Final answer:
The standard labor cost for Lewis Company cannot be determined from the provided options without additional context. The figures given in various examples relate to total labor costs, marginal costs, and union-negotiated wage changes, but they do not specify the standard labor cost per worker.
Step-by-step explanation:
To determine Lewis Company's standard labor cost, we must consider the context and any additional information provided. The question, as it stands, does not provide enough specifics to accurately choose either option (a) $3.40, (b) $10.50, or (c) $42,900. We might infer that the standard labor cost could be a rate (per hour or other unit of time), a total labor cost for a specific job, or the aggregate labor cost for certain production levels. However, based on the various contexts provided:
- Example C suggests that if Lewis Company's workers cost $90 each and different technologies require a different number of workers (10, 7, and 3), then this does not directly indicate a standard labor cost per worker, but total costs instead (e.g., $900 for technology 1).
- The table showing the marginal cost of labor at different wage levels ($1, $2, $3, etc.) implies that the marginal cost remains constant at $1 per hour, which does not give us the standard labor cost of the company.
- The situation where a union raises the wages by $4 leading to a new wage of $22 per hour, indicates labor cost changes in response to union negotiations, but this also doesn't specify what the standard labor cost is.
Given this, we can't definitively say which one of the provided options is the standard labor cost for Lewis Company without additional clarification on what the standard labor cost refers to in this particular case.