Pegging the Labor Market

First big management-union agreement to end labor pirating, labor shifting and strikes in defense industries hard-pressed for skilled workers was being put through ast week under OPM auspices. The industry : West Coast shipbuilding, where eleven mushrooming private yards are busy on $667,000,000 in contracts.

With a production boom reminiscent of World War I's Hog Island days (TIME, March 31), shipbuilding has looked like a ure bet for strikes. Even without strikes the industry has had enough trouble.

Workmen had a way of disappearing suddenly, gone to seek (or lured to) greener fields. Precious man-hours were wasted traveling from yard to yard on West Coast highways. If shipbuilding's West Coast labor market was near chaos with 20,000 workers employed now, what would it be by late 1942, when the industry expects to have 70,000 employes? What OPM wanted to do was avert an explosion, not try to pick up the pieces afterward. Out to the West Coast went bald, spectacled Isador Lubin, Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, now on leave as deputy to Sidney Hillman in defense. Last fortnight Lubin returned with a plan that pleased everybody--shipbuilders, union men, OPM, the Navy, the Maritime Commission. In the first overall, zone-wide agreement of its kind, labor gained a $1.12 wage scale (compared to $1 in most yards before), a premium of 10% for the first night shift and 15% for the second night shift. Management got help toward putting production on a continuous basis by a uniform settlement on Saturday rates (time-and-a-half). With all yards offering the same terms (even those now paying more than $1.12 will adopt that rate for future employes), workmen will have nothing to gain by moving, nor will one company be inclined to raid another's personnel.

Finally, the agreement contained this key provision: no strikes or lockouts for the next two years. OPM, getting ready to urge the plan on management and labor in other great shipbuilding districts, was sure Lubin had an effective scheme to keep the yards launching ships instead of trouble. Once shipbuilding's labor market is pegged, OPM will use the Lubin plan as a model for agreements to stabilize labor conditions in other fields.

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