End of Appeasement?

WLB handed down a decision last week which sounded as if, for the first time in its eight months' career, it was ready to abandon appeasement in favor of a settled wage policy based on an extension of its award in the Little Steel wage case (TIME, July 27).

Labor that has not had its hourly pay raised 15% since Jan. 1, 1941 is still in line for a raise despite price freezing.

Labor whose pay has been raised 15% since Jan. 1, 2941 is not entitled to a raise unless it can prove that its wages were "substandard" at that time.

Big-hearted employers should be compelled to get WLB permission before they hand out voluntary raises. Any unsanctioned wage increase will not be a valid excuse for charging the Government more on a war contract.

The basis of this policy is that labor is entitled to retain its "peacetime" standards of purchasing power, and Jan. 1, 1941 is the magic date as of which that peacetime standard is to be figured.

This doctrine was enunciated last week when WLB denied a general wage increase to 2,750 employes of General Cable Corp. Grounds: their pay is not "substandard and has already been upped at least 15% in the past 16 months--more than enough to cover the rise in the cost of living. A similar decision was handed down two weeks ago in denying a raise to 1,200 Remington Rand workers, but without any such clear explanation of "uniform and universal application."

The labor board estimated last week that universal application of its cost-of-living escalator will cost somebody a little under $1,000,000,000 a year. Leon Henderson's price-control office had previously guessed $3,000,000,000. But the big question left open is how much further the board will go in raising the pay of workers who claim that their pay was "substandard" 18 months ago.

First real test of the policy will come on cotton-mill wages where the problem is vastly complicated by traditional New England v. Southern differentials, and where wages are far lower than "Little Steel." Here WLB will have to unscramble how much of a raise, if any, its new policy would allow to cover the higher cost of living; how much raise, if any, is in order because textile wages in general are relatively low; and how much extra raise, if any, Southern labor should get because its present pay is lower than up North.

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