AT FIRST SIGH r it seems reasonable that the British
Employers' Confederation should condemn em- ployers who pay 'extravagant wages.' Its argument is that so long as full employment continues, there is no untapped reserve of workers in the country; so that an offer of higher wages from one em- ployer merely compels his rivals to put up their wages too if they want to keep their workers; and thiS, in turn. accelerates the inflationary trend. But is it as simple as this? In my experience most firms which increase wages in the way the BEC condemns do so because they are not allowed, owing to restrictive practices within industry, to reduce prices, and to pass the benefit of their increased efficiency on to the .consumer. But this is a possibility that the BEC, as the guardian of trade restrictive practices, is careful to ignore.
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