,” the A. F. L. expressed belief that employers could cut costs by improving processes and equipment. Earlier in 1949 the A. F. L. declared in Labor's Monthly Survey for May-June: “Wage increases should now be based on past or future increases in productivity to prevent undue rises in costs.”