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VOL. XVIII; NO. 36 V CHARLOTTE LABOR CHARLOTTE. N. C„ THURSDAY. JANUARY 20. 1949 Subscription $2.00 Per Year i Buick Roadmaster Sedan Tops Gifts Approximately 4,000 people heard the “Quiz Kids” ip their broadcast last Sunday evening at the, Armory-Audi torium, at which time the “Kids” officially opened the 1949 March of Dimes campaign. The appearance here of the famous youngsters, helped somewhat in getting the cam paign off to a good start, but Mecklenburg’s goal has been set by the National Foundation at $100,000 and much work and considerable giving must be put into action in order that the quota will be raised by January 31. A large list of gifts, donations of Charlotte and Meck lenburg county firms and individuals, is on file at the head quarters office and these gifts will be awarded to the win ning contributors when the campaign comes to a close. Top ping the list will be a four-door Buick Custom Roadmaster Sedan, which will be awarded the contributor who submits the lucky line to complete the jingle, which accompanies this article. Altogether more than $15,000 in prizes are to be given away by the donors. An impartial list of judges has been selected to select the contest winners. Anyone is eligible to compete. All he or she needs to do is add the last line of the four-line jingle, the first three lines of which appear in the accompanying entry blank. The line contributed may rhyme with any of the other three, officials of the contest announced. The entry then must be accompanied by a contribution to the $100,000 March of Dimes quota. All entries should be mailed to March of Dimes Head quarters, 127 East Fourth 'Street, Charlotte, K.C. The prizes offerred in the jingle contest are: First—1949 new Buick Sedan, valued at over $3,000. Second—Complete Basic American Central Kitchen, in stalled, donated by A. K. Sutton, Inc. Third — Complete Laundry Assembly, consisting of one deluxe Bendix washer; one deluxe Standard electric ironer; one deluxe dryer, gas or electric, together with another prize; one hydraulic Kaiser dish washer, all the gift of the Southern Appliance Company, and can be seen on display at Bridges Furniture store. There are several other prizes. See the sample jingle at the bottom of this column, complete it and let your con tribution be in dollars instead of dimes. The following are the county workers who are assisting County Chairman Mrs. Ralph Miller: Mrs. Joe Craig, Oakhurst; Hugo Sapp, Davidson; Mrs. Lee Kearns, Long Creek; Berdette King, Hickory Grove; Mr. and Mrs. Byrum Faires, Robinson; Mrs. A. B. Connell, Arlington and Clear Creek; Mrs. Carl McBwen, Mint Hill; Mrs. Lucille Thompson, Mint Hill; Miss Gladys Warnock, Huntersville and Mrs. R. H. Atwell, Cornelius. Perhaps there are many people who do not know that there are many polio victims of the 1948 epidemic who are in the hospitals here and throughout the State. The local and national funds were exhausted in providing atten tion for the stricken ones by last fall, and the National Foundation has assigned larger quotas to North Carolina counties this year than ever before because of the great number of polio cases in this State. Your dollars and dimes will certainly be used to aid those victims who re main to be cared for and also others who may be attacked by the disease will require the same careful attention. Turn your dimes into dollars and march forward doing your part to aid these unfortunate ones! COMPLETE THE JINGLE AND HELP FI6HT POLIO Complete this jingle, enclose your contribution and mail to March of Dimes Headquarters, 127 East Fourth Street, Charlotte, N. C. My contribution is in dollars this time Instead of the usual dime; To fight polio harder than ever Because.. SUBMITTED BY Address. rThejr Said It Would Protect Labor in the END! TAFT- HARTLEY AFL Prepares To Protect Workers If Slump Comes WASHINGTON— The American Federation of Labor is studying a proposal for a 30-hour week as a means of spreading employment and main taining 60,000,000 jobs in the event of a slackening in the pres ent business boom. This was announced by Daniel W. Tracy, president of the AFL’s International Brotherhood of Elec trical Workers and head of the AFL’s shorter workday commit tee, which was created to study the employment problem. “We don’t know how long pres ent employment will continue,’’ Mr. Tracy added, “but we must be prepared to move toward a shorter work week when the Marshell European recovery plan and the rearmament program are no longer sufficient to carry' us along.” He declared that the drive for a shorter work week was only in the “preparedness stage,” and that the union had a “tremendous ed ucational job” both among labor and management to “sell” them on the idea. While there had been some slackening in employment and some cutbacks in production re cently, he said that economic conditions generally were expect ed to remain good enough to de lay the start of the real drive until the AFL’s convention next October. A series of layoffs rcently de veloped in the textile, shoe and other “soft foods” industries. The railroads also have been laying off men because of s drop in rail, traffic. The ultimate goal of the AFL’s program is to maintain 60,000, 000 jobs and to stave off the kind of mass unemployment that re' suited from the depression in the 1930’s. The “watchdog” committee, Mr. Tracy said, was made up of the research staffs of the AFL, the Electrical Workers and other un ions. The group will make its first report at a meeting of the parent union’s executive cpuncil in Miami on January 31. The committee was authorised by the AFL’s 1948 convention. It ia studying the poasible im pact on employment of any cut back In the European Recovery Program or a cut in defense spending if peace should be re stored to the world. In addition, the committee is weighing the probable effect on the job market of rmproved pro duction methods, including time and motion studies, incentive sys tems and similar proposals for boosting output per man. Mr. Tracy said that the AFL was not opposed to these methods as long as they did not destroy the worker's earning power and as long as the union had a voice in setting wage standards. He held that the fears of some industrialists that a shorter work week would lead to a drop in production were groundless. In fact, the drive for a 30-hour work week, he said, very well might guarantee a better distribution of the increased production stem ming from mechanization of in dustry. FEDERAL WORK FORCE INCREASES Washington.—The government’s civilian work force at home rose 16,400 last month to a total of 1,896,000. Reporting this, the Civil Service Commmission noted that the capital itself had 211, 000 at work on December 1, a rise of 1,600 in the month. The figures are for executive depart ments and agencies. Inside and outside the country, the employ ment total was 2,100,300. U. S. POPULATION RISES; TOTAL PUT AT 148,000,000 Washington. — The Bureau of the Census reported the popula tion of the United States stood at about 148,000,000 at the year’s end, roughly 12.5 per cent higher than the 131,669,275 counted in the last 4ecennial census in 1940. The final approximation for 1948 represented a population in crease during the year of about 3,000,000. AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS OPPOSES USE OF ITS MEMBERS IN TAKING CENSUS Chicago.—The National Execu tive Council of the AFL’s Amer ican Federation of Teachers, meeting in Chicago, took an em phatic stand in opposition to a proposal that the nation’s schools be closed so the teachers can be used as enumerators in taking the 1950 census. The national body also empha sised that any participation by teachers in the census taking should be on a purely voluntary basis without any pressure from administrators. The council also recommended that not only teach ers but other professional per sons, such as lawyers, doctors and dentists, should be called upon to assist in the census and that the regular wage scales of professional employes should be paid for such services. The full statement issued by the national officers of the A. F. of T., which is a professional or ganization of classroom teachers, is as follows: We believe that if any teacher wishes to apply for the position of enumerator, he should apply as an individual citisen. We believe that no application should be solicited, accepted or transmitted by school adminis trators. We believe that we should op pose any change in the school calendar to have the teachers par ticipate in the program since any such change would adversely af fect the statutory school year and interfere with the teacher’s vaca tion period at which time many are called upon to meet personal agreements previously made. We believe that since the salary offered enumerators now is not even as high as that offered teachers, it would therefore be doubly unjust to "expect” teach ers to work at a reduced scale in their vacations. We believe that it is essential that the National Advisory Com mittee be enlarged to include at least two A. F. of T. classroom teachers. Advisory Council Urges Better Unemployment Insurance Program Washington. — The Advisory Council on Social Security reported to Congress on the deficiencies of the present state-federal unemployment insurance system and recom mended a. 16-point program for its improvement. In a report to the Senate Finance Committee, the coun cil, which is composed of 17 prominent labor, business, and educational leaders under the chairmanship of Edward R. Stettinius, former Secretary of State, preposed greater benefits and a broadening of the system to include about 7,000,000 workers who are now excluded from unemploy ment insurance protection. Nelson H. Cruikshank, director of the AFL’s social insurance ac i tivities, served on the council as a representative of the Ameri can Federation of Labor. The report highlights the fol lowing deficiencies In the pres ent system which the council singled out for special criticism: 1. Inadequate coverage.—Only about 7 out of 10 employes are now covered by unemployment insurance. 2. Benefit financing which operates as a barrier to liberal ize benefit provisions.—The pres ent arrangements permit states to compete in establishing low contribution rates for employers and therefore discourages the adoption of more adequate bene fit provisions. 3. Irrational relationship be tween the contribution rates and the cyclical movements of busi ness.—The present arrangements tend to make the contribution rate fluctuate inversely with the volume of employment, declining when employment is high and when contributions to the unem ployment compensation fund are easiest to make and increasing when employment declines and when the burden of contributions , is greatest. 4. Administrative deficiencies.— Improvement ia needed in meth ods of finwcni administrative coats, provisions for determining eligibility and and benefit amount in interstate claims, procedures for developing interstate claims,' and methods designed to insure prompt payments on all valid claims and to prevent payments on invalid claims. 5. Lack of adequate employe and dtisen participation in the program—Workers now have less influence on guiding the admin istration of the program and de veloping legislative policy than they should, and some employes, employers, and members of the general public tend to regard unemployment compensation as a handout rather than as social insurance earned by employ ment, financed by contributions, and payable only to those whc satisfy eligibility requirements. The 16-point program for ac tion by Congress was designed to correct these deficiencies, the report declared. Among th< recommendations, the following are of special significance to or ganised labor: 1. The council urged lifting the limitation which excluded em ployes of small firms from cov erage under the Federal Unem ployment Tax act. 2. Employes of nonprofit or ganizations with the exception of clergymen and members of re ligious orders, should be granted the benefits of coverage by law, the council said. 3. The council urged the devel opment of a procedure under which wage credits earned in more than one state may be com timed for the purposes of th* law. 4. On the subject of disqualify rations, the report recommended a federal standard which would prohibit the states from (1) re ducing or canceling benefits as the result of a disqualification ex j cept for fraud. (21 disqualify I ing those who are discharged be 1 cause of inability to do the work, 1 and (3) postponing benefits for j more than 6 weeks as the result ! of disqualification except for fraud. While signing the report, 5 members of the council appended a statement declaring in their opinion that regardless of the improvements made in the exist ing system, anything snort of a national plan to replace the pres ent state-federal system would not achieve the most desirable objective of attaining a highly efficient unemployment insur ance program. These were: Nel son Cruikshank, Sumner H. Slich ter. Harvard University professor; J. Douglas Brown, of Princeton University; John Miller, assistant director of the National Planning association, and Emil Rieve. pres ident of the CIO’s Textile Work ers union. NORWEGIAN LABOR HAILS MARSHALL PLAN Washington. — The \larshail Plan was hailed here as an in valuable aid by Norwegian labor leaders who are battling against heavy odds in their efforts to strengthen Norway’s economy and I to resist Communist attempts to weaken the nation. This view was expressed by Haakon Lie, secretary-general of the Norwegian Labor party, and spokesman for a group of Nor wegian labor representatives who are visiting this nation under the auspices of the Economic . Co operation Administration. The delegation ia in the United States to study American pro duction methods. It is the first group to visit this nation under the Technical Assistance Program which is supported by the Mar shall Plan. At a press conference at ECA headquarters, Mr. Lie declared that the European Recovery Pro gram has enabled Norway to keep her factories operating and to maintain full employment in the face of dwindling financial assets, and the loss of large segments of the Norwegian merchant and fishing fleets during the war. He stressed, however, that the Communists are trying incessant ly to promote discora among in dustrial workers in Norway by a stream of propaganda aimed against the United States. The Communist party line, he said, is to portray the United States as an imperialist nation and the Marshall Plan as a means to en able Wall Street to capture and run the world. To counteract this campaign, (Continued on Page 4) PRIZES TOTALING MORE THAN S15,000 WILL BE A WARDED BY LOCAL FIRMS
