The Daily Worker Newspaper, February 22, 1930, Page 5

AFTER SAPPING WORKERS’ LIVES IN SPEED-UP, THROWS THEM ON STREET Same Story of Hard Slavery in Denartment After Departmen (By « Worker CHICAGO, Iil.—In the Western Electric Co. of Chicago there have heen mass lay-offs of the workers. being Inid off two or three at a time but in thousands. Flectric has a hundred and one different ways of knocking workers out of jabs so the bosses can make more profits, Et ~which takes the place of the workers. THREATEN NEW BIG LAY-OFF IN MAJESTIC RADIO Workers Boo Arrest of TUUL Speakers (By a Worker Correspondent) CHICAGO — At the Majestic Radio Corp. every day many young and adult workers are being laid off. Thruout the shop there is talk of very big layoffs in the near future. Hoover’s “Prosperity” has hit the Majestic workers very hard in the form of bigger unemploy- ment. Wait for Work and Freeze vot ve t Correspondent) The workers at the Western are not The Western They have big machinery lat the same time they are replecine | whatever old workers there are yet jon the job, by young workers who are gréatly underpaid and are made |to turn out more work. | Not only that, but the young work- ers also suffer from the terrible | speed-up system, which is known as lithe “Bogey” system. The Bogey | system is a new system whereby the | bosses find out just how much each one turns out and at the same time uses this as a club to speed-up the workers, ‘Those :vorkers that can- |not keen up with what the hosses |want them to put out, are thrown out of jobs first. ‘They use the Bo- gey system to pit one worker against the other worker and in this way divide the workers. Fire 15,000 in Month. | Inthe last month-there were about | 15,000 workers laid off including | thousands of young workers, The | bosses are trying to blind the young | workers at the Western as to the ' yotten conditions and also to prevent them from organizing by keeping Recently the Trade Union Unity | vp company sports. But the young League organized a factory demon- workers must not be fooled by this. stration at the gates of the Majes- | heard many young workers say, tie. There were around 300 unem- | ployed young and old workers, many of them being girls, waiting | in front of the Employment Office. | They had to wait outside in freez-| ing weather for over 2 1-2 hours} before they were told that no work is to be had, The TUUL in Action t The Trade Union Unity League speaker mounted an automobile and pointed out to the workers the) cause of unemployment and called | upon them to demonstrate on) Mareh 6, | The workers displayed their eag- erness to listen to the speakers of |* the TUUL, The bosses of the Ma-| jestic called upon the police to} break the demonstration of unem- | ployed workers, This resulted in the arrest of the girl who spoke in the name of the TUUL. The workers | booed at the arrest. No sooner! was she arrested when a speaker) for the Youth Committee of the) TUUL mounted the auto and began to expose the police department as/| tools of the bosses. | Workers Demand Prisoners Be | Free The police seized him and placed him under arrest. The crowd in| the meanwhile demanded the release | of the two speakers of the TUUL} and resisted the attempts of the police to break up the demonsra-/ tion. | In the meanwhile the two placed under arrest were taken thru the factory where thousands of men} and young girls are heavily ex- “Damn this dirty job. We should get more money for this work, ete.” | The young workers, together with the adult workers, in order to im- prove their conditions, must organize and fight for it. Here’s Real Slavery. In Department 6371 we find quite | a few yuung workers working et the ryotter rosin and pitch work for 38¢ an hour on the basis of gang picce work. In department 5736 we find a few workers working as janitorg lifting heavy pans: The Western Electric has a safety gan of not to lift heavy pans but the young workers should ask for more help, that is, extra men, then the boss answers, “Tf you can’t do the job, we will get some one else that can.” In department 6344, |building 34-4, we find young work- ers poliehing and buffing dust all over the building. This is very in-/| jurious to their health. In department 6341, building 39-4 we don’t as yet find young workers employed there, however, it won't be very !ong before young workers will be put in to replace the older workers. This department is very stinky. not fit for a human being to work in. It even makes you sick to walk thru it, let alone working a whole day in it. | In department 9385, building 32-2, | $4 FALL RIVER we find young girls taking the place ef men and working at such work as the punch press. These girls are forced to lift heavy pans and gen- erally have to work very hard. In the juck department, building &6-1, we find young workers work- | Mills, normally employs 2,506 work- | ploited and brought to an office in|ing the dirty. oily, junk There are} the factory. There the detective in| young girls and women working at charge cursed like anything at the arrested and delivered some heavy | punches to both the girl speaker of | the TUUL and the speaker for the Youth Committee of the TUUL. After warning the arrested they were both released. ® Come Out on March 6. They both went back to the crowd of unemployed and spoke to them once again. ‘The workers this filthy junk. | In department 6337, building 37-2, we find that there was a big !ey-off of about 60 percent ef the entire de- partment. All over the plant, in jevery department, we find big lay: | offs. Join the Army? The bosses tell workers to join the army and navy Rats! and be real “patriots”, By that they |New York has sent many of these showed there indignation when they|tean that the young workers who | bosses to Fall River and New Bed-/ were told of what had happened | have worked hard at the shops, and the unempoyed | labor, to those that were arrested. The demonstration proved that they will fight against unemploy- ment and will come out in huge numbers on March 6 and demon- strate together with the employed werkers against unemployment. MAJESTIC SLAVE. ‘All Day Trotiers’| They’re Humans Too- WillOrganize (By a Worker Correspondent) Recently, we, the messengers employed by the Western Union Telegraph Co., were notified that’ rates for messages and packages were reduced and at the same time were told that there were 4,000 boys waiting for our jobs if we left, The Western Union, knowing if we left we would hardly be able to find a job, so we are forced to hang on to the rotten job of run- ning around all day for as little as $2 and most of the time less, With a very big cut on rates for delivery of messages, there is no chance that you can make more than $2 8 day. All around me I_ hear from messengers if they could get an- other job they would take it. No matter how bad the job was. \\ Well, the thing for “all-day trotters,” as we are called, is to orpnize. We youig workers should join the Young Commu- | nist League. —“ALL DAY TROTTER.” |were thrown out cf work by their lgreedy bosses, should take up arms | |workers at the Westerr must lay and shoot down the workers of other countries in the interests of the same bosses that threw them out of a job. All young workers at the Western must fight against unemployment, against the speed-up system, and! low wages. Demand a living wage! Demand the six hour day and five- day week for all workers under 18! Fight for unemployment insurance! Down with the Bogey system! All young workers at the Western Electric should join that organiza- | tion that at all times fights for the interests of the young workers — the Young Communist League, The down their tools on » ‘*...7 26th and join hands with thousands of other workers in demonstrating against unemployment: —Western Electric Worker. WESTERN ELECTRIC DISCHA DAILY WORKER. EW YORK, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1930 Page Five SS Western Electric Scraps Thousands Like These Thousands of Western Electric workers have been cast on the streets after their strength was sapped away in the speed-up. They'll make themselyes heard in the great unemployment demonstrations “PROSPERITY"?- A MYTH TO METAL WORKERS IN OHIO Tens of Thousands Laid Off in Hamilton: (By a Worker Correspondent) HAMILTON, Ohio.—In some cit- ies around here as much as 60 or 70 per cent of the workers are un- employed. In Hamilton the situa- tion of the workers is shown by the following facts: The Moesler Bank Safe Co., in normal times, employs 2,500.. At present employs no more than 400, mostly party time. Harrington-Hall Safe W: normal times, employs about 100, Long and Alstatter Machine Tools Co., in normal times, m1" 2 | now employs less than 200. | Schuller and Bennhoffer Woolen | rks, in 0, now | ers, at present only 700, all part time. Hamilton Knitting and Silk two months ago had over 2,000 workers, now only 500, The Production Plant has re- duced the number of workers em- ple; ad in the last month or <0 from 3,800 to 1,000 and still continues to lay off more every day. The Niles Too! Works has em- ployed over 2,000; now it is prac- tically closed, The, Hoover-Owen-Rontchler Tool | Works is down to 200, for ". had | 1,500 workcvs. | Half the 3,500 workers of the Champion Paper Co, only tv» weeks | ago were laid off and the wages) of the rest cut 50%. The Hamil-| ton unemployed workers see Hoo-; ver's talk of increased employrent| as.a joke, only let’s turn “ve joke oa/ the capitalist system, | Hamilton unemployed demonstrate on March 6, unemployment. —HAMILTON WORKER. Mills, | workers, against NEEDLE WAGE That’s the Weekly Pay; Bosses Flee New York) (By a Worker Correspondent) | FALL RIVER, Mass.—The needle trades manufacturers of all big cities are forced to go to the smal! industrial cities and get cheap The recent needle trades strike in| ford, These exploiters, knowing that unemployed workers in these two textile cities have opened many needle trade shops. | Just in Fall River and New Bed- | ford there are about 30,0000 unem- ployed textile workers, | The young workers are the most | exploited in the needle trades shops here. These young workers are receiving the average pay of $4 to $5 a week. In Fall River today there are over 20 big shops in the needle | trades with over 5000 workers, | mostly young. | About two months ago 20 young girls in the sewing shop formed a group and walked out on strike a few days-but lost the strike be- cause it did not have any leader- ship. The TUUL must send out an or- ganizer to Fall River and one to New Bedford and smash these ex- Write About Your Conditions for The Daily Worker. Become a Worker Correspondent. ploiting needle trades bosses. Fall River needle trades young workers are waiting for the answer.—M. P, March 6. At left, Western lectric workers operating a 500 ton punch press. Right, workers assembling units in a Western Electric plant. —< v4 All Ready For March 6! Some of the Milwaukee unemployed workers who took part in the second large jobless demonstration held in that city, demanding im- mediate relief for the 50,000 unemployed workers in Milwaukee. They'll make themselves heard on Merch 6, when millions of unm- ployed workers throughout the world demonstrate under the leader- ship of the Communist Party. WITH THE SHOP PAPERS L! ST week we let loose in boosting the good qualities of the shop papers we réviewed. We showed off some of the snappiest ex- cerpts from those papers. Now we're going to do a little panning. Constructively, of course, and as a stimulus for more and better But we won't forget the new papers that we got in shop papers. this week. GAL. FARM HANDS PREPARING FOR NEXT BIG STRIKE |And Misleaders Had| Better Beware! (By a Worker Correspondent) BRAWLEY, Imperial Valley, Cal. —The ranch that we are working on | we get $3.00 a day wages, out of| factory, | which we must pay all of our ex- |penses. We are covering canta- loupes. It is very hard on the back, legs, and in fact on every part of the body. The boss wants to make us jwork very fast, but we all refuse |to work so hard. The other day | the boss told us he will cut our pay} |to $2.85 per day. We told him we | would not stand for it, that we would strike; the bess did not cut} our pay. Also, there are young workers; working with us. The boss tried to | make their wages 50 cents per day less than ours, but we protested and the young workers now get the same pay as the adults. On many other ranches the young workers are paid less wages than the adults. Some ranches pay as | low as 25 cents n hour for even the ladult workers. This is because they | are not organized. We must all or- | ganize in the Agricultural Workers Industrial League. Only then we can win higher wages and better liv- | ing conditions for al! of us. | We lost the last strike because RGES THOUSANDS IN “BOGEY” SYSTEM IT’S A DIFFERENT STORY IN THE U. §, $B, ELECTRICAL FACTORIES Seven-Hour Day; They Are Working Hard; All Get Out to Build Own Workers Government Read the letter of a worker in the Western Electric Company in Chicago on this page, and then contrast the conditions described by the American werker with the conditions described by these workers in the huge Soviet electrical equipmént plant, “Electroaparat.” Enough said—these two letters, to any American worker who hi been ground under the iron heel rationalization. Here is the Soviet electrical plant workers’ letter. Workers in the Westinghouse, Edi- son, General Electric, Western Elec- trie plants, answer these workers, They want to hear from you. | se 8 | To the Metal Workers of U.S.A. The workers of the factory “Elec- | troaparat” turn to you with a wish | to organize direct and regular con- | tact with workers’ organizations | connected with the metal industry | in the United States. Our factory is the only one in the U.S.S.R. which produces equip- |ment for electrical stations of our country. All Are Organized: We have 2,200 workers in our including 1,800 factory | workers and 400 office and admin istrative technical workers. We have 600 young workers and 350 women workers. All the workers are organized in the Union of Metal Workers, Busy Building 5-Year Plan. At the present time all forces are placed side by side, speak volumes “1500 LAID OFF ® IN MARE ISLAND, CAL. NAVY YARD Fire 400 Machinists in Bremerton Yard (By a Worker Correspondent) SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.—About fifteen hundred workers have been laid off at the Vallejo Navy Yard | (Mare Island) in the past few weeks. Four hundred machinists |have been laid off at the Bremer- | ton Navy Yard, which together with | the steamfitters, boilermakers, and jother categories, totals another fif- teen hundred. Hundreds of machinists from Bre- merton are coming into San Fran- cisco looking for work, increasing the jobless army here. The Machin- concentrated on carrying out the! ists Union reports about one-third | Five-Year Plan in our factory, The | of its membership unemployed in first year in our factory already shows that the workers are ready | to earry through and go beyond their assignments. ‘We have already exceeded our outlined in the control figures. The third Government Loan was carried out in our factery 119%. The Seven-Hour Day Here. Our change from the eight-hour day to the seven-hour day and the eontinuous work week, shows elear- ly that the Five-Year Plan is not a Utopia but a reality. In conclusion, we hope that work- ers Organizations of the electrical apparatus industry of the U. S§. will respond to this letter. We want an exchange of experience through scheduled production, far above that | we were not organized, ad we did| sending papers and magazines of | San Francisco, The Electrical Workers Union has cancelled the charter of its appren- tices branch, “due to unemployment among ¢lectrical workers.” —FRISCO WORKER, ‘GUT LUMBER ~—WAGEIN MINN 'Speed-Up Filthy Camps for Woodsmen (By a Worker Correspondent) DULUTH, Minn.—There’s only More Workers’ Letters, Cleveland! We've got to raise a rumpus with the shop papers. that come from Cleveland. The thing that gets shop papers across is workers corres- pondence, letters. Not even a peep of a letter in the “Red Motor,” the “Spark Plug” which are one sheet bulletins in the White Motors and Fisher Body plants, respectively. That’s one reason why the “Red Ingot,” the shop paper in the Re- public Iron and Steel Co. is not so “hot.” A good ladleful of letters would sure be hot stuff. Same thing as regards the “Red Billet” issued in the Central Alloy. Another thing about the Cleveland shop papers. They are too much of a pattern, seemingly more office made than a reflection of the shop struggles. Let’s see if Cleveland can't get out shop papers with a page or two of letters from the shops. We suggest four page papers in place of the single page bulletins. And don’t make it hard on the workers’ eyes. * * * The Risks They Take For Slave Wages Meat choppers in w packing house. a hand is a daily occurrence in these plants. The loss of a worker's arm, The Trade Union Unity League will help lead the fight of these workers for safety protection, among other demands. * * 9 * A Beefy Youngster Enters! A robust young shop paper is the “Packing House Worker” issued in the Swift Packing houses in St. Paul, Minn. solar blow at the Hoover grand fascist council. It starts off with a But we'll let the Packingtown scrapper speak for itself. * * HOOVER DECLARES WAR UPON WORKERS! PRES. SWIFT AND GREEN JOIN HIM In the issue of the “Swift Arrow,” of January 9, 1930, a front page photograph of Louis F. Swift and Herbert Hoover appeared, titled, “Two Presidents Meet to Talk Business.” This bosses’ paper is trying to mislead us workers by telling us that when a business president gets together with the U. S. president, this furthers the interests of the workers. Exactly the opposite is true. The visit of L, F. Swift to the White House can be understood only when we consider it in the light of the economic conference called by not have the right leadership; we)! were betrayed by the Mexican Mu-| tual Aid Association leaders. Let us not be betrayed again. Let us | win over next strike which will take |place during the next cantaloupe season about next June. We can win by organizing in the Agricul- jtural Workers Industrial League, and fighting under its militant lead- ership.—A, P. our industry. We can send such workers organ- izations in your country illustrations our building, and life. For the victory of the working class the world over! With revolutionary greetings, The Workers of Electroaparat, Leningrad, U.S.S-R. —_ | Hoover immediately after th Wall York, Well, we can’t pan “The Paeki Street stock market erash in New | ing House Worker” for not having | workers correspondence. There's a big letter in that’s full of meat, Judge | for yourself by reading part of it: Nothing has yet been done about the terrible odor of the dressing room, plant, they smell a half block away. arrangements. The stink is worse than ever. When hog workers leave the Nobody wants to be closé to them. The dressing room is surrounded on all sides with horrible stinking odors since it is impossible to get proper ventilation with the present Our representative asked the assembly for relief for the peor stinking workers. But as usual nothing is being done about it. It seems that they tell us that we either ean take it or leave it. But we will have to fight for it—HOG WORKER. * haa Throw the Bosses Down the Shaft! | The miners are a fighting bunch. And so it is kind of natural that a mine nucleus paper should be a fighter. And that’s exactly what “The | Shaft” is. Illinois. The miners in Tllinois are face to face with the terrible ravages | of intense boss rationalization. We can get an idea of the things they It is issued in the Duqoin Coal and Coak Co. Aurora Mine, ‘ |one way out of slavery for the lum ber workers of the Minnesota-Mich- }igan-Wisconsin woods, and that’: | Qitegraphs) showing moments of Organizing into the Lumber Worker: Industrial Unign. The wages in the lumber camp: | are starvation wages. The regulai wage scale averages $30 to $50 2 month, We work from sun up to.pur down. The camps are filthy, bed. ding full of bedbugs and lice. Th: food served is rotten, . t A Wage-Slash Attack. The bosses are in a wage-slashin; jattack on the lumber workers Wages have come from $40-$50, a] the way down to $30 a month, Th bosses ave laying off the old hands The type of the workers here ii jchanging to younger men.. Th: ; bosses want the slaves younger be cause they stand greater speed-up We want the seven-hour day,.six |day week, minimum wage of $4.50: day, clean camps, clean bunks, en \of the contract system, no discrimi nation, recognition of the Industria Union. We'll only get these demands b: jeining the Lumber Workers’ Indus trial Union. —MINN. LUMBER WOKER. Get 10 Members of with the fire boss and working unt! half as much as we would have a ditions. | Any man compelled to work 14 | peeved about that. But, we do wai | next issue. | ° (From Fisher In December, 1929, the bosses days, We can’t live on promises ani bosses’ promises. Send in Your Shop Paper! are fighting against by reading this short article in “The Shaft.” | ||NTWrorEachOne It is a regular thing in “our” mine to find loaders going down il quitting time, This means that some men work 14 hours a day and, of course, the bosses say they are enjoying prosperity. The Chinese and Indian workers who are not supposed te know revolution against such hellish con- hours a day might as well be dead. Organize and fight for six-hour day, five-day week! A letter in this issue of “The Shaft” is salve to us. We can’t get| nt the comrades to note this. It is | hard on the eyes and illegible in big spots. A little more legibility and | technical finish would do the trick. We'll be on the lookout for the Some More Promises. Body Worker) told us plenty of work after New Year's. As soon as this was over they changed it to work after thirty And now with the Auto shows over they have again chasged the “promise” to plenty of work in 60 or 90 days, id we know that is only a trick of the hosses in the hope of keeping us on the string. We have only one answer—that is—refuse to starve! Fight back! We can’t live on Establish Shop Papers! “LET'S HOIST BANNER OF N. T. W. U. HIGH” IN GASTONIA Worker Tells Super Who Wanted Him to Disavow Reds, to Go to Hell (By 4 Worker Correspondent) GASTONIA, N. C..-1 was talk- ing with a fellow worker the other day that told me he went to a super of a mill here in the county for a frame job. The super told him to get a recommendation from his boss and get Major A. L. Bull- winkle to sign it signifying that he didn’t have anything to do with the Reds, the Communists. - He told the super they could all three go to hell ina pile. How is that for telling them? I want to say to all workers who have beckbone enough to organize to get busy and bring more new members into the organization. Everyone already in the organiza- tion has a friend somewhere that they can talk to and get into the organizati So let's "get busy fellow workers. We are all acquainted with the speed-up and stretch-out system _in the mills. Let’s get some speed- up and stretch out into our union work. Come on fellow workers. Join the N.T.W.U. Help your fel- low workers, your own class. Don’t help the boss class, or you know that they won’t help you. Now come on. Boost the N.T.W.U. Subscribe for The Daily Worker, the Labor Defender and all other labor papers and labor magazines. Read them, give them to some other workers and let them read them. By doing this we will be helping to organize the N.T.W.U. the greatest labor organization ever for us. All workers that ate able to help support The Daily Worker, the Labor Defender and other © Sor pap- Come on fellow workers, hoist the banner of the N.T.W.U. high, and let's go forward to victory. All workers know their rotten conditions. So come on fellow workers let’s do all we can to smash the bosses and their black hundreds, so we can organize where we want to and in any way we want to. Solidarity means the world to the working class, so let's go with one union and one front. The N.T.W.U., make it solid. —A Gastonia Mill Worker, a Strong Union Man.—C.R.B. Fired, Greenville! (By «@ Worker Corresponde:t) As a native of the South I know its conditions. We South- ern workers work 10-11-12 hours a day, and our wages are from $1.50 to $2.50 a day. | A textile worker making $2.50) a day used to think he was mak- ing good money. But now they fare waking up to the fact that they are only slaves. But very slowly. Many are afraid to join the Na- tional Textile Union because the A.F.L. has pulled so many dirty tricks that they are afraid to join any other union, and if the bosses find out that we are union! men the yfire us right off and blacklist us. The way the bosses try to find out who are union members, they hire a stool pigeon to join the union and get the names. I know that to be true, for in the Poinsett Mill, in Greenville, S. C., the boss hired a man for $2.50 to join the union and get the names, and in less than a week they fired four of our lead- ers. I knew they were going to} fire me, so I quit and didn’t give them a chance. Comrades there is only one way to stop this and that is to get 10 new members every time they fire nd raise ou W.U. ban- igh and trample down the bosses and the A. F. of L., for its the bosses’ pal. —By a National School Student.