WAGE INCREASE

Taranaki Daily News, 2 April 1934, Page 5

WAGE INCREASE

810 UNITED STATES FIRMS GENERAL TEN PERCENT. RISE TWO CORPORATIONS MOVE £SOAL SITUATION SOLUTION SMALL STRIKES .CONTINUE

’ By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright. Bee. 5.5 p.m. New York, March 31. Two of America’s largest corporations, United States Steel-and General Electric, announced general .10 per cent, wage increases yesterday to he effective on April 1, to about 200,000 workers. The long and vexing labour situation in the soft coal industry has apparently been solved with the granting of 350,000 miners a five-day, forty-hour week and a basic pay increase. • The epidemic of small strikes continues but the National Recovery Administration is using the utmost pressure to settle the strikes as soon as possible. Railway wage negotiations are still deadlocked, the Federal co-ordinator, Mr. F. Eastman, announcing to-day that neither side was willing to compromise. He is returning the matter to. the President for his personal arbitration. The Federal Court to-day upheld price fixing byl the N.R.A. code as constitutional, which is another important step in the judicial interpretation of the recovery programme. A clothes cleaner accused of charging rate#, below those stipulated entered a plea that the N.R.A. had no right to fix prices. In denying the contention the Court allowed ten days for an appeal, indicating that the case would probably go to the Supreme Court for. a final decision.