Wasting of Manpower
» “The main reserve of labor is from among married women with no young children. And we shall have to draw tremendous numbers of these married women into the labor market in 1942 and in 1943.”
by JOHN J. CORSON
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IN TIME of war, idle men and women any where are an anomaly. Yet today — eight months after this country’s entrance into this war — at least one out of every seven men and women who can be considered potential workers is without a paid job. Simultaneously, twenty-five of the country’s principal industrial centers report a shortage of male labor for the production of aircraft, ships, machine tools, and munitions. The widespread “pirating” of scarce skilled workers by one employer from another confirms these reports.
Coal mine operators insist that a fuel shortage is imminent if the miners taken by the armed forces and other employers are not replaced. In Oregon a scarcity of labor, it is reported, will drastically curtail lumber output. Farmers claim that their production is threatened by shortages of farm hands in the potato fields and truck areas of Virginia, Maryland, and New Jersey. There is a shortage of sheepherders in Nevada, of dairy hands in Minnesota and Massachusetts, and of cotton field workers in Texas and Arizona. Moreover, since gasoline rationing and tire shortages will further reduce the usual supply of migratory farm labor, workers from Mexico will be imported to replace them. Newspaper reports that men are to be
“frozen" in their jobs cause thousands hurriedly to seek other jobs at higher wages or nearer home. Thus, evidences of a scarcity of labor are numerous, while idle workers look for jobs.
There are plenty of men and women to man this country’s expanded plants, shops, and farms for this year at least. Probably there will be enough in 1943 as well. Certainly there can be no real labor shortage in this country so long as there are two million or more unemployed men and women, so long as some workers remain idle because wages are low and others because their skin is colored. Nevertheless even now we are confronted with shortages of labor in centers and industries vitally important to the war effort. Crippling shortages, moreover, develop as further contracts are let for planes, tanks, guns, ships, and gas masks.
Employers in war industries forecast that the greatest expansion of employment since the start of the war program will take place this summer and early this fall. It may become necessary to tell men and women where they must work, just as we tell our young men where they must serve in the armed forces. Moreover, it may prove necessary to tell employers how they shall hire workers, and which workers they shall or shall not hire — unless we find ways of eliminating the present widespread waste of manpower.
There is nothing novel, nothing unique, in the ways by which we waste manpower. Excessive labor turnover is a well-known source of waste. The railroad industry, for example, provides a total of over 1.2 million jobs. During the next six months there will be an increase in employment of about 135,000 jobs and a replacement of some 167,000 workers in the course of normal turnover. The hiring, rehiring, training, and retraining which these figures represent account for the loss of tens of thousands of man-days of employment.
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The accelerated economic tempo of war itself increases labor turnover. Reckless competitive bidding for labor, differential working conditions, and the Selective Service drafts are all contributing factors. For instance, according to the indexes of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, net separation rates in manufacturing industries have increased from about 3.5 per 100 employees in November, 1941, to about 5.4 per 100 employees in March, 1942. At the turnover rate prevailing in March, and if it is assumed that each separation lasts only one day, the loss during 1942 wall be about 24 million man-days. Since it requires about 80,000 man-days to build a 6800-ton cargo ship, a loss of 24 million man-days is equivalent to the loss of some 300 vitally needed cargo ships!
An even greater, and less justifiable, loss of manpower can be attributed to industrial accidents. For disabling injuries alone, the loss to production during 1940 was 42 million man-days, or the manpower required to produce another 525 needed cargo ships. In contrast, the loss of from 6 to 15 million man-days during 1942 as a result of strikes seems minor.
Another effective way of wasting manpower is by utilizing rigid or discriminatory specifications which preclude the employment of women, Negroes, aliens, Jews, and aged workers. In Baltimore, for instance, the supply of white manpower is virtually exhausted while thousands of Negro workers remain unemployed. In-migration of white workers is encouraged even though there is a shortage of housing and transportation facilities. Similar situations exist in Seattle, in Philadelphia, in Mobile, and in other cities. Some employers also refuse to hire aliens because they either think it is prohibited or are unwilling to take the trouble to obtain permission to employ them. Moreover, such discrimination does not distinguish between aliens and foreign-born citizens, or between aliens from the United Nations and those from Axis countries.
As a nation, we have done little to dovetail seasonal jobs. In the Southwest, this year, a thousand acres planted in sugar beets, enough to supply sugar for 1.5 million people for one month, were plowed under because of the lack of “stoop” labor for blocking and thinning beets. Workers are required a few weeks later in the cotton fields and on the railroads for “track labor.” In former years, it was possible to meet these three labor demands from separate groups of workers. This year the available aggregate supply of workers in the area has been depleted by Selective Service drafts and by the recruitment of aircraft and shipbuilding industries on the West Coast and in Texas. Hence, the only way these labor demands can be met is by dovetailing seasonal jobs.
In two major eastern ports, the workers in approximately twenty separate ship repair yards are working half time or less. The total number of workers required to man these yards is roughly twice as great as the number that would be required were all ship repair work concentrated in yards where men were employed full time. But manpower has been too readily available to force the development of means of eliminating waste.
In expediting production for war needs, Army and Navy contracting authorities have let contracts to producers with plants and equipment wherever such plants were located or would locate. After a year and a half of awarding contracts, it became apparent early in 1942 that there had been a gross maldistribution of contracts as related to the available supplies of labor in different sections of the country. In New York City there are more than 400,000 unemployed workers. Though more than half the state’s population and labor force is located in this city, only one-sixth of the contracts for war production have been let to New York City. The allocation of additional contracts to employers in that city bids fair to prevent the wastage of perhaps a quarter of a million man-years during 1942.
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The only real shortage of labor which has affected war production to date is the shortage of skilled workers, particularly in the metal trades, aircraft, shipbuilding, and ordnance. For every skilled tool designer available, 15 are needed. For toolmakers, the ratio of demand to supply is 31 to 1; for assembler, ship and boat building, 93 to 1; for plate hangers, shipbuilding, 61 to 1; for skin men, aircraft, 48 to 1. This scarcity of skilled workers accounts for an even more serious wastage of manpower than does surplus labor because, when skilled workers are so hard to get, employers try stealing or “pirating” them from other employers.
Meanwhile employers who have skilled workers in their employ “hoard” them, knowing how hard it would be to replace them. In New England, skilled toolmakers were found playing bridge while the shop in which they were employed awaited hopedfor new orders. An automobile plant in Detroit, lacking tool and die work, put its tool and die workers on the job of painting the plant. Still other skilled workers are doing assembly-line work which any worker could learn in two or three weeks.
In months past there has been enough surplus manpower so that war production has not been seriously handicapped by such wastage of manpower. But the surplus is diminishing rapidly, while the labor requirements of war production are expanding inexorably. Enactment of the Sixth Supplemental National Defense Appropriation Act brings the total appropriations for war production to more than 160 billion dollars. Few of us can think in terms of billions of dollars. The figures become more intelligible when the President translates them into things to be produced: —
In 1942 — 8,000,000 tons of shipping 60,000 planes 45,000 tanks
In 1943— 11,000,000 tons of shipping 125,000 planes 75,000 tanks
But before the appropriations and the contracts can yield planes, ships, tanks, and other weapons of war, these figures must be translated into people working on war orders. At the close of 1941, about 7 million people were working on war orders and about 2 million men were in the armed forces. Twelve months later, when the armed forces will have been increased by another 3 to 5 million men, about 18 million people will be in war production jobs. A year later, in December, 1943, if the war continues, there will be 9 million men in the armed forces and 20 million people in war industries.
In the two years 1942 and 1943, from 5 to 7 million men will be added to the armed forces. The number of men drawn into the armed forces this summer will very likely be greater than the number drawn during the previous six months. During the same two-year period — 1942 and 1943 — upwards of 13 million people will also be drawn into war production. In short, one of every six or seven persons in this country will switch from no work or dispensable work to service in the armed forces or to essential war work.
No one likes to be uprooted, but it is evident that many of us will be. Of the 10.5 million men and women required for expanding war production during the current year, more than 7 million will be workers whose plants have been converted from peacetime activities to war production, or whose jobs were wiped out entirely.
The reservoir of manpower upon which we must depend consists principally of housewives and students under 18 years of age. In 1940, there were 7 million students 14 to 17 years of age, and 2 million students over the age of 18. This group, however, is not likely to yield many regular workers. There are approximately 19 million women between the ages of 18 and 44, and about 10 million between 45 and 64, who are not in the labor force. But the employment of women in the 45 to 64 age group may be restricted by the unwillingness of many employers to hire older women, and housewives with young children cannot be expected to provide many full-time workers for industry. Single women who are not employed in industry may have household and other responsibilities which will prevent them from accepting employment. The main reserve of labor, then, is from among married women with no young children. And we shall have to draw tremendous numbers of these married women into the labor market in 1942 and 1943.
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What will these girls and women do? Everything but heavy manual labor. Already women are employed in aircraft plants as welders, turret-lathe and punch-press operators, industrial engineers and chemists. They are proving particularly adaptable to electrical assembly work, which requires a high degree of finger dexterity, and to repetitive jobs which require constant alertness, such as winding coils and armatures, soldering, taping, painting, and visual inspection. Today, over 40 per cent of the workers in small-arms manufacture and in bag-loading plants are women. To determine the varied jobs suitable for women, the United States Employment Service has just completed an analysis of war-industry jobs. Of the more than 600 essential occupations studied, women were employed in fewer than 30, though analysis of the duties performed showed that they could be used in about 250.
However, most of the women who must be drawn into the labor market will not be put to work on new or novel jobs. For the most part they will take over the humdrum jobs which men leave when they enter the armed forces or war production. Perhaps 150,000 women will themselves enter the armed forces in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps. But most women who work will be needed in stores, offices, schools, hospitals, and the like, as nurses, social workers, dietitians, secretaries, telephone operators, stenographers, and clerks. Unless women — and, for that matter, everyone else — understand that essential war work includes all jobs necessary to civilian maintenance as well as “glamour” jobs in munitions factories, we shall be unsuccessful in utilizing our manpower to its full extent.
If, as these figures would indicate, there is an essential job for every man and woman, two conclusions follow. First, we cannot afford the waste of manpower to which we are accustomed. Second, wTe must find effective ways of getting workers to the places where they are needed.
Two major steps have already been taken to cut down the waste of manpower and to facilitate getting workers to essential jobs. The first step was taken on January 1, 1942, when, upon the request of the President to each governor, all of the former state employment services were transferred to the Federal Government and integrated into a single national employment service. This national system offers employers quick access to the workers they need. It tells workers where jobs are.
But an employment service cannot produce workers. It can only recruit and refer those men and women who are known to the employment office. To facilitate access to the country’s existing manpower, and particularly to the relatively small number of skilled workers whose services are now urgently needed, a national occupational inventory of men is under way. Each of the 40 million registrants under the Selective Service Act — each male between the ages of 18 and 65 — has been asked to report by questionnaire what skills and experience he possesses. A copy of each questionnaire wall be housed in the local employment office, which thereby will have access to the community’s resources in skilled and unskilled manpower.
The demand that each man and woman must serve wdiere he or she can contribute most to winning the war conflicts with the right of each worker to work where he will, and of each employer to hire and fire as he deems best. This conflict arises only when the total demand for workers outruns the number of available men and women of requisite skills. Meanwhile labor is not scarce in the United States so far as the total number of potential workers is concerned. What is scarce is effective use of our manpower and effective management of the labor market. The sooner these lacks are supplied, the longer shall we be able to meet the rapidly expanding labor requirements of war production without substituting compulsion for the volition of worker and employer in bringing men and jobs together.