Imperial Valley Press

Labor Launches Anti-Service Law Campaign
48-Hour Work Week Sought in Work-Fight Bill

By DEAN W. DITTMER
WASHINGTON, Jan. 15. (UP)—Organized labor formally opened its campaign against national service and work-or-fight legislation today coincident with the start of what appeared to be a drive for imposition of a statutory 48-hour week in essential war industries.

Chairman Andrew J. May (D.) Kentucky, of the house military affairs committee, urged prompt enactment of a work-or-fight bill with provisions to put all essential war industries on a 48-hour-work-week basis. He said in an interview he would offer this proposal as an amendment to his bill to force all 18-45 year old men into essential jobs on threat of induction into the army.

Lewis G. Hines, legislative representative of the American Federation of Labor meanwhile, told the house military committee that present manpower shortages were caused principally by frozen wage level in certain plants.

He said wage increases in plants where production speed-ups were needed would have no sufficient inflationary effect because they would involve relatively few plants and, in the main, products bought by the government.

CALLED DISCRIMINATION

Hines insisted that national service legislation would discriminate against labor by forcing it to work at low pay to provide profits for employers.

Albert Hamilton, Vienna, Virginia, farmer, appearing for the Socialist party, also attacked May's work-or-fight bill. He said the manpower problem did not justify a labor draft, that voluntary recruitment methods had not been exhausted, and that a manpower draft was an "un-Democratic" device which would hamper production.

He recommended breaking the Little Steel formula and granting wage increases where necessary to recruit and hold war workers. He also urged a permanent fair employment practices commission to insure full use of Negro labor, an expanded housing program for war workers, and "adequate planning" by procurement agencies.