The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1930-08-29
BY LEO THOMPSON
I. L. L. L. Youth Organizer.

THE conditions of the working youth gener-
ally throughout the U. S. A. are getting
worse as a result of the crisis, unempIoyr Mt,
ETC.. but in the automobile industry
that the already intoerabIe speed-up system
has reached a stage unheard-of in any other
industry. Today in the auto industry, we have
young workers working and starving at the
same time, getting $12 to $14 week for and
days work, as in Briggs, etc.
In the mad competition for markets and
profits, The break-neck speed-up system is used
as the main way of cutting the living standards
of the whole working-cass. Before the pres
ent crisis in the auto industry set in, the pro-
portionate number of young workers was not
as big as that of the adult workers However,
with the sharpening of the already fierce COM
petition and growing unemployment, the bosses
setting higher speed-up production sched-
ules in shorter time-limits.
AS result of the fact that the young work
ers are better physically able to stand the
strain and the speed of the work, the adult
workers are being continually laid off, and
the young workers are mostly surviving in the
struggle for existence on the production line.
However, this does not mean that young
workers are not also unemployed, but their
relative percentage is not as great as that OF
recently at Murray Body and Chevrolet while
lay-offs of workers were taking place continu-
ally, it was the young workers who were
mainly retained on the job. So while thou
sands of young workers are suffering the
miseries of the unemployment, there are many
thousands that are undergoing systematic
starvation at the same time that they are en-
ployed on the job. Because of the fact that
it is precisely these young workers that are
best able to endure the inhuman speed-up sys-
TEN, the bosses consciously follow the policy
of replacing adult workers with young work
ers In greater numbers Especially young girl
workers, who slave for even much less than
the fellows dol. But while for time in the
past the young workers emporarily were best
able to keep pace with the increasing speed-up
system, we know that there is a limit to the
endurarce-power of the young workers. This
limit has already been reached, and the young
workers are actually living on wages below
their normal physical needs, amounting to
S1.5O to 81 day on piece-work scales.
Young Girls Do the Heaviest and
Dirtiest Jobs.
Young girls and women are being drawn into
the industry at an especially fast rate. Young
girls today in certain auto plants are doing
the fllthiest, heaviest and dirtiest jobs in the
industry such oil-sandng, metal polishing
and metal finishing for % cents and 80 cents
an hour, while adult men-workers used to make
S1.35 to $l50 an hour two or three years ago
Even now young girls are being taken in by
Briggs for duco-spraying for 30-35 cents an
hour; this duco-spraying job is very hard on
the lungs and even the strongest men are not
able to last more than four or five years on
the job.
In other words, the young workers are drawn
into industry under the most miserable cond-
lions of discrimination and exploitation. The
speed-up system is burning out the lives of
Young workers They work longer hours than
the adult workers. This is especially so in the
accessory parts section Of the auto industry
which is a youth industry. 1t is nothing un-
usual to find young workers Shaving 1886
hours week, such as at the Briggs and Muir
'ay plants. There is in addition to the discri-
nination in wages and hours, the rotten piece