- Standardization of Wages and Purchasing Power
As well as production and product properties, standardization was also applied to work and wages. That the standardization of work should go hand in hand with the standardization of production and of products is not at all surprising. Standardized production, after all, entailed a regularized labor process, along broadly Taylorist lines, while standardized products also meant standardizing the skills required to make and service those products. The “standardization” of wages, however, was a more complex and contentious matter. What after all, might it mean to standardize a wage? The answer is not obvious. Diferent conceptions of the logic according to which wages ought to be standardized were advanced by diferent interested parties— business, labor unions, and the state.
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