Both labor and management have a special interest.  Labor’s interest is very direct and personal because working conditions, wages, and prices affect the very life and happiness of the worker and his family.

Management has a no less direct interest because on management rests the responsibility for conducting a growing and prosperous business.

But management and labor have identical interests in the long run.  Good wages mean good markets.  Good business means more jobs and better wages.  In this age of cooperation and in our highly organized economy the problems of one very soon become the problems of all.

Better human relationships are an urgent need to which organized labor and management should address themselves.  No government policy can make men understand each other, agree, and get along unless they conduct themselves in a way to foster mutual respect and good will.

The Government can, however, help to develop machinery which, with the backing of public opinion, will assist labor and management to resolve their disagreements in a peaceful manner and reduce the number and duration of strikes.

All of us realize that productivity—­increased output per man—­is in the long run the basis of our standard of living.  Management especially must realize that if labor is to work wholeheartedly for an increase in production, workers must be given a just share of increased output in higher wages.

Most industries and most companies have adequate leeway within which to grant substantial wage increases.  These increases will have a direct effect in increasing consumer demand to the high levels needed.  Substantial wage increases are good business for business because they assure a large market for their products; substantial wage increases are good business for labor because they increase labor’s standard of living; substantial wage increases are good business for the country as a whole because capacity production means an active, healthy, friendly citizenry enjoying the benefits of democracy under our free enterprise system.

Labor and management in many industries have been operating successfully under the Government’s wage-price policy.  Upward revisions of wage scales have been made in thousands of establishments throughout the Nation since VJ-day.  It is estimated that about 6 million workers, or more than 20 percent of all employees in nonagricultural and nongovernmental establishments, have received wage increases since August 18, 1945.  The amounts of increases given by individual employers concentrate between 10 and 15 percent, but range from less than 5 percent to over 30 percent.

The United States Conciliation Service since VJ-day has settled over 3,000 disputes affecting over 1,300,000 workers without a strike threat and has assisted in settling about 1,300 disputes where strikes were threatened which involved about 500,000 workers.  Only workers directly involved, and not those in related industries who might have been indirectly affected, are included in these estimates.