Image provided by: SEIU Local 503; Salem, OR
About The Oregon state employee. (Salem, Oregon.) 1944-195? | View Entire Issue (Sept. 1, 1946)
13 About 20 per cent of the people feel that "A few are getting all the money” and " I f the rich had less, the poor would have more.” But most Ameri cans feel that any redistribution of the wealth by putting the top limit on salaries would be of little advantage to them personally; some suspect they might be even worse off. The public is equally emphatic that married men should not get more pay than single men simply because they have families. Workers should be paid "according to ability and work pro duced.” Remarks a Toledo, Ohio, per sonnel manager, "Any attempt to bene fit the family man by paying him higher wages would probably backfire. It would put him at a disadvantage in competition for jobs with single men.” Says the wife of a tire changer for busses, "A single man should get the same amount for his labor, but the married man should have help in hos pitalization, medical and dental care.” Still others say a man’s family and personal obligations are not an employ er’s concern. The same fundamental notion of fair play and honest rewards for honest labor turns up in the answers to: "Should men and women receive equal pay for equal work?” Three fourths of the men and four fifths of the women say "yes.” "Payment is for work, not for sex,” says a Miami, Ari zona, stenographer. " I f women’s w ork' is satisfactory,” believes a North Caro lina farmer, "their pay should be the same.” The few dissenters feel that women are somehow less capable than men in the workaday world. One wife of a serviceman states that equal wages for women would "hurt men’s feel ings.” In summary, we may say that the violent claims and counterclaims of unions and management gave a chao tically untrue picture of the wage situ ation in America today. Union workers are certainly not the most exploited groups in this country. Factory take- home pay has toppled since the war, but it is still as high as the average American income. Today, as before the war and during the war, a ditchdigger earns as much as some ministers, a movie star is worth fifty college presi dents, some Ph.D.’s get cooks’ wages. The deepest discontent over wages seethes not in the breast of the man with the lunch pail, but in the one with the shine on his shoes and on the pants of his blue serge suit. At any rate, the sense of personal in justice which one in every two Ameri can adults feels, has not yet seriously dimmed the bright U.S. virtues of self- reliance and enterprise. Although the public resents salaries which run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, although some feel "the money’s not di vided right”— still they will defend to the end the right of any American to make all the money he can. They only wish that those who make a real con tribution to human welftre {not movie stars) could be rewarded accordingly. They aren’t asking for any special favors or baby bonuses for family men — a man should shoulder his own re sponsibilities. All they ask is the chance to work like blazes for those extra few dollars in the pay envelope that will mean Utopia someday. And when they get a raise, and Utopia is still around the next mountain— well, they still have the chance to keep on trying, don’t they. Studying the many forthright opin ions voiced in this survey, one might well say the attitude of most Americans is: Congress, hands off, please! Don’t go trying any communistic schemes to bring more money to the masses. There are no "masses” in America, just a bunch of feet-on-the-ground individu alists who want to straighten out a lot of human injustices in their own rug ged way.
