The article reports on efforts by Australian tycoon Rupert Murdoch to rejuvenate the British publishing industry by focusing on improving profits and fighting excessive demands from newspapers unions. Murdoch, who has bought "News of the World" and "Sun," faces wage demands by "Sun" journalists and a strike notice. The growth of "Sun" after its acquisition by Murdoch and Murdoch's News Ltd. publishing empire in Australia are described.
The Cobb-Douglas function indicates that the demand for labor in the United States and Australia is elastic. This would indicate that total labor income decreases as wages rise. Must trade unionists' insistence on maintaining or raising wages even under conditions ot widespread unemployment necessarily indicate short-sightedness or selfishness on the part ot employed unionists? This article answers in the negative. In the first place, a mathematical bias in the Cobb-Douglas function prevents its showing simultaneously an inelastic demand for labor and a positive share of labor in the national dividend. In the second place the function considers only the "gross" elasticity of demand. The "net" elasticity which takes account of workers' income while unemployed, is necessarily lower and more relevant here. In the third place, the Cobb-Douglas function is inapplicable to the long run in which population is variable, and in which labor seeks maximum real wages consistent with full employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Determination of wages in Australia through a system of industrial arbitration has had significant economic and social consequences, unforeseen by the initiators of the system, whose principal objective in its establishment was reduction of industrial strife, This article discusses some of the effects of wage arbitration on the Australian economy and suggests that in view of the widespread economic and social consequences of arbitration, its rote in the functioning of the economy should be reviewed for the purpose of integrating wage policy more closely with other aspects of the nation's economic program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]