Firm Finds Problems in Guidelines: Firm Finds 'Simple' Wage-Price Guidelines Perplexing
It was Oct. 25, 1978, the day after President Carter announced his new, voluntary program to cut the rate of inflation and begged the nation not to ridicule the plan.</br></br>Wall Street was ridiculing it. Stock prices slumped as investors said, in effect, that wage and price guidelines would do nothing to slow the rate of inflation. The dollar was tumbling on foreign currency markets for the same reason.</br></br>But Andrew Purser, chief executive officer of a large industrial company, was not laughing. He was worried.</br></br>President Carter had asked companies and ÐÊworkers to hold wage and fringe benefit increases to 7 percent a year on all contracts, signed after Oct. 24. He promised to monitor all companies with sales in excess of $500 million.</br></br>PurserÛªs company, which spoke freely with The Washington Post on the condition that neither it nor its officers be identified by their real names, is among the 400 or so companies that will be watched carefully by the Council on Wage and Price Stability.