Maintaining the Take-Home

BUSINESS & FINANCE

The time had come, Philip Murray told the President, when C.I.O. had a right to ask a 20% increase in basic pay. Thus Labor last week opened its pre-reconversion drive for higher pay rates.

Labor's reasons were simple enough. With cutbacks in war production at hand, overtime is already becoming a thing of the past in many plants. For workers who have to leave war production to go back to civilian production, with its generally lower pay rates, the size of the pay envelope is likely to shrink even more. Only higher pay rates can keep Labor's weekly take-home pay from shrinking drastically.

But mild, white-haired, C.I.O. President Philip Murray did not stress this side of the case. He argued that Labor deserved a 20% rise--10% to cover increased living costs and 10% more because of increased productivity. This argument was much more questionable. A rise to cover living costs would compound inflation. And "increased productivity," if it exists, can probably be chiefly credited to the greater efficiency of operating at capacity because of war demands.

However, the argument that Philip Murray did not press was more cogent. With the falling off in take-home pay and the prospect that there may soon be up to 2,500,000 temporary unemployed (during prospective reconversion), there may be too much of a recession if pay rates are not raised.

Labor might not get all of the 20% it asked, or get it at once. But the chances were that Labor would gradually get softie of it--just to keep the economy on an even keel.

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