11 Saw a very interesting editor- the other day in the Hearst Spapers. The editorial pointed ‘the importance of our war quction and said the American @cers are not doing enough to this preduction out. € editorial writer said—“‘look ussia, they are producing yellously, they are working hours, they are working hard, out any disputes about wages. * ean’t American workers do same?” ~ ben Mr. Heart begins to ask ‘eo look at Russia and copy ijia, it is permissible, I think, me to speak a few words t the Soviet Union at a trade #1 meeting in introducing the sct of production. WAST of all I want to say that Mir. Hearst is too radical. We ® ot follow the example of the #2t Union. We have to find our way because our system is rent in this country. In the Bt Union they have what is d socialism. Im the United is we have what we call capi- a. In the Soviet Union they ® sroducing in a socialist way. we have to find out how oduce in a capitalist way for war. So Mr. Heart is wrong _he tells you to copy Russia, though we can learn much Russia about production, be- our first problem in this ry is how to produce for war capitalism. The difference | s itself immediately when we tine wages. i@ reason why in the Soviet n wages do not constitute ‘y serious problem in produc- is because there the worker ts that even if he doesn’t get +s that he might think he t*to have, at any rate, what ioesn’t get remains in the S of the government — his snment, and is used for the and for nothing else. There- as long as he gets enough Bs to purchase his regular iin of food and clothing, and 63 all he can spend his money inyway during the war, he a't care much about any more i esr, for if he had it he would & put into into government fs anyway.-It is his govern- s, the same government that the industries and is go- lo take care of him and his ren after the war. We haven't that in this country. In this iry we have capitalism, The ties, the industries belong to tapitalist class, and what we up in wages does not go to royernment. It goes into the tte pockets of a group of capi- Ss. SARDLESS of what our sys- -em is, capitalist or socialist, iare with the workers in the +t Union one great interest— .t of Hitler and the Axis. -her we think capitalism is better system, or socialism, is an idle question now for the duration of the war. We don’t even debate it because we are in this war and we have to win it the way we are, and in the United States we have got to win this Sa EARL BROWDER War under the capitalist system. Therefore we have to find out how to make the capitalist system work. And since the capitalists themselves, who are in charge of that, are not doing a job that satisfies us, we have to help the Capitalists to learn how to run their own system under war con- ditions, ARLY in the war there was officially adopted the program to set up labor-management pro- duction committees. The govern- ment blessed the idea; manage- ment at least gave a grudging assent, and the labor unions were enthusiastic for it and labor went out to increase production. The experience of labor has not been a happy one, and today I am sorry to say that in all my survey of labor-management production committees, I found only a hand- ful that were really functioning in anything like the way that they should. Qne of the main reasons for that has been that the employers have surrendered the leadership of their class to that small sec- tion among them who~are against the development of labor-manage- ment committees; they are afraid you workers might get too ambi- tious if you learn something about Management; they are so short- sighted in their greed for profits that they are actually penalizing iInereased production, rewarding sloth and indifference and pun- ishing improvement of produc- tion, This is above al] expressed in current employers’ wage poli- cies. age Poliey In ar Prodetion By EARL BROWDER [very happy to address such a representative gathering }of trade unionists. I want to talk about some of the prob- s of production, problems which are very vital to all of us, dur entire country and to the world. The war is being ght on the basis of production. Our country has the great- ‘productive economy of any country in the world. It would mm that we should be well fixed for the war. But we find, te than.a year after our official entrance into the war, our ntry is still not able to make full use of its economy. | Bees Woveniber I issued a pam- phlet on war production problems in which T tried to point out how some of these problems could be solved. I pointed out that the proper wage policy (once we accept the principle of wage stabilization) for the expansion of war production, required increased earnings for every worker to correspond with the increased production. There can be no maximum uti- lization of the economy of this country for the war until we Straighten out this wage question and establish this principle—that Since wage rates are stabilized, stabilization must prevent reduc- tion in wage rates as well as in- crease in wage rates; that wages are to be the expression of the prevailing rate of reward based on production, and, as production goes up, earnings must go up cor- respondingly; that the best wage policy is one which gives an added incentive to increase production, so that with a certain higher de- -gree of increased productivity gees a rise even in the rates upon which earniligs are based, be- cause of the reduction in costs thereby achieved. Iz collective bargaining relation- ships were operated by the em- ployers without resistance, and if this wage principle were estab- lished, we could have such an in- crease in production in this coun- try that would startle everybody; we could have a general increase in productivity that would give us in the course of six menths or @ year twice as much war pro- duction as we have today. It seems to me that the union which has most clearly developed the correct wage policy for the War period is the United Elec- trical and Machine Workers of America. From the first days of the war it stood for increased production, and for correlating Wwage-earnings to production, on the basis of labor-management cooperation. The statement by the General Officers in UE News of Jan. 16, outlining policies for wage negotiations in 1943, are sound, especially the summation, which says: = “To sum up, wage considera- tions this year must be based upon: “First, stabilization of the econ- omy through an over-all produc- tion and economic program. York City. @ What should be the wage policy of trade unionists under wartime conditions? Labor generally feels that wage stabilization should not mean wage-freezing. Revision in wage rates in many industries are vitally necessary. As a result, many Canadian and United States trade unions are beginning to propose the in- centive wage scheme, based on increased wages for inereased production. An outline of this important new policy, required study for all trade unionists, is given in the following excerpts from a speech by Earl Browder to a gathering of trade union leaders in New “Second, immediate establish- ment by the WLB of a wage for- mula te remove the gross inequity between wage rates and the cost of living, such formula to be suf- ficiently flexible to keep pace with the rising living cests. “Third, increases to remove un- justifiable and disruptive wage differentials. ‘Fourth, negotiation of definite, detailed procedure for putting the principle of equal pay for equal work for women into practice. “Fifth, protection of rates and increased earnings for incentive and day workers alike for in- creased output. I HIND one weakness only, in the arguments that back up this summation of policy; that is, not enough emphasis upon and backing up of the fifth point, which, in the long run, will be found to be the most important. Throughout the labor movement we have not fully realized the great possibilities of this question, based upon already established governmental policy, and there- fore we have not done enough to put it into practice. Many wage-increases which have been agreed upon by the employers and rejected by the Labor Board, need not even have been based upon increased production which was already achieved but not recog- nized in computing wages; when these increases were based upon cost-of-living arguments instead of production arguments, then they had to go before the board. Now let me add the observation that we should not blame the War Labor Board for not apply- ing the principle of relating wages to production, if the labor move— ment does not press for the prin- ciple and base its arguments thereon. We must ask the board to apply it. The main practical task is for us to become better ‘labor law- What's Ailing The Recent defeats suffered by the Japanese in South Pacific fighting, in particular their. staggering setback in the Battle of the Bismark Sea, indicates more sharply than ever a ten- dency by the Japanese high command during past months of “sending a boy to do a man’s job,” servers put it. This can be the only conclusion drawn from the fact that in that battle they lost a convoy totalling 22 ships, carrying an entire divi- sion of infantry, yet made no real attempt to protect that valuable shipment with either aircraft carriers, battleships or heavy eruisers. What did they bank on, know- ing that, plane for plane, they were about three times weaker than we? They seem to have banked on the weather, which was Supposed to remain foul un- til they reached Lae but somehow didn’t. But that is a slim reason as some military ob- for what they did. There must have been another. And that, many believe, is sim- ply that the Japenese haven’t got the stuff. They are short of air- eraft carriers, they are short of transports and ships generally, and they are short of men. Consider their offensive in China. They struck three weeks ago on six or seven fronts. They openly said that they were going to knock China out of the war. But what do we see now? The offensives have not made any ap- preciable headway and the Japan- ese already talk of “mopping up.” yers” than ever before, and argue our case better before the public, before the employers, before the War Labor Board. (ey NE further word on the bonus System versus incentive wages. The main point is this: that all the old-time methods of inereasing production which labor and the trade unions quite rightly rebelled against, because they were arbitrary and harmful, were tied up with what was called the “bonus system." We should make clear our position to all those methods, by absolutely refusing to carry over the old term “bonus system” to apply to any of the new and unobjectionable methods of computing the incentive ware rates. And let us remember this too, that if we find in our ex-— perience that “incentive wage rate systems” are not worked out very. carefully in the interests of the workers as well as of production, then the old opprobrium that sticks to “bonus” will rise to dis— credit even the better methods. Bad applications can ruin the reputation of good principles. Under these circumstances it is clear that the trade union cannot relax for one moment in the most zealous protection and promotion of the wofkers’ money income from wages, consistent with the main war-economy policies adopt- ed by the government and accept- ed by the labor movement. Wage-policy can be made to con- tribute to the expansion of war production, provided it takes into account the needs of labor, the prime mover in production. Such policy is consistent with the inter- ests of the employers, and of the nation as a whole. Therefore the trade unions are performing not only their special function for la- bor, but also a patriotic duty to the nation, when they fight for such a wage policy. ikado? We know what that means: their offensives were a fizzle. What General Chennault said of the Japanese Air Force can, I think, be said of their armed forces in general: it seems they are on the decline, with the ex- ception of the Kwantunge Army which has been carefully hus- banded, reinforced, pampered, and saved. This is the army which stands poised on the border of the USSR and the Mongolian People’s Republic. It represents approxi- mately one-half of the total Jap- anese land army, with a good proportion of the air force. It would appear that the time has come to strike energetically in the South Pacific. Action of our task forces in the northern Solomons might presage such ac— tion in the near future.