The Wilmington morning star., 1940-10-23
In Washington
BY BRUCE CATION

the CONSUMPTION act has tossed a
hefty monkey wrench into the ma
chinery of the Social S ecurity
Board, and Congress will undoubt-
ely be called on to extract same
before it finishes its work for the
year.
AS things stand now, men called
up for service stand to lose GER
tain rights, both under the federal
old age and SURVIVOR insurance
acts and under the unemployment
compensation law.
For instance: The amount of un-
employment compensation a man
is entitled to d e p e n d S on the
amount of insured employment he
has had during the preceding year.
A man who is in the draft army
is not, of course, going to need
employment insurance while he is
in uniform; but when he finishes
his year of training he will have
spent an entire year in a non-in-
sured job-and hence, for the fol-
lowing year, will be extremely shy
on unemployment insurance pro-
lection.
In other words, his year of serv-
ice will simply cancel the pro-
lection he has built up.
AVERAGE WAGE
WILL GO DOWN
The draftee's rights under old
age and survivors insurance will
be somewhat less drastically af-
fected. He will spend an entire
year in a non-covered occupation.
Hence, on the Social S ecurity
Boards books, his average wage
on which the insurance he or his
survivors will be lower than it
would have been if he had stayed
out of the army.
1t is the unemployment insur-
ance angle which is worring Off
Gals of the Social Security Board
most. They expect that when the
first year of training ends, a great
many draftees will meet some de-
lay in finding jobs. Legally, a
drafted worker is entitled to have
his old job back; in practice, it is
believed this will be rather hard
to enforce. The boards experts
figure some form Of unemployment
allowances will be prettv badly
needed when the draftees 60 back
to civil life-and yet as the law
now stands, not a man jack will be
entitled to any.
TWO REMEDIES
SUGGESTED
Two ways of remedying the sit
uation have been suggested.
One is simply to freeze" every
draftee's status as of the date of
his entering the service: to rule
that his rights to all benefits under
the social security act would be
the same when he came out of the
army as they were when he went
in. One objection to this is it would
not help the man who had c
mulated no benefits before he was
drafted; another is that the states
might thereafter be called on to
pay unemployment insurance for
a period during which they had
collected no payroll taxes.
The solution preferred by Chair
man Altmeyer of the Social Secu-
rity Board would call for amend
ing the social security act so as
to make army service a covered"
job. The army then would report
to the board the wages paid to
each man, and would deduct the
proper tax from each soldiers pay
envelope. One thing Altmeyer likes
about this is that the man who
had not previously been in a COW
cred job could start building up
some benefits for himself.
II the act is to be amended,
Congress will have to do some
thing this fall. Any change in the
unemployment insurance title will
require action by all the state leg
lslatures. They convene in Janu-
airy; if they are to act, Congress
must complete it's part of the job
ahead of time.
THE FINEST