Chilled but Not Frozen

Labor legislation was dead --for the time being. Franklin Roosevelt succeeded in choking it off last week when he declared: "I believe that stabilizing the cost of living will mean that wages in general can and should be kept at existing scales."

In the Senate, Tom Connally of Texas quietly withdrew his plant-seizure, anti-strike bill, but in the Naval Affairs Committee of the House there was a final lashing around before the Vinson bill (to wipe out overtime wages for hours under 48 a week, freeze existing labor-management relations, limit war profits) was tabled by a hairline 13-12 vote. The debate was bound to go on, but possibility of immediate action was out.

The problem was now in the hands of the harassed War Labor Board. On WLB the U.S. turned its eyes for a solution to the No. 1 economic headache.

Labor was sore that the President should say wages should remain "at existing scales." Management was suspicious of the qualifying words--"wages in general."

One handicap of WLB was that a policy had never been laid down. Its practice has been to handle each case according to its special features. Now the Board had to consider the relation of wage adjustments to the national economy.

Grey, grizzled Board Chairman William H. Davis optimistically thought that the President had "clarified things to some extent." Said Davis: "In the past, when we said that if we increased wages the costs would go up, labor came back with the assertion that somebody was going to get the pie, and that it was going to be the boss. Now with the President's remarks on prices, we can say . . . that nobody is going to get any pie. . . . To increase the real wage level is now, I think, completely out of the question. . . . The cost of living has increased about 10% in the last year.* To increase the wage level 10% over-all would just about absorb the amount of the new projected tax bill."

But Chairman Davis did recognize an area wherein adjustments might be made. "I think that the word 'stabilize' has a dynamic rather than a static meaning,"/- said he, "I don't think that the President meant by that that wages must be frozen. You could stabilize, or equalize, and still keep wages at the 'existing scale.' . . ."

A WLB panel was busy studying more than 3,000 pages of evidence in the Little Steel case. Steel workers' flat demand was for a $1-a-day boost. Though it will be several weeks before the Board is ready to make its decision, which will have far-reaching effects, Davis made some prophetic observations:

The figures studied in that case did not encourage the belief that all the increased cost of living could be covered by a wage boost. "But neither does that preclude an increase of wages to meet part of the increased costs."

Wages, in a word, were to be chilled but not frozen. Observers wondered how long that kind of refrigeration could withstand the hot demands of workers, who could not understand why wages in the midst of a war-boom prosperity could not keep up with cost of living. Mr. Roosevelt had killed labor legislation. It remained to be seen whether he had lassoed inflation.

* Other Estimates of the rise during the past year were slightly higher. Estimate of the rise since August 1939: 15%.

/- Says Websters' stabilize means "to make stable, steadfast or firm: to hold steady, to prevent fluctuations,as, to stabilize prices."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.