The Butler County press. [volume] (Hamilton, Ohio) 1900-1946, 1917-01-12
LARGELY A SEASONAL TRADE

Operatives Work Only About Twenty
Weeks In the Year-During the Dull
Periods There Is Practically No La
Dor Done-D fficuIty of Fixing Wage
Scales Satisfactory to Both Sides.
The cloak and suit industry, which
Is worth S1O0,O00,000 year, says the
New York World. and which was tied
up for many weeks by lockout and
strike involving originally 60,000 men
and women and at no time less than
$4,000 is peculiar and seasonal trade
quite out of range of the general infor-
nation of the public. The wages de-
manded by the workers, practically all
of whom are sewing machine opera
tives, appear, for this reason, to be
much higher than they really are.
A majority of the workers are stead
lily and intensively employed about five
months year, divided into two busy
seasons, one extending from Ian. to
March 10 and the other from July Is
to Sept. 80.
During these two ten week periods
the piece workers, who comprise near
ly 75 per cent of the industry, earn,
the manufacturers say, from $50 to
$40 q week The average according
to the union is $50, not more than 10
per cent receiving over that figure.
AS a matter Of fact, the earnings of
this class is In sharp controversy as
to the general average wage, the man
ufacturers claiming the average wage
earned under the scale Is higher than
admitted by the union By piece work
ers are meant finishers. operators and
piece tailors
The other % or 80 per cent of the
operatives, who work by the week, are
paid salaries ranging from $11 for skirt
flnishers to S2750 for cutters. The
salaries between these figures are:
Part pressers, $780, skirt basters,
SIS; skirt underpressers, SIS; Jacket
underpressers, $21; REFER underpress-
ers, $21; sample tailors, S23; skirt up
perpressers, S23; skirt cutters, S23.50:
REFER upperpressers, $50; Jacket up
perpressers. S25. AS to the wages OF
the by-the-week workers there is no
controversy
During these intensive seasons In
normal years every available hand is
employed, the workers being mostly
young men Approximately 10 to 70
per cent OF the rotal number of oper
atives In the Industry are women or
girls. AboEt Is per cent OF the oper-
atives are Italians; the balance, So per
cent Of them, are Jews
At the tail end of each season there
are three or four weeks when there
is a considerable volume of work, but
not enough to keep it from being duh
Between the tail ends and the next
busy season the shops have almost no
work at all, owing to the fact that the
designers are working up STYLES and
only samples are required.
Thus the wages earned in twenty to
thirty weeks have to be spread over
fifty-two weeks in estimating the wear
ly average earnings. There IS so little
work in the duh seasons that an op-
cording TO the union and not pick up
more than 30 cents or a dollar when
some little hurry up order drifts In.
There are several hundred different
scales Of wages in the cloak industry,
for the reason that there are several
thousand different styles Of cloaks and
suits, all mostly piece work 1t takes
an expert calculator to figure out In
each big shop, just how much is to be
paid the sewers for making this, that
or the other cloak or this, that or the
other part OF cloak or suit The basic
wage price is based on the amount of
work an operative can do In a day,
and the hundreds of different wage
prices are based on the number of
particular pieces or parts of the gar
ment that can be sewed in a day.
The great strike preceding the recent
one drove some of the biggest manu-.
facturers out of business and resulted
in establishing all over the Jewish dis.
tricts, but particularly in Brownsville
and Williamsburg, small shops employ
ing from three to twenty-five sewing
machine operators. They cut into the
trade of the big manufacturers, and
one of the objects of lhe recent lock
out and strike so far as the members
OF the Manufacturers Protective asso
citation is concerned, was to drive these
outsiders out of the trade and restore
the $100O0000O a year industry to it;
former centralized condition.