The Pittsburgh Press (October 22, 1944)
Perkins: The ‘annual-wage’ issue
By Fred W. Perkins, Press Washington correspondent
Washington –
The question of whether or not American industry can or should guarantee an annual wage or steady work the year around to wage earners isn’t exactly an election issue, but at the same time it has some connection with the balloting Nov. 7.
Neither major party platform covers the subject, nor has it been dealt with specifically by either the Republican or Democratic candidate for President. But with the increasing attention being given to the right of the man who works for wages to some assurance of a dependable income, it is conceivable that the post-war period will include a real drive toward an objective that authorities agree would represent a great advance in the industrial and economic life of this country.
So, the question related to the election is whether President Roosevelt or Governor Dewey would be most likely to espouse this idea and give effective national leadership to it.
Mr. Roosevelt’s friends will argue that he is the man for this particular job, because of his labor record.
Mr. Dewey’s supporters will counter with the argument that their candidate is more likely to be successful in assuring steady work for all, as the full sympathy and cooperation of business would be required to reach this objective without government coercion; that Mr. Dewey could be relied on to enlist business support, and Mr. Roosevelt couldn’t.
Nunn-Bush plan
Recent evidence of interest in the guaranteed wage or steady work idea was a discussion by radio on America’s Town Meeting of the Air.
One of the two speakers on the “pro” side was Henry L. Nunn, shoe manufacturer of Milwaukee.
He said:
On July 3, 1935, management and the workers in our Milwaukee factory signed what might be called a share-the-production and 52-paychecks-per-year agreement.
Over good times and bad, it was found that production wages had maintained a more or less constant percentage of the value of business done, so it was agreed that this share, determined by experience, should be the basis for dividing the value of production between the workers and the company. We established drawing accounts for our workers, based on estimated annual income – one fifty-second to be withdrawn each and every week. Adjustment with actual earnings is made monthly.
Nine years in effect
It was a thoroughly new concept. No longer was the company buying labor as a commodity. The innovation made a common enterprise of the business, Sharing the value of production with the workers.
For more than nine years these workers have received an annual income which, we have reason to believe, is much more than the average for the industry. For 482 consecutive weeks, these workers have received a paycheck, regardless of how many hours were worked.
The Nunn-Bush Shoe Company’s plan varies from others in various enterprises that have found it possible and practicable (and according to what they say, very wise) to guarantee steady pay or steady work. The Procter & Gamble Company in Cincinnati has a different plan, and the Hormel Packing Company’s plan is different from both. There are plenty of plans, but so far they have been applied only in individual enterprises, and no attempt has been made to adopt the idea for huge industries such as coal mining or steel manufacturing or auto production.
CIO speaker
The other favoring speaker on the Town Meeting program was Harold J. Ruttenberg, research director of the CIO United Steel Workers, who gave most of his attention to the annual-wage demand in the current wage case of that union before the War Labor Board. He noted that his union “took the annual wage off the shelf of idle talk and put it into the arena of collective bargaining.”
However, the WLB panel was much less certain that this federal wartime agency could legally and with propriety order such a drastic step in American industry. Some opinion is that the problem will be solved eventually only through an overall organization of American industry, working voluntarily to level out the peaks and valleys that now disfigure the peacetime chart of industrial production.