Muscle Flexing

For three months the giant Boeing plant in Seattle, hamstrung by a manpower shortage, has failed to meet constantly rising schedules for Flying Fortresses. Up & down the West Coast there is plenty of scary talk from other planemakers about production lags.

Last week all this talk caused the War Manpower Commission to do some tough, scary talking of its own. Gist of its talk: if necessary, the manpower problem may be solved by the wholesale removal of plants from the Pacific area. These were big-muscled words for often flabby WMC. And while few believed that such drastic measures would be necessary, or feasible, there was plenty of evidence that WMC is at last using its muscles to solve its No. 1 problem.

Chink & Plug. Fortnight ago, WMC asked Puget Sound shipbuilders (suspected by WMC of hoarding labor) to lay off some 14,000 workers to give Boeing a pool from which to draw the 9,000 it estimates it needs. Speedily the shipbuilders agreed. (WMC warned them that they would get no more contracts, might even have some of the present ones canceled, if they did not.)

But the plan seemed to have a chink as wide as a Flying Fortress. What was to prevent laid-off workers from getting jobs in other shipyards outside the Puget Sound area (such as Henry Kaiser's yard at Vancouver, Wash.)? Also, many smaller plants in the area are understaffed, pay more under the WLB freeze than Boeing.

Last week, WMC neatly plugged the chink. It warned that if Boeing does not get enough workers, contracts in the area will be canceled until it does. One small Seattle company, Pacific Huts, is so afraid of this very thing happening that it is taking full-page ads in Seattle newspapers urging workers to take jobs with Boeing.

In many another labor-parched coast area the solution calls for more than a WMC order. Within the next few months, the number of shortage areas on the West Coast is expected to jump rapidly. The total number of additional workers now needed by the expanding aircraft industry--100,000--is expected to increase to 250,000 early next year. To solve these problems, WMC has murmured of a National Service Act. But most planemakers dislike the idea of a labor draft.

Said handsome, 51-year-old Donald Douglas, president of the Douglas Aircraft Co. (which also makes Flying Fortresses): "Transportation, feeding and housing are the crucial problems. If the Government breaks these bottlenecks, it won't need a labor draft." But he added this warning: if the manpower problem on the West Coast is not solved, aircraft makers cannot meet their huge 1944 production schedules, may even have trouble meeting them this year.

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