The Waterbury Democrat., 1942-01-07

COSoh JIlGSc l0UU OluCGS should be expected to function with more of look at the national point of view
 Once the USES boys are on the Job, they are supposel to give the working force of the plant good look, classifying the employees by skills, trades, and numbers.
 At the same time USES is called in, the OPMs CDD-the Contract Distribution Division - should be called in. ODD hasn't as many offices as USES, but USES men should know where the closest CDD branch hangs out. The function of CDD in this case Nculd be to send in an engineer for a plant survey, checking on the machines and equipment, what it has been making for civilian use, what it might be making for war use.
 EXPLAINS ALL
 The buck is then passed to Army and Navy contract divisions. Here is plant A, with a factory of so many square feet floor space. so many machines of such and such a type, so many employees of such ana such skills and whadoyougot for 'em to do?
 Under ideal conditions, the Army or Navy would say, dandy! Plant A has just what it takes for what we want and let 'em bid on a piece of this. Employer A gets contract, workers keep on working, and every body is happy and gets lousy pros- l porous on war orders.
 But too often these ideal condi- 1 tions don't exist The plant is too small, or it can't quite convert, or the USES and the CDD and the Army and Navy don't cooperate. Nothing happens after the surveys are made and employer A, sore and discouraged, shuts up the plant and starts looking for a job right along with his employees.
 It is to overcome these difficulties that ODD and USES are bending their best efforts now. CDD was late getting reorganized under Floyd w. Odlum to meet it's problem after false and somewhat ineffective start It will be heard from more and more during 1922. USES, just fed erallzed into more cohesive unit and with a young new director in the person of John J. Corson, has yet to make it's mark. But if there is any one agency which has the primary job of mobilizing the na- tion's manpoWer for maximum war production, it is this United States Employment Service. OPM's labor division calls for shipyard or air. craft workers by the thousand. USES tries to find them.
 SERIOUS ....
 UNEMPLOYMENT
 In spite of all the demand there is for manpoWer today, the biggest problem is still unemployment. Army and Navy may pick off from seven to 10 million of teh best men. Gov ernment civil service will take it's million more. In the highly skilled trades, employers bid against each other Specialized training groups like the merchant marine or the air craft factories call for their quotas. Farm labor may run short next year. New powder and shell loading plants in remote non-industrial sec- tions drain their areas of the avail able labor surplus.
 In spite of this, there are still some five million unemployed, and the estimates of additional workers who will lose their jobs, as plants making goods for normal civilian consumption are forced to shut down through inability to get metals and raw materials, run as high as two and half million It is a par adoxical situation if there ever was one, to find the country in a war boom with potential unemploy- ed force of seven million or so.
 The temper of the times, says Cor son, is to let the little fellow go. h. stead of helping the small manufac- turer or dealer find war jobs and keep going, the tendency has been to sacrifice this productive capacity if it can't readily be converted to war work. When that happens, the problem is to find jobs in war in- dustries for the displaced workers.
 In some cases it's easy. Shutting down of an automobile assembly plant at Norfolk, Va. simply meant that the auto mechanics went to work in the shipyards. Or displaced tire workers at Akron drove over to the powder plant at Ravena, o. But most of the time it isn't so easy.