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The task of trying to interpret the wage-price freeze fell to the little-known Office of Emergency Preparedness (see box, page 8). The OEP aims to answer all the questions raised by the freeze. But no structure is contemplated that would be remotely similar to that of the Office of Price Administration, which at its peak during World War II included 63,000 paid and over 200,000 volunteer employees. In 1942, one of those OPA employees was a young lawyer named Richard Nixon. He stayed just long enough to build an abiding dislike for the ponderous bureaucratic mechanism. So it was with some feeling that Nixon said in his television address: "While the wage-price freeze will be backed by Government sanctions, if necessary, it will not be accompanied by the establishment of a huge price-control bureaucracy. I am relying on the voluntary cooperation of all Americans."
He is not likely to get it from all Americans. The first strident objections came from labor leaders. The Government's rule is that no wage increase scheduled to take effect during the freeze period may be paid, even if it has already been agreed to in a contract. United Auto Workers President Leonard Woodcock noted that two of his contracts—with Caterpillar and John Deere—call for raises during the three-month freeze. He threatened to sue, and added: "If this Administration thinks that just by issuing an edict they can tear up contracts, they are saying they want war. If they want war, they can have war."
Another loud demurrer came from A.F.L.-C.I.O. President George Meany. Shultz and Labor Secretary James Hodgson explained the Nixon program to the 35-member A.F.L.-C.I.O. executive council, but they might as well have saved their breath. Meany called the wage freeze "patently discriminatory" against labor. Hodgson insisted that the rank-and-file union man would back the Nixon plan and accused Meany of being "out of step" with the average working man. That struck a raw nerve, for the aged Meany, 77, feels his leadership threatened by younger union Turks. He sneered: "I don't pay too much attention to the Secretary. If you have a problem with the landlord, you don't discuss it with the janitor."
Open Defiance
The Nixon Administration pleaded with labor leaders to make a voluntary end to existing strikes in order to help the economy pick up at the maximum possible speed. The most devastating strike under way is the West Coast dock stoppage, now eight weeks old, led by Harry Bridges. It is likely to continue. Bridges wired Nixon that the freeze "favors the rich," and he added: "We are with you in your desire to stop inflation in our country, but it is wrong to pick on the workers, who suffer first and the most from inflation."
Other complaints came in from Ralph Nader, who told a congressional committee that he suspected General Motors had been given advance notice of the price freeze, possibly during a recent meeting between Connally and G.M. President James Roche. (G.M. had raised prices on its 1972 models before the freeze went into effect, but agreed to rescind the increases.)