The Waterbury Democrat., 1943-07-22
WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE HOME FRONT? - WAR PLANTS WILL MOVE TO WORKERS
Cities Lacking Labor May Lose Some Contracts { In New Scheme to Balance Nations Manpower

By PETER EDISON
 Waterbury Democrat Washington
 Correspondent.
 The country's manpower problems are going to be solved in each in- dividual community, says War Man. power Commissioner Paul V. Me Mutt. They will be solved by moving war contracts to the areas where there are surplus workers-not by continuation of the original policy of placing the contract and then eX- pecting labor to move to the jot and stay put. Handled in this way, Governor McNutt believes that the manpower problem can be solved on & voluntary basis without any compulsory nationa. service act.
 Failure to spot the good points of this procedure may have been the principal cause of confusion on the manpower issue during the past six month3 or a year though the cause of the confusion goes back to the beginning of the production effort. ShipyardS standing timber, mines have to be worked where they are, but faulty placing of other contracts in the early days, without refer ence to manpoWer supply, caused needless confusion.
 COMPANIES TRY PLAN
 Too many aircraft contracts were in the first instance placed on the west coast, where there was no surplus manpower. Labor rushed west to take those new jobs, but now that labor is mov- ing back home. Recruiting and transporting more labor to these jobs won't solve the problem The thing to do is move future contracts and sub-contracts into the areas where there is surplus manpower. Some of the aircraft companies are themselves follow ing this policy as one solution to their unbelievably high rates of job quitting.
 Looking at it the other way, for some time the Army refused to permit the placing of any im- portant contracts in the New York metropolitan area. The req son was that this was a strategic area, a most likely target for bombing raids. Yet there were 100000 unemployed in metropoli- tan New York for many months, and all this manpower wasted Today, with the policy broken down, that unemployment has been reduced to 10000 and it will go down further.
 Unemployment for the entire country has been reduced to less than a million, and Governor McNutt no longer considers it a problem. The problem now is the placing of contracts where there is adequate manpower. Areas that have more contracts than they can handle may have some of those con- tracts taken away from them and shifted to localities that don't have critical man-poWer shortages.
 PROTESTS DUE
 That may hurt local pride, may cause considerable yelling and political maneuvering, and it may give the appearance of causing still more manpower confusion. But 1t is the realistic approach The War Manpower Commission now believes it can see ahead to the end of 1943. It has surveyed every one of the 278 areas in which there is war production contract. It knows the available 1o hnr cl1NrN1y fhn Ior,o yodc IJrdnr existing contracts, the resulting shortages or surpluses. It can ap- prove or disapprove new contracts on the basis of the available man. power deficit or reserve. WING finds acute labor shortages in AZ areas, surpluses in 73, anticipates short ages in 163.
 The total manpoWer force will be 656 million by the end of the year, plus 108 million in the armed services. TWenty-six million workers have changed jobs. Every day 30,000 workers are being placed in new industrial jobs and 15,0O0 are going into the Army and Navy. Two million women who never be- fore held jobs in industry have been brought into the labor force.
 Now the point of these statis- tics, Governor McNutt emphasizes, is that they reveal shift in the labor force that would normally be recorded only in the course of generation or more. There is in- evitable confusion in such move mentS of great numbers of people, even in the course of lifetime. but these particular changes have been effected in less than two years. To control or at least to chan nel this confusion, Governor Mc- Mutt thinks he now has the clean 1 est organization in Washington. Very little of 1t. however, is in Washington. Under Lawrence A. Appley, WPMC's deputy administra- tor and executive director, the or ganization has been cut down and moved into the field.
 A vital part of the manpower organization are the 1900 full time, the 5000 part-time local of- fees of the U. s. Employment Serv- ice, which has taken a terrible kicking around.
 WAGES NOT REVISED
 Last December all the separate state employment services were merged under federal supervision through the War Manpower Com. mission. At the ime 1t was sup. posed that the eX-state employes would be given federal rates o1 pay, but Congress refused to sanc- tion this Result was that the force now charged with doing all the hir. ing in critical areas, has kept go. ing on not much placing 30,00(