Should Congress take action to reduce the present labor strike power?
No, I don’t think it should. Again, I think that we’re being very simplistic in our approach to the economics. People are saying the reason why we have inflation is because the trade unions are negotiating higher contracts. I’m sorry I don’t have my arithmetic before me, but we did some analysis over the past 30 years. The fact of the matter is that the per-unit cost of labor is cheaper now than it was in 1940. So it’s not the question of labor cost. That’s not the issue, but, again, it’s either the blacks or the radicals or the labor unions who are the scapegoats. We constantly want to find some simplistic answer to the serious problems. And so I don’t think that the strike, that the power of the unions to strike should be limited, because you’ve got to have some way to walk in and negotiate the circumstances under which you shall or shall not work, and that should be a legitimate right if we’re not going to exploit human beings. But the issue of inflation does not rest on the questio
