ASPECTS OF THE U.S. LABOUR MOVEMENT by a special correspondent
This month's issue of Labour News from the U.S.1.S. carries some i intriguing items: (1) The drive for a shorter working week. One line the drive is taking is to raise overtime pay from time and a half to double time, It has been clearly recognised by the unions in the US that overtime working as a common practice means cheap labour for the bosse "The increased volume of production in the overtime hours reduces the employer's overhead costs per unit the greater volume is spread over the fixed overhead costs. But more than that, the cost of hiring additional workers has increased, Through both legislation and collective bargaining, various fringe benefit costs have been added to the employment-cost package, which varies with the number of workers employed rather than with the number of manhours worked." "An increase in the overtime penalty from time and a helf to double time would increase the employers' costs of scheduling overtime work. It would discourage them from scheduling such overtime and provide an incentive for business firms to hire additional workers." (The article makes clear that the main incentive behind the drive is to provide jobs for the 4 million unemployed.) (2) Shop Stewards in the U.S. A review of a new study "The Rank and File Leader", describes the author's* findings on shop stewards! attitudes in dmerica, "...taken together, they challenge some accepted canons about mass (and classless) society in America, about the "job-conscious" theory of the labour movement, and even about the direction in which labour educ-~ ation should be moving, The basic conclusion is that the steward reflects without question a "consciousness of kind" or class consciousness, a “we" and "they" attitude towards all questions discussed, This leads him to discount corruption in unions as a device of anti-union forces and to rally round his union leadership even more firmly, It leads to "solidarity" feelings and effective representation for negroes and womeneee."
"The stewards feel that "they" control economic life, even dowm to ordering recessions, and that technology and automation are fearsome forces that cannot be stopped but must somehow be controlled. On the subject of war and peace, the stewards are strongly against a nuclear war, believing that co-existence is possible.s..." "The author concludes that whilst socialist ideology is clearly not in their scheme of things" (yet?? Ed.) "neither is the "job-consciousness" cescription big enough to hold what they fcel and believe, which the-author describes as class-conscious or social-unionism,"" * Sidney M. Peck