Evening star., 1938-05-28
Wages and Hours.

The wage-hour bill, entering wedge OF
governmental regimentation Of industrial
workers, has achieved the conference
stage in It's march toward enactment into
law. Representatives of the Senate will
sit down with representatives of the
House next week in an endeavor to recon-
cile the differing versions passed by the
two houses. The differences are radical
and fundamental. The Senate bill sets
up a new tribunal, a labor standards
board, to administer the act. The House
bill turns over the administration of the
law to the Secretary of Labor The Sem
ate bill provides for discretionary treat
ment; for wage and hour differentials.
The House bill makes no such provision.
One is flexible, the other is rigid.
What the conferees will bring forth as
q compromise remains to be seen. Re-
publicans of the North have insisted that
there shall be no differentials favoring
the Southland so have the Northern
Democrats. It was such bill that the
House passed. The Democrats Of the
south-there are no Republicans from
that area-will insist that the more fiexi-
bic provisions of the Senate bill be writ
ten into the proposed law.
In order to make the bill more palata-
bic the House wrote in sliding scale,
with the minimum wages starting at
twenty-five cents an hour and increas-
ing to forty cents hour at the end of
three-year period. It's maximum hours
start at forty-four week and decrease
to forty at the end of two years. South
erners and other potential opponents of
the legislation, for whose enticement
these sliding scales were inserted in the
House bill, must have realized, however,
that the bill really provides a forty-cent
minimum wage and forty-hour maxi
mum work week. Three years will pass
quickly. Presumably the standards Of
living so different in various parts Of the
country, and the cost OF living, which
also varies, are to be leveled during these
years-a period of adjustment.
If there is to be a wage-hour law, let
Congress at least take the better features
of the two bills and write them into the
conference measure. If the power Of life
and death over industries is to be placed
in governmental-and political-hands,
let the power at least be subject to re-
view by impartial tribunals. The coun-
try has already had demonstration of
the manner in which power may be used
with extreme partiality, once it is placed
in the hands of an executive body-the
National Labor Relations Board.
The wage-hour bill is recognized as
only preliminary step. The effort to
place Government more and more In
control Of wages and hours will follow as
surely as night follows day. Supporters
OF the legislation now before Congress
assert that labor will continue to bargain
collectively with employers for better
wages. shorter hours and improved work.
ing conditions. They even insist that
labor will be in better position, because
OF a Federal wage-hour law, to carry on
such bargaining. But once the Govern
ment has entered the field as COM
petitor to organized labor; once it has
the power to say what shall be the wages
and the hours of labor the labor unions
will be crowded out. That is the way
Government competition works, wheth-
er 1t be a competition with the en-
ployer or with the employe.