Skirting Unemployment

To spread the available work when unemployment runs high, unions and management have tried a number of ideas: seven-hour days, four-day weeks, summer plant shutdowns, and earlier retirement for older workers. Now drugmaking Parke, Davis & Co. and Local 11-176 of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union are trying out another form of share-the-work. Some 450 women workers at the company's Detroit plant have volunteered to take one or two weeks of vacation without pay in order to assure more work for the others. Though the A.F.L.-C.I.O. frowns upon what it calls a "share-the-misery program," both the local union and the company are gratified by the early results. So far 24 laid-off workers have been recalled to jobs at the Parke, Davis plant, and each has been promised at least five months of steady employment.

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