Evening star., 1944-07-12

District uses
Halls Listing
OF Domestics
Step Taken to
, Divert Workers to
Cafes, Loundries

The United States Employment
Service has stopped taking orders
for domestics in order to divert the
supply of those workers into such
labor short industries as restau-
rants and laundries, it was learned
today.
Domestic workers form one of the
largest labor pools in the city, ac-
cording to Ernest v. Connolly, act
Ing area war manpower director.
He reported that during the last
six months of l943 more than A
per cent of the workers referred to
jobs through the USES went into
domestic work.
Domestics are not covered by the
Job referral plan and do not have
to so to jobs through USES as long
as they stay in domestic service
nor do they have to present state
ments of availability to their en-
ployer
Whether domestics still will seek
Jobs through the USES when they
know their chances of getting house
work are slim is a question, Mr..
Connolly admitted.
A telephone call to The Star indi-
Gated, however. that some domestics
are seeking jobs on their own. Mrs.
M. F. Schoeffel. wife of a Navy
captain and an employe of the Office
of Censorship, told The Star that
as a result of an advertisement she
nlQrpH for Gny,o IL -,
ce1ved more than ITO calls.
After she had talked to a number
OF the prospective employees, she
said, she started asking where they
had worked last. Some had been
Government employees, some had
domestic jobs and others were high
school girls wanting summer Jobs,
she said
Her advertisement was for a girl
to live off the premises. Go general
housework, no laundry. She offered
$40 week.
Informed of the volume of calls.
Mr.. Connolly said the wage offered
might have something to do with it.
combined with the virtual elimina-
tion of the domestic service division
OF USES.
After laundries. restaurants and
other essential and locally needed"
establishments are stated, he said.
the USES may resume sending out
domestics on limited scale.
Meanwhile another step to help
laundries was taken yesterday at a
conference between VINO officials
and laundry owners. Effective Mon
day the Laundry Owners and Dry
Cleaners Association of the District
will be permitted to recruit and
refer workers for the laundries with
out clearing through the USES, al
though the hiring plan is not COM
pulsory and individual laundries can
continue to seek help from the USES
# they prefer to do so.
Laundry owners, Mr. Connolly
said, will be permitted to hire work.
ers coming to their plants if they
check each applicant with a central
file at the laundry associations
headquarters and stay below their
employment ceilings.
The laundries had sought this
hiring arrangement to save time
and enable them to put workers on
the job as fast as they apply Under
the hiring arrangement, however,
workers having no releases or state
ments of availability cannot be
hired.
Among complaints registered by
the laundry officials at yesterdays
meeting was charge that doctors
certificates have been used in some
cases by disgruntled laundry work.
ers as racket to secure their re-
lease from jobs on the ground of
personal hardship"
When VINO uncovered a similar
situation in HaGoton Roads, Va,
VINO official said, efforts of VINO
to question doctors resulted in the
response by medical authorities that
VINO had no right to question a
plVSicianS decision