The Waterbury Democrat., 1945-02-16

| Region of Indiana, Illinois, and Wis consin-has a labor force estimated | at 1,883,00, of whom over a million | are in war production. Every pro- l curement agency has contracts in | Chicago Army, Navy, aircraft, Maritime Commission and 50 per cent of the Quartermaster Corps processed foods are procured in Chi cago packing plants.
 GOVERNMENT TAKES ALL
 Many of these Chicago area con- tracts are without ceiling, meaning that the government will take all of the items that can be produced, without limit Chicago can there | fore use all the labor it can get for war industries. The question was where to get it.
 Toward the end of last year Chi | cago area manpoWer officials. | through the 18 area offices of the U. s. Employment Service, were crying for 60,000 more workers in essential industries. That figure has been successively cut down to 40,- GOO to 10000 and to 10000 through very simple and apparently work able plan which has been found &C., ceptable to employers, labor union officials, and the working people themselves.
 Point of attack on this problem was the 650,000 people employed in the trade and service industries First step was to put all women workers under priority referral, meaning that women could no longer switch from one job to an- other unless they had USES re- lease
 Net step was an order to cut 10 per cent from the labor force of all non- essential industries employing more than 10 people, the 10 per cent cut to be paid off in male workers. Thus if an employer had 200 workers, half of them women he would have to release 20 men
 These employers could not be given credit for the men they re- leased, however, unless they were men who could be placed by USES, unless they were accepted by the essential industry employer to whom they were referred and un- less they had a written guarantee they'd get their old job back from their original employer and that all their seniority and other union rights would be protected during their temporary employment in es- sential war industries. These three conditions, particularly the last, solo the idea to the labor organizations and furthermore they prevented the, non- essential industry employers from dumping" their least efficient workers.
 WAR JOB - OR ELSE
 If a transferred workman didn't have the necessary skill for the job to which he was referred, he could go back to his original employer. If he refused to take war job to which he was referred, without giv- ing good reason, he was laid off to think 1t over If he still refused he was fired and he couldn't get an- other job, because he would have no USES release.
 Employers in the non-essential trades were given certain attitudes. All eHIplOycI Ol IOU WOIhtIo, Ol whom 180 might be women, did not have to release the men, but paid off in women. And some 75,000 em- ployers of less than eight workers were given authority to hire any woman who had not had a job in the last 60 days-thus tapping a new source of unskilled labor to i'll up the gaps.
 Deadline for release of the first five per cent was set at February 15, the second five per cent to be re- leased by March 15 for the tri-state region, though this was moved up to March for the two-county Chi- cago area.
 The results, as announced by Dean Spencer, show how Chicago has been able to shift it's work force to meet war needs. What this all means is that Chicago has found tens of thousands of workers it did mt know 1t had and that 1t will get many more millions of dollars worth of war contracts as result.