A NOBLE EXPERIMANT'
Chamberlain, John
'A Noble Experiment' By JOHN CHAMBERLAIN PHILIP MURRAY, President of the United Steel-workers of America, has had the temerity to slap down on the conference table for purposes of collective...
...With the conventional idea of steel, the great "prince and pauper" industry in mind, it doesn't seem to make much sense...
...Of course, this does not solve the problems of an individual steel company, which may lose out in the bidding for battleship orders...
...The examples here cited are, of course, for consumers' goods that are not subject to seasonal ups and downs...
...A conservative economist, John Maurice Clark, has argued that fixed charges act as a goad to industry to go out and sell the product necessary to cover the inexorable debt...
...Why not...
...But when the layoff comes, he tightens his belt, pulls in his horns, and goes into debt...
...Republic Steel, for instance, has a virtual corner on much of the light alloy steel market, for its electric furnaces are built to turn out this sort of metal to rigid specification...
...The steel market has always been variable, uncertain...
...Is it crazy...
...Then, again, car buying, refrigerator buying, and agricultural machinery buying go by seasonal spurts...
...That is to say, he is asking for a guaranteed work week based on 40 hours, with 50 weeks of employment coming to each worker whose time is contracted for in advance under a union-management agreement...
...Is this Utopian...
...Procter and Gamble, for instance, has made annual estimates in advance of its orders for soap, and then prorated the production over 12 equal monthly periods...
...Thus she annual wage would have beneficial results on pricing policy, on volume, and on competition...
...And the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union nas signed annual wage contracts in Detroit and in a few other cities...
...If legislative and city and state road planning programs are known in advance, it should not be difficult to project the steel requirements for bridges, for reinforced concrete, and for cruiser and battleship plates a year ahead...
...He is apt to eat the cheaper, starchy foods and get sick...
...The Hormel Packing Company has also paid an annual wage in the past...
...He points to the war-swollen depreciation and "post-war" contingency reserves that the companies have been salting away since Pearl Harbor...
...It would do wonders for steel town and steel valley morale...
...Most certainly he quits going to the dentist, he is late with his rent, and he tries to dodge the tax collector...
...But if other industries were to get the idea—the automobile industry, the railroad industry, the electrical equipment industry—the result of ironing out the seasonal production dips over a wide area of the economy would have its stabilizing results in steel...
...An annual wage would be a fixed charge, and the company that had assumed it would presumably try to price its product at a point calculated to take the goods off the market and keep the working force employed at top capacity...
...Murray Urges A Try No doubt there are many bugs in the proposal for an annual wage...
...Under normal peacetime conditions, automobiles take 15 per cent of the steel output, the construction industry takes some 18 per cent, railroads take 21 per cent, armament takes five per cent, and so on...
...For then the relief bill would drop, and the town taxes would not be in arrears...
...Planning Ahead But if steel is a seasonal performer, it might be possible to use market prediction as a basis for ironing out the ups and downs of ingot production...
...Knowing that its customers can't very well turn elsewhere, Republic should be able to estimate at least some of its probable tonnage well in advance of orders...
...And, when he does get siGk, he tries to get along without the doctor...
...Plan Has Been Tested But the more one thinks of the idea of an annual wage, the more enticing it seems...
...From the point of view of simple administration, any steel town would be glad to see its population getting an evenly spaced-out income...
...It would be good for the capitalist system, even though individual capitalists might resent it...
...As things stand now, a steel worker spends when he is getting good money...
...Practical or impractical, Philip Murray thinks the steel companies could afford to try the annual wage for a year or two...
...for example, no one knows what the orders for automobile body steel will be until the General Motors and Ford salesmen have done their jobs out in the grassroots country...
...If steel operations were to be levelled out, there would have to be a good deal of production of billets, blooms, and ingots for the warehouse...
...The annual wage has been tried by some employers and pronounced good...
...But many of the steel companies produce for special markets, and know the probabilties of customer response...
...Soap is bought on a month-to-month basis in practically every home in the land...
...A Noble Experiment' By JOHN CHAMBERLAIN PHILIP MURRAY, President of the United Steel-workers of America, has had the temerity to slap down on the conference table for purposes of collective bargaining a demand for an annual wage in the steel mills...
...And Hormel's hams and spam are for Summer and Winter consumption...
...he asks, use some of this money to underwrite a noble experiment...
Vol. 8 • January 1944 • No. 1
