Evening star., 1933-03-26
World Agreement to Cut Work Week
Will Be Pressed at Parley in June

Furthermore, the effects are almost
uniform regardless to the nature of the
| industry.
while most of the experiments with
shorter hours have been voluntary on
the part of employers, in some cases
in the Free City of Danzig, Germany,
Italy, Australia, Poland, Czechoslovakia,
Belgium and Argentina-federal and
municipal authorities have taken the
matter in hand. In Germany recently
municipal employees increased 10000
through adoption of shorter hours.
! In both public and private work it
has been established that reduction of
hours, to a point where those employed
are still able to maintain their custom
ary standard of living, has resulted in
increasing the number employed by
anywhere from rs per cent to 331s per
cent.
Although the idea of the 40-hour
week is supposed to have originated
in the United States (Ford factories
adopted it in 1926 and the United
workers on five-day week as a per-
manent thing) such countries as
Czechoslovakia, the industrial center
of midi Europe, outstrip the United
States. In 1881 Bata Shoe Works was
already employing $4,000 workers under
the system, where the year before, when
the system was introduced, the company
had $4,000 employees working As hours
per week. Large chocolate works, motor
car factories and other industries in
Czechoslovakia have followed the ex-
ample Of the shoe industry with sue
cess.
In the sugar industry in Western
Poland 4,500 additional workers were
absorbed recently despite the fact that
sugar production was less than IN pre-
vious years.
The brewing industry in Germany, as
a result of introduction of the 4O-hour
week has been able to retain 5000 en-
ployes which otherwise would have been
discharged had the 48-hour system been
maintained.
Save Jobs Of 1900.
| The Minerva Automobile Works In
Belgium, going on the 40-hour week as
temporary measure have announced
! that they can retain 400 workers who
were to have been laid off.
| In the coal mines of Lower Silesia,
reduction of working hours prevented
the discharge of 1900 miners.
The electrical works of Robert Bosch
Gle at Stuttgart actually increased their
staff recently by 300 through institu-
ton of a six-hour working day while
the Hirsch- -Kupfer- Messing Werk A.
| G. at Eberswalde, Germany, added 200
skilled workers after adopting 40-hour
week.
In Holland, the biggest wood working
firm, c. Bruynzee tried out 40-hour
week in place of the regulation 48 hour
week and found that besides re-engag-
ing all the workers it had previously
discharged it was able to raise wages
from 73 to 78 cents per hour.
In the tin-plate industry in South
Wales England, it has been decided
to institute a six-hour shift in place
of the present eight-hour work day.
The firm of Richard Thomas g. Co.,
which controls 70 per cent of the tin
!. plate industry, estimates that unem-
ployment in that industry will prac-
tically be wiped out by the reform If
it proves economically successful.
The question of reduction of wages
through reduction of working hours has
not as yet been satisfactorily solved.
In most instances workers take small
cut, but not enough to seriously reduce
their standard of living. In many cases
however, the present scale IS maintained
and in some cases it has even been in
creased. A. F. J.