The Potters Herald

Comment On World Events

David A. Morse, director-general of the International Labor Organization had some interesting things to say on labor productivity and the organized workers' attitude on it, at the ILO's 33rd general conference in Geneva. The conference, which opened June 7, was featured by the world's first official international debate on labor productivity.

Technically, the worker, employer and government delegates from most of the 60 member ILO nations were considering Morse's annual report. The ILO head, however has emphasized the vital importance of increasing labor productivity, not only in the world's under-developed regions, but in the industrially advanced countries, too.

Reporting on economic trends during the past year, Director-General Morse declared that governments can prevent lengthy periods of unemployment, a view which labor has long held.

"Since the war," Morse said, "there has been no mass unemployment due to a general decline in all sectors of effective demand, such as occurred in the 1930's. If this kind of unemployment again arises, understanding of the underlying factors will be much more adequate than it was then. There is no reason why any government should allow mass unemployment due to lack of effective demand to persist over a long period of time.

"Serious doubts are being felt as to whether the normal forces of international trade and finance will be sufficiently effective to close the gap when the United States terminates its program of emergency external financing, particularly its European Recovery Program.

"Since the end of the war, intra-regional trade, although it has expanded in Latin America compared with the prewar period, has declined drastically in Europe and Asia. This has been a major cause of the increased dependence of these two trading areas on imports from hard-currency areas. To restore this intra-regional trade is therefore an essential condition of a permanent reduction in the world's dollar deficit."

On the question of productivity, Morse gave the following report on labor's attitude:

"Recently there appears to have been a tendency on the part of trade unions to attach greater importance, in the national interests and in the interests of workers themselves, to measures to raise productivity, as distinct from measures to redistribute income. Coupled with this there has been a tendency towards the establishment in a growing number of countries of safeguards for the interests of workers and participation by trade unions in the administration of measures to raise productivity.

"In these circumstances, a trend of the greatest significance can be discerned in a number of countries. Though it cannot be said that the deep-rooted fear which many workers have of working themselves (or their mates) out of a job has been overcome, nevertheless a tendency can be observed for the attitude of cautious reserve often adopted by trade unions in the past towards measures to increase the productivity of labor to give way to a new attitude of positive and vigorous support for and cooperation in such measures, provided that they are accompanied by adequate safeguards for the interests of workers."