The Daily Worker Newspaper, March 2, 1931, Page 7

ae March, i931 $ anal St Starvation Wages In Tenn. Rayon Mills . WORK] ‘e oo. SHOP NEWS Page Three Women Textile Wer ‘~anize Into the NTWU! Women Parad Less in Elizabethton Rayon F.ardiy a Day Without a Wage Cut on One Job or Amother in Murray Body As Low AS Wages Are, Girls Are Robbed of $1.65 a Month By Bosses (By a Worker Correspondent) DETROIT, Mich.—Where is that promised prosperity? We work- ers at the Murray Body Co. have been waiting for it over a year. Those who are class-conscious know that it will never come. In the shop where I work average pay girls are getting is $15 a month. Be- sides that they deduct $1.65 a month for insurance. Last Christmas they’ distributed so-called Christ- - mas baskets for those whose hus- ! bands are out of work. But they didn’t lose anything on that, they even gained, because when pay day came the bigger part of us were short. 1 other cases if you were short and filled out a shortage slip you got it back but not last Christmas. When I went to the office to find out about my shortage a bosses servant told me my shortage slip is lost. Now we count out earn- ings not in dollars but in cents. She Does The Bosses’ Dirty Work Conditions in the shop are ter- rible. No day without wage cuts on one job or the other. Our fore- lady, Rose! Charest, is the worst creature to.work under. All day long she is:running from one place | to the other yelling at us and she | is the one who ¢ut our wages last | tire } \nen we come to work in the | morning most of the time we must : wait for work an hour or two. ! Then comes work for a few cents. Can a girl support herself on these few cents a day? No! That’s why many girls go on he bad road: We must stop this great exploita- tion by organizing into a big in+ dustrial auto workers union. A ae Women Jewelry Workers Wages Cut. in Chicago (By a Worker Correspondent} CHICAGO, Illinois — We siaves at <Aginin & Singer, mannfacturers of jewelry at.¢@ nev- elties, setting stones, especially the - expensive ones, do not wear them. We can not afford to. No, not on the eight dollars to twelve dollars per week which Aginin & inger 80 generously “give” us. They tsed to hire us girls at twelve dollars per week, but to make the indns- try more efficient and to make more and more profits for the boss they start us out with eight. dol- lars. per week—about twenty-three cents per hour. If we prove our- selves after the first week to the “good ability,” we get a rnise and get ten dollars per week. The boys make a little higher, but noth- ing to brag about. We must organize and fight. —Woman Jewelry Worker. SUBSCRIBE to the WORKING WOMEN Greetings to the ¥ ' Militant Wonien , rg Ye One of the 18,000 workers in the Westinghouse Electric in Pitts- burgh, whose wages will be.cut 10 per cent on March 1. Women are Metal Workers Industrial League worst exploited in this p'ant. The must organize these workers. Girls in Nat'l Electric Who Ran 30 Machines A New Kind of ~ S$Slavery For Mass. Women (By a Worker Correspondent) FALL RIVER, Mass. — There is a new kind of slavery for the wo- |men in Fall River. Already over two thousand former textile mill workers are working in the needle trades factories that moved in as the mills closed down or moved out. Of the two thousand women now working in the needle factories here I would say about 1,500 are power machine operators, and the rest are packers, ironers, and doing other work and the pay is lower than ten dollars a week for nearly every woman needle worker. Always Best Fighters; Are Eager To Organize Into National Textile Union _‘ave Been Sold Out by A. F. of L.; Women Folk at Home Have Hard Time Too (By a Worker Correspondent) ELIZABETHTON, TENN.—I want to let you know somethin, about the conditions of the women and girl workers here in the Glanzstoff and Bemberg rayon plants. They are now using girls in a lot of departments where they used to use men and boys. They start the girls off at the lowest wages they can force on. For instance, in it | a a ee, EW sting department they steer The famous bosses’ Bradford Durkee Textile School is now teaching woman workers power sewing to train new slaves for the needle trades bosses for ow wages. Beginners are being paid only four dollars to $4.50 a week while the period of instruction is on. The hours are very long, more than ten hours, as a rule, and the conditions of health are worse even than the textile milis, and they are bad enough. These needle firms came from New York to pay lew wages here, and so I think the Needle Trades Workers Industrial Union ought to send organizers up from New York to teach us to fight for better con- ditions. —A Needle Trades Woman. Miners Wives Starve, Cannot Nurse Babies; “We Must Organize!” (By a Worker Correspondent) RUSSELTON, Pa. — I am the Are Now Running 60) wife of an unemployed miner who (By a) Worker Correspondent) AMBRIDGE, Pa. — Here are : some of the-conditions of women in the National Electric Ce. In my department, Braiders, we work nine and three-quarters hours — getting only twenty-three cents an hour. Here is how the pace is set in our department. Before, ene girl used to run every thirty machines. The bosses began to think how to work us faster and also how to throw some of us on the streets. So they made every girl run sixty machines and half the girls are thrown out. Workers of the National Elec- trie Company, the Metal Workers Tdustrial League fights against speed-up and the rotten conditions in our plant. Join now, and be pre- pared to fight fer better conditions. —National Electric Worker. has been out of work for eight months, I have four children The oldest is five years and the. yaung- est is one month. My husband has tried everywhere to get work, but he cannot get any. My children and I sre starving: I cannot nurse-my young baby be- -cause I do not have enough to eat, |so@ that I de not have enough for my baby. ; T have: gone to the Wildwood coal mine four times to get a job for m husband. Each time the super- intendent has told me that there is me work. But Iam going once more befere this mine to look for a job for my husband. When I go this time 1 will take a club with me and if this super does not give {nmxy husband a job I will beat him with that stick so that he will go to a hospital. I do not care if I go to jail. I have nothing anyway. My chil- dren are starving and } can not help them. But here is a better’ weapon to Plenty of Coal But Miners Freeze Photo shows child of unemployed coal miner in the Anthracite comb- ing dumps for pieces of coal. His father slaved years at starvation wages to dig the coal —- now he has been laid off and his. family must freeze. Miners and miners’ wives must fight for immediate unemployment relief and unem- ployment insurance. SHAM BATTLE OVER NIGHT WORK RALEIGH, N. C. — The textile hosses contrel the state legislat- ure which is considering the sham move. to abelish night work for wemen. One group pretends to favor abolition ef night work for women, merely because it is an ex- cuse for laying eff thousands of workers. use. Several times I have called a group of women together and we talked about the conditions. What we need now is that these women organize inte 2 women’s auxiliary, and when we are organ- ized we will better be able to lead and. fight. —Miner’s Wife. Negro Women Are Framed in Va. (By a Worker Correspondent) ALEXANDRIA, Va.—In _ this There is only one drinking cup for the colored women, and diseas- city a Negro woman is arrested |ed women easy spread it to those and convicted as easy as anything without any proof at all. 3 Many colored women workers are arrested for prostitution when they never were prostitutes. Then m this nth a is ‘colored. Just the A city jail—it is the most horrible and unbelievable ever known. only woman, put that are healthy. The front of the old building which is the only en- trance to the cell tiers is a fire trap. The whole inside of this part is wooden with a furnace right under the wooden floor, and if there was a fire in this part of the ‘building there would be no way to get) the prisoners. ne Pe pee proof.rooms for white women and a toilet and shower, but even for the poor white working women it will be just as bad as for us, that will. only be for any white woman that has some money that has to be a prison guest a few days. They mix healthy priseners with insane or diseased prisoners. We working people in Alexandria, one of the worst jim-crow towns in the world, are not yet smart enough fe to realize that we must join an or- out isoners in this jail, ay aT Cee cl caced bata vaak © colesa women. There is room in’ each tier for 5 cells, 4 bunks for each 20 prisoners. Thereis only 2 wash basins for 55 prisoners. | uM. raised’ that ‘now they jare talking,| ganization that fights for us, like about making a few improvements. |the Communist Party does, espe- But only for white women. No im-| cially for the colored women. But provements for the colored women| we must soon realize this and join is planned. They will have fire-' up. Negro Woman Worke:. ? us off at $12.32 a week. In some departments you get even less to begin. Even when you are very experienced you seldom make over $16 or $17 a week. No Pay For Overtime In the reeling and inspection de- partments, where there is only one shift, they work us very often lon- er than 8 hours. We are sup- posed to work from ’ to 4, and up to 12 on Saturday, but sometimes we work to 5:30 and they rty to make us work up to 3 on Saturday. For this we ge. only the usual rates. Last fall we-had one wage cut, now we have another one ‘in Janu- ary, that is in almost all depart- ments. : There are lots of girls working here younger than 16. They have to do this because their fathers can’t make enough to support the family. The women-folk of the mill work- ers who stay at home haven’t any joke either. A neighbor of mine has a husband, 2 girls and 3 boys working in the Glanzstoff. There are 3 children at home. You would think that with all those pay-checks they would do well, but the pay- cheeks are only for from $10 to $15. Out: of*this you have to pay $1.00 a week for transportation, by’ an arrangement between the bus company and the mills. Tn the 3 strikes we had already, the women and the girls were some of the best fighters we had. Only we got sold out by the United Textile Workers Union. But now we want to organize again ia a Teal fighting union, the National Textile Workers Union. A Girl Worker in Glanzate®, Negro Domestic Workers Cheated; Must Organize IT am a working woman. I have been working hard ali my life. 1 have been doing house werk for @ rich lady. I would go to work at seven o’clock in the morniig and quit at six in the evening, and work hard all day long, scrubbing, wash- ing and cooking. For all this she paid me only two dollars a week. And what hurts me very bad is what I am going to tell you. About a month ago the old lady fired me and did not even pay the misera- be two dollars. She just told me to go, But then she said, “If you want to work for only your board you can do so.” Now I am out on the street with no place to stay and nothing to eat. This is how we working people are treated, and we will be treated even worse if we don’t stand up for cur rights. For now I know that we can help our- selves if we only organize and os oe to fight these bad conditions: ‘ I ask all you women to join bsg aes Party and help on the w that will lead us freedom. 4 —A Negro Working Womaa, 738 Melty