Decatur Daily Democrat, Volume 46, Number 63, Decatur, Adams County, 15 March 1948 — Page 6

PAGE SIX

jgp,— ) ) prv^*vC^ r ' \ \P\\ • c ’ If there were a 3rd Round l HE REFEREE MIGHT GET KNOCKED OUT

A 3rd Round demand is important to you As is the case with many companies now across the country, General Electric is engaged in annual contract and wage negotiations with UECIO, which is one of 20 unions representing those GE employees who are in bargaining units. The discussions thus far have been in the calm and temperate vein that generally characterize these proceedings. UE-CIO is seeking another substantial wage increase and other new concessions that will add to our costs. The union’s claims are based on cost of living advances and on the Company’s ’’ability to pay”. These demands are important, not only to GE but to everybody in the country, because of the bearing these demands have on your cost of living and your future job security. General Electric wants to do what's best If we could be at all sure that agreeing to these demands would be beneficial to our employees, to our customers, to our stockholders, and to the public, it would be our obvious duty to step out with some sort of 3rd round of wage increases, even though it would probably bring about a 3rd round of wage and price increases for everybody. The theory behind these demands is that they will result in improved purchasing power for our employees. But we believe that meeting these demands would have exactly the opposite effect—and not only foi our employees but for the rest of the people in the United States. Inflation is still the big enemy of our employees, and of everybody else. What we need to do is to stop inflation. We cannot be fair to anyone if we go on agreeing to action that speeds up the inflationary spiral. General Electric wages have Increased more than cost of living General Electric feels it is futile to try to cure the effects of inflated prices t by keeping on raising wages with no corresponding rise in indi- ■» productive contribution. This would simply result in everybody hi. ? more money with which to try to buy a given amount of goods. It would only bid prices of scarce items up farther. We see vivid examples in what has happened so disastrously in France, Russia, and China.

He would come out for any third round still pretty groggy from the blows he got in the first round in 1946 and the second round in 1947

GENERAL ELECTRIC

DECATUR DAILY DEMOCRAT, DECATUR, INDIANA

• While we were sure that the attempts would almost surely fail, General Electric has gone along twice —in 1946 and 1947 —with the general desire for a fair trial of this hopeless experiment of seeking to have more goods merely by cheapening money. And General Electric has obviously done more than its share of increasing wages in relation to cost of living since the war. Government figures for the year 1947 as compared with 1940 show an increase in the cost of living of 59%, while the average weekly earnings of hourly rated General Electric employees have increased over 70% in that time. It is now very evident, based on the experience of the past two years, that chasing inflationary price rises with increased wages will never serve to arrest an inflationary trend, as too many people simply use their increased number of income dollars — along with some of their savings —to put extra pressure on the bidding up of prices of already scarce items. Some time ago the Company even experimented with adjusting wages with changes in cost of living, but this union itself insisted that it be discarded because the members did not want to have their pay geared to the ups and downs in the cost of living. « Wages can't be based e on "ability to pay" i The other basis for the union’s demand is that the Company can afford to give a wage increase out of its substantial profits. This represents a reappearance of the old theory of "ability to pay” — the idea that wages in an individual company can go up and down with profits of that company. It has been tried many times. It failed in 1946 and again in 1947. It has never worked, and it cannot. Were General Electric to try to pay more than other employers in nearly 100 communities, those other employers would almost certainly have to pay immediately —as they did in 1946 and 1947 — the same extra amount to everybody on their payrolls from machinists to baby sitters. The wage increase would in all probability sweep across the coun try and be imposed on everyone with the resulting necessity of price raises. General Electric does not want to take the responsibility for that further damage to the interests of employees and public alike.

This union itself rejected the idea of ’’ability to pay” in the past because it did not want wages to be subject to adjustment downward when the Company’s profits go down. Who agrees with General Electric? Even before there was any hint of the break in commodity markets and cost-of-living prices, a Gallup Poll disclosed that 53% of the public already knew that another round of wage increases would be harmful. Os the union members questioned in this poll, 39% expressed themselves as being against another general wage increase and 16% were undecided. With prices coming down and scarce goods becoming more plentiful, we believe further inflationary wage increases — with no more production — are now opposed by an even greater majority of the public and probably even by a majority of union members.

What should we all do instead of having a "3rd Round"? 1. Each one of us should exercise care, interest, and ingenuity in producing more. 2. Each businessman should try to accomplish voluntary price reductions, and then seek the cooperation of all in going after cost reductions not only to make up for those price redactions but so as to be able to make new price reductions. 3. Each of us should put away in savings the benefits gained from lowered prices, and each of us should go on to make further new savings by wise buying, some self-restraint as to extra pressures on prices of scarce items, and even some temporary selfdenial, if necessary, until values get better. • 4. Each one of us —employer and employee — should go at this in the same spirit that has enabled us to meet every national emergency of the past. For our part, that’s what we are going to do — and keep on doing.

MONDAY, MARCH 1 5 , 1948