[Labor in the War]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

LABOR IN THE WAR
War Production Hoard
The front-line trenches of this war are in the mines, mills, and shops of America. The call to arms for our soldiers is echoing throughout the land in a call for arms to our industrial workers in the factories, in the smelters, in the pits.
We and our allies are meeting the enemy on the far-flung battlefronts of the world. Already we have been locked in mortal combat in the Philippines.
America’s big job is to provide an unending flow of guns, planes, tanks, ships', and all the other material of war to our own and our allies’ fighting forces. There can be no limit to this flow other than the need.
American labor has pledged its very lifeblood to the meeting of this challenge and to the fulfillment of its task. Men and women in every State in the Nation, in every trade union, are responding to the call. With full knowledge of costly sacrifices ahead, the people who make up the rank and file as well as the leaders of the millions of workers of the AFL, the CIO, and the Railroad Brotherhoods stand united in their resolve to beat Hitler and his Axis hordes. They are united in the proud consciousness of their power to do it, too.
Between June 1940 and the beginning of this year our Government has appropriated 78 billion dollars for materials for our own and our allies’ armed forces. In the first 6 weeks of 1942 this amount rose to almost 110 billion «dollars. At the end of 1941 American workers and American industry were producing implements of war at the rate of 2 billion dollars’ worth a month.
In November 1940 there were slightly more than 10,994,000 workers in our various manufacturing industries. By November 1941 this number had increased to 12,728,000 as a result of Dunkerque. On
Labor Division
the basis of pre-Pearl Harbor planning, it was expected at that time that an additional 3,000,000 workers would be needed in 1942.
There were a lot of people who thought that this was pretty good producing, but the blow that was struck in our back on December 7 has convinced us otherwise. Our industrial machine really was only in first gear. We are shifting into second now. In a few months we will be rolling along in high gear.
In his address on the state of the Nation early this year, President Roosevelt announced to the Congress and the world that within 2 years we would confront our enemies with 185,000 airplanes, 1^0^000 tanks, 55,000 antiaircraft guns, and 18,096,-000 tons of shipping, and that in 1943 would outbuild the Axis by 3 to 1 in planes alone.	i □j
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This is the biggest job ever undertaken j by any nation or group of nations, but it is0 a job that must be done if we are to keep this Nation free and restore freedom to the enslaved countries of Europe and Asia.
Not only must we build unheard-of numbers of planes and ships and tanks but we must do it with great speed. The size of the job and the urgency of it call for a pooling of all our energies and facilities. It is not a job that can be done piecemeal. No vested interest in the past or in “things as they are” can be allowed to stand in the way. This is an “all-out” task, and we are going ALL OUT to meet it.
This superproduction will cost billions of dollars, and it will take billions of tons of precious raw materials. But, most of all, it will occupy millions of human hands and human brains. Free American workers must give us the driving force to outproduce the Axis and its hosts of slaves.
At the end of December we were employ
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ing some 5,000,000 men and women in the production of war materials. To carry out the tremendously expanded requirements for victory, we must treble that figure and do it this year. The War Production Board has called upon the United States Employment Service to undertake this huge recruitment of manpower.
To turn out war materials in such vast quantities, the people who place contracts, the people who assign materials, the people who build houses for war workers, and the people who are concerned with actual training and recruiting of workers will all work toward the common objective of bringing together men, materials, and machines in such a way that the greatest possible production will be accomplished.
It will not be as easy to employ the next 10,000,000 men as it was to employ the first 5,000,000. During the first months of our •* detent program there were still available m^»y «killed workers who could go to work • production. There were large num-, hel$*of semiskilled workers to be employed. ■ TJjq ¿levels of the unskilled were reached afidjhe Government launched a huge pro-gripfi of training for the untrained unem-’ployed. Beginnings were made in the inclusion of women in defense work and in the breaking down of barriers of racial discrimination which fenced off industry from important sources of manpower. But all of this has not gone deep enough. We must expand and intensify all previous efforts.
In addition to the task of mobilizing manpower, the Government, working with labor and industry, is faced with the vastly complicated problems of converting our industrial machinery to war production, of making ready the machines which will enable our working men and women to turn out the tools of victory. The great automobile industry is an excellent example of this with its hundreds of thousands of trained workers and its thousands of acres of plants and equipment. Special committees, made up of representatives of the United Automobile Workers’ Union and the management of the industry, have been
set up to help carry out the conversion of these forces of men and machines to production under Government authority.
Machinery which is now being used to produce nonessentials cannot be converted overnight. A temporary displacement of workers is inevitable in most factories during conversion. These displaced workers must be reemployed as quickly as possible, in the interests both of greater production and of the prevention of hardships and suffering during the transition to a war economy. They must be given new training in the shortest possible time if they are not adequately prepared for war production jobs. They must be assured unemployment compensation or a training wage during the period of conversion unemployment. We cannot afford to allow either men or machines to stand idle.
Since the Wright brothers flew their first plane, the United States has turned out about 75,000 airplanes. Today we are determined to produce as many in 1 year as we did in all the 37 years before. All our other war industries must be expanded in proportion. In order to achieve this we must have 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week use of every available machine throughout the country for war production. We will have to enlist every worker whose energies possibly can be used. This means that all but the absolutely unfit or unemployable must be put to work. Workers who are older and younger than those previously employed must be used. Women, the single ones and the married onei whose family responsibilities will not interfere, will be needed to do all but the heaviest types of factory work. All workers, both factory and whitecollar, who are now engaged in nonwar work have to answer the call for more and more industrial war production. And, finally, we will have to prove that we mean we are ALL OUT FOR DEMOCRACY by opening wide the doors of our factories and mills to the one-tenth of our own population whose abilities have not been fully used—the Negroes.
Since the day the defense program was
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startëd^nMay 28,1940, its labor functions have been of primary and basic importance, and labor has been recognized as a vital part of production.
At the start Sidney Hillman, president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers’ Union of America, was appointed commissioner in charge of the Labor Division in the National Defense Advisory Commission. In March 1941 the Labor Division was included in the Office of Production Management, and Mr. Hillman, who was made Associate Director General of OPM and co-chief* of the defense production effort, remained as its official director. He remains as director of the Labor Division under the new and more powerful War Production Board, of which he is a member.
The Labor Division was given the responsibility of providing adequate manpower for all defense production needs, present and future. This general purpose includes the duties of ascertaining war-labor requirements, assuring an adequate supply of labor in war industries, advising on problems involving standards of work in employment, assisting in preventing and adjusting labor-management disputes which might retard the war program, the advising with other war agencies and other governmental bureaus on all matters affecting labor.
Even more important, perhaps, is the fact that this division is staffed by men drawn directly from organized labor’s ranks, as was Mr. Hillman.
The Government has proceeded on the conviction that labor’s role was vital to the success of the whole program. Human energy and skill had to match the machines. As production expanded, the demand for labor soared; and this demand will continue to soar. The Labor Division geared itself to the policy of perpetual anticipation of a rising curve of labor requirement and the avoidance of all possible causes of retarded production. It also resolved to implement in full the President’s policy of voluntary cooperation and maintenance of social standards in defense work.
One of the first developments was the formation of a committee of 16 prominent officials of the American Federation of Labor, the Congress of Industrial Organizations, and the Railroad Brotherhoods to advise the Labor Division on policy. This National Labor Policy Advisory Committee has symbolized labor’s unity in the cause of defense and victory, and has exercised a constructive influence upon the problems of manpower.
Another early step was the listing of workers available for defense jobs, in every area of the Nation, as to their location and skills. The U. S. Employment Service, at the Labor Division’s request, undertook this task through its 1,500 full-time field offices, and, with the cooperation of the Civil Service Commission, the Social Security Board, the WPA, and also by surveys made by the unions through their own membership, many millions of workers have been registered, and war industries have been able to recruit manpower when it was needed.
The urgent need of training was noted at the very start, and the training program was begun through the Labor Division in June of 1940. A policy was adopted and followed to carry out this program through existing agencies and with the cooperation of local school and public officials, management and labor groups, and such agencies as the NYA and WPA. In less than a year and a half vocational training has advanced to an all-time peak and has been geared to the direct needs of industry. It has been reported that during the entire World War only 60,000 workers received vocational training. At the beginning of 1942 nearly 3,000,000 workers had received job training in 1,200 public vocational and trade schools, 155 colleges and universities, and 10,000 public-school shops.
Prior to the emergency some large industrial establishments had developed systems of in-plant training and upgrading of the skills of older workers. The Labor Division, convinced that this method could greatly shorten the time necessary in developing
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needed skills among the defense occupations, set up a Training-Within-Industry Branch. This branch, working through training specialists borrowed from factory management and aided by labor-management advisers, has consulted with more than 2,000 war-industry contractors on developing such programs, providing assistance and advice. The factories employ more than 2,700,000 of the men and women engaged in producing war weapons.
To bring about a more direct expression of the needs and attitudes of organized labor and to promote harmony in labormanagement relations, a Labor Relations Branch was established. Staffed almost entirely by representatives of major labor organizations, it parallels in structure the other branches of the Labor Division to which the Labor Relations staff members act as consultants. A special section of the branch has been devoted to the development of labor-management cooperation, working with the Labor Department’s Conciliation Service in the settlement of labor disputes.
A special effort of a pioneering nature was undertaken in the shipbuilding industry, which went through such chaotic conditions during its great expansion in the first World War. Faced by an even greater expansion of this industry, Mr. Hillman more than a year ago set up the Shipbuilding Stabilization Committee. This committee includes representatives of the Labor Division, the Navy and Maritime Commission, the employing shipyards, and the AFL and CIO unions with shipbuilding membership. The committee convened conferences of management and labor in each of the four coastal zones which, through the democratic process of discussion, drafted standards of wages, hours, working conditions, grievance machinery, and many other essentials of labor relations. The standards also pledged against lock-outs, strikes, and other stoppages or limitations on production. All four zone standards were subsequently made effective through collectivebargaining processes, in which employers,
unions, and the Government as purchaser ratified the proposals. This industrialrelations machinery made it possible, beginning with the Pacific coast zone in J anu-ary, to arrange quickly for 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week use of shipbuilding facilities. Staggered shifts make possible 1 day of rest weekly for each worker and time-and-one-half overtime is paid for all work above 40 hours a week.
Above and beyond these activities, however, is the greatest problem of all—the actual delivery of the labor supply of the country to defense operations. This is the problem created by the fact that you can’t operate a factory in a social vacuum. You must have workers who have training, and they must have homes and schools. The Labor Division started out to meet this problem by setting up a Labor Supply Branch to coordinate the many Federal and State activities which are concerned with labor supply, a Negro Employment and Training Branch to integrate one group of workers into industry, and a Minorities Group Branch to act similarly in utilizing the skills and the energies of available aged, aliens, and similar groups now discriminated against in many war plants.
Heading up these activities is Brig. Gen. Frank J. McSherry, Deputy Director for Labor Supply and Training. Policies governing the wartime mobilization of industrial workers are established by the National Labor Supply , Policy Committee, appointed by Mr. Hillman, and made up of six management and six union leaders. These policies are carried out through the interdepartmental Labor Supply Committee, whose members are working representatives of the governmental agencies responsible for training and employment.
To decentralize the execution of these policies and directions, the Labor Division has set up 12 Regional Labor Supply Committees in the field. The regional officers of the United States Employment Service act as chairmen of these working committees, each of which also includes salaried representatives of management, labor, the vo
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cational schools, the National Youth Administration, the Civil Service Commission, and other groups which are active at the regional level.
Through these committees, and through the 1,500 field offices of the United States Employment Service system, the plans and needs of war-industry employers and labor are handled. As a part of this job, the Labor Division has directed this organization also to gather figures and make plans for the orderly transfer of workers to war industries when they are displaced in non-essential employment by shortages of materials caused by priorities and other warprogram developments. Also through this machinery, surveys are being made of future unemployment in nonwar factories as a basis for War Production Board recommendations of special treatment for distressed communities by spreading war work to smaller factories which have not heretofore joined in the production program.
A major function of the whole Labor Division program has been to organize and make more efficient the movement of labor through the use of the United States Employment Service, instead of following the old, wasteful, frequently inhuman methods of hiring by advertising, importing, and “pirating” labor. One of the major considerations is the necessity to hire and train local-resident labor to the maximum possible extent, recognizing that in a few cases of new war industries some controlled, orderly migration may be necessary.
But the utilization of the available locallabor supply is vital, if we are to avoid chaotic, unsettled, unsocial conditions among our working population. This clearly implies that employers who discriminate against certain racial, religious, or national groups of workers must cease to do so. To eliminate this labor-supply “bottleneck” the Labor Division set up the Negro Employment and Training Branch and the Minorities Service, the latter dealing with discrimination against other minority groups than the Negro.
As a means of bringing women workers
into war production as speedily and efficiently as possible a Women’s Labor Supply Service has been established within the Labor Division. It has been estimated that several 'million women will have to be added to our national labor force in order to complete the total of workers needed in war industries. This service will help to recruit and train women workers.
Our arsenal of democracy must produce more than arms. It must produce the voluntary cooperation of all citizens, pledged to a common cause. In this war program we have developed new techniques of teamwork among Government, management, and labor. We have called into vigorous action human and physical resources long dormant in our Nation. We will emerge from this crisis stronger than before.
If we can do this to destroy the menace of foreign aggression, we can do all this— and more—to banish want and insecurity from our country. If we can mobilize all our productive powers to turn out guns and planes and ships and tanks, we can mobilize them even more effectively to bring better homes, and better food, and better education to all our people when Hitlerism has been banished from the earth. In arming for war America has learned anew the meaning of democracy. It has laid the groundwork for the new world of peace and plenty.
American labor responded quickly, enthusiastically, and virtually unanimously to our country’s war needs.
Within a few minutes after the first Japanese bombs fell on Pearl Harbor on December 7, the leaders of labor began flooding Washington with offers to help in prosecuting the conflict that had been thrust upon us.
Ten million union members, through the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations, immediately announced formal support of the war effort and thereafter joined in a pledge to prevent all strikes and other stoppages which might impede the production of war munitions and materials. Thousands of
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local AFL and CIO unions as well as many unaffiliated groups of workers also volunteered immediate support.
Leaders in organized labor who had bitterly opposed some phases of the Administration’s foreign and domestic program prior to December 7 joined unhesitatingly with other factions of a divided labor movement in the labor peace conference which the President convened on December 18. Out of this joint labor-management meeting there developed on December 23 a unanimous agreement that:
1.	There shall be no strikes or lock-outs;
2.	All disputes shall be settled by peaceful means; and
3.	The President shall set up a proper War Labor Board to handle these disputes.
On January 12 President Roosevelt established this War Labor Board, headed by William H. Davis, with four members from the general public, four from labor, and four from management. Its job is to settle by voluntary arbitration all differences between employees and employers that cannot be resolved by direct negotiations. The members and alternates of the board were chosen with great care and we can look forward to a minimum of industrial disputes for the duration of the emergency. At any rate, now that the machinery for peaceful settlements has been established with prior commitments by both labor and management to use this machinery, there need be no stoppages of production.
President William Green of the AFL summoned officials of more than 100 affiliated international unions to meet in Washington December 15, and this meeting, together with the AFL’s executive council, reaffirmed “loyalty to the principles underlying our Government” and pledged “to the President, to the Congress, and to the people undivided support for the most vigorous and rigorous prosecution of this war until final victory is ours.”
President Philip Murray of the CIO, immediately after the declaration of war, addressed the CIO’s 5,000,000 members over
the radio with “an urgent message of the necessity for immediately enlisting the full cooperation of all elements in the production of weapons of war and other materials needed for the success of our national effort.”
Mr. Murray said the workers in the industries are telling America: “Here we are, ready to serve our country. All we ask is that you let us use our energies and our brains to the utmost and listen to our constructive proposals for achieving all-out production.”
There is probably not a single local union or central labor body anywhere in the country that is not now on record unanimously and enthusiastically to do everything in its power to complete our war effort and speed us on the road to victory. In many States the warring factions of the labor movement have forgotten internecine strife and formed victory committees.
This desire for a united labor effort to win the war has been given emphasis by the President in his appointment of six top leaders from the AFL and the CIO, who, together with Mr. Hillman, form what is in effect a national labor-policy council. The President consults with this group on all matters affecting working people in the prosecution of the war.
Labor has a definite obligation to help to convince employers and the general public that aliens and minority groups should receive decent treatment. There are still too many industries in America which exclude aliens and Negroes. Contrary to a widely held belief, there is no legal barrier to the employment of aliens in any factories having war contracts. It is only in those manufacturing plants which produce secret items for the Army or Navy that the permission of the armed services must be secured by the employer before aliens are hired. One-tenth of our population are Negroes. Many of them possess badly needed skills, more of them possess badly needed semiskills, all of them are anxious to do their part in the war production program. Too frequently employers hide their
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own prejudices behind the false statement that their white employees will not work beside Negro workers. The trade-union movement must scotch this lie and open the doors of opportunity and production to their Negro fellow workers. Democracy and efficiency alike demand that this ability and loyalty shall not go to waste. In all-out production every human resource must be utilized with sanity, with common sense, and with the conviction that no one shall be denied opportunity to participate in the war effort because of race, color, creed, or national origin.
The most important immediate phase of the task before us is the conversion of every available instrument of production to war work. Every worker in the United States has a stake in this. First, he is concerned with it because as a responsible American he wants our efforts to win the war to be 100 percent complete. Second, he must help determine if and how his own factory can be converted to the production of war materials.
The needs of our armed forces are so vast and diverse that there are few plants which cannot fabricate some parts on the immense list of needed war materials. Most of these plants, moreover, can be included in the operations of our arsenal for democracy after making some changes and adjustments in their equipment.
As a united nation, we are all going to do without every nonessential and luxury so as to release the maximum amount of productive resources, both mechanical and human, to war production. Raw materials must be conserved and so they cannot be wasted in the manufacture of nonessential civilian articles. We must redirect and revitalize all our resources, and we must be prepared for whatever hardships and dislocations may occur in the process.
War officials in Washington are aware of the problems that such upheavals in our industrial structure may create in communities both large and small. There are places where industrial activity has been curtailed and where immediate conversion to war
production is difficult. This means unemployment and temporary economic distress. There are other places where war industries have expanded so rapidly that the influx of new workers is creating all the social problems of crowding and congestion.
In total war, casualties on the industrial front are as inescapable as they are on the battlefront. The Government is doing all it can to minimize these hardships.
Only by cooperation on the part of management, labor, and Government can we accomplish the giant production task now before us. Spokesmen for both management and labor now meet and consult with the chiefs of the War Production Board industry branches on all questions relating to the most effective contribution of that particular industry to the war effort.
In this whole activity the final authority of course remains with the Government, where it belongs. No single individual or group has a monopoly on industrial “knowhow”; no one has a patent on constructive ideas. But we are able to pool the experience, the technical knowledge, the ingenuity of Government experts, workers, and management under centralized direction.
We dare not take our time in this vital job of conversion. A worker not yet transferred to a war job, a plant not yet converted to war output, must be reckoned in terms of planes and guns not produced, of keels not laid, of vital weapons of war neither fabricated nor delivered.
We all know that conversion from civilian to war purposes is going to cause many dislocations for workers, for businessmen, for whole industries, and for whole communities. There will be unavoidable temporary unemployment. No one group alone must be allowed to bear the brunt of the economic readjustments that will be necessary. The war effort is a national effort. We all have a stake in it. The cost, therefore, should be borne not alone by the two or three million most directly affected, or by their towns or cities, but by the whole national community. It is a certainty that it will be done that way.
16-27060-1
U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
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LABOR DIVISION WAR PRODUCTION BOARD WASHINGTON, D. C.
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GPO 16-27060-1