LABOR’S VOIC

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E FOR VICTORY

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VANCOUVER, B.C.. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1942

5 Cents

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Such a ministry of production
was not set up until March, 1942.
Before the control of production
Was vested in no less than seven
different agencies. Ghief of these
were the ministry of supply,
ministry of aircraft production
and the admiralty. Final produc-
fion authority over these agencies
(with the exception of the admir-
alty) is now in the hands of Oliv-
er Lyttleton, production minister
in the war cabinet.

Main function of the ministry
of Supply, which includes the war
poifice’s production department, is
control of government arsenals
royal ordnance factories) and
and “shadow factories” (publicly-
owned plants operated privately).
ft also allocates all raw materials
and and machine tools.

Within the supply ministry are
“controls” for each basic raw ma-
terial and war industry. Personnel
af each of these is virtually iden-
tical with that of the correspond-
ng trade association or monopoly.
fhus the officers of the stee] con-
‘rol are heads of the Iron and
Steel Federation, strongest of Bri-
tain’s monopolies, which continues
0 pay their salaries. Chairman
£ the chemicals contro] is also
lirector of Imperial Chemicals In-
Sustries. Chairman of the alumin-
im control is head of the Brit-
q sh Aluminum Corporation (asso-
Hclate of ALCOA).

Head of the admiralty’s ship-
duilding control, which has full
®2ontrol over shipbuilding and re-
gair, is Sir James Lithgow, chair-
man of National Shipbuilders Se
curity Ltd, $50,000,000 monopoly
4-ormed in 1930 for the purpose of
sutting down ship production. Be-
ween 1930 and 1937 this corpora-
don succeeded in reducing Bri-
tain’s merchant fleet by 1,869,000
sons. Controller-General of the
(ministry of aircraft production is
a fermer managing director of
Vickers=Armstrong.

Gonecerning the appointment of
(Sir Andrew Duncan, formerly
thairman of the Iron and Steel
Federation, as minister of supply,
the “Economist” said: “He has
devoted many of the best years
of his life to restricting produc-
don, which is not the most fitting
jipprenticeship for the task of
mecreasing production.”

“In the interest of monopoly
profits, the federation had cut
down the number of blast fur-
haces from 394 in 1929 to 200 in
1937, and during the war it has
Continued to restrict production
dn the grounds that development
bi domestic ores (before the war
iron ore was imported from Spain

ernment necessary for total economic mo
months. Even before the outbreak of war in Se

Congress was demanding a Ministry of production, with full powers to allocate raw materials,
industrial capacity and manpower.

ritain
Production

--and How

and Sweden)
Postwar surplus capacity.” In De-
cember, 1941, ingot steel produc-
tion was still below the maxi-
mum pre-war rate.

Te monopolistic, yet uncoord-

inated, control of Britain’s war
production explains, in labor's
view, the astonishing fact that as
late as January, 1942, the govern-
ment could attribute the defeats in
Melaya te a “chronic lack of mil-
itary materials”; and that Gor-
don England, chairman of the En-
gineering Industries Association,
could state on September 25, 1941,
after two years of war, that the

LONDON.

at [PARE AE has been at war for more than three years, yet the over-all machinery of goy-
bilization has been developed only in the last
ptember 1939, the British Trades Union

might lead to “a “total industrial Capacity of the

country is far from being em-
ployed.”

In January, 1941, mainly due
to TUC pressure, the government
set up a production executive un-
der the chairmanship of Labor
Minister Ernest Bevin, to function
as a committee of the war cabin-
et. In July, 1941, a joint advisory.
council to the production execu-
tive was formed, with equal rep-
resentation from management and
Jabor.

Under the production executive,
eleven area (regional) production
boards were set up throughout the
country, also with equal repre-
sentation from labor and manage-

Shock Brigades Formed In Plants

‘Take The Offensive’ Sian

i Nae by the gallant efforts of their comrades

ment. These regional boards had
no executive power, and their ad-
vice was rarely taken. The pro-
duction executive itself lacked
effectiveness because it was un-
able to break the monopolies’ hold
over the production controls.
Last March the ministry of pro-
duction was finally established,

LONDON.

in the armed forces, workers in

British production lines have launched a new campaign for increased production under
the slogan “Take the Offensive.”

Introduced by the formation of shock brigades to iron out bottlenecks which may
be holding up some departments, the slogan heads posters reminding workers that “it is
the working class that stands to lose more than any other if fascism is victorious.”.

In one factory in the South Mid-
lands, one department was holding
up production in every other de-
partment and in other factories.
The joint production committee
went in a huddle and formed a
special mobile shock brigade,
whose first job would be to over-
come this immediate problem and
then stand ready to cope with
other bottlenecks as they arose.

Printed to introduce the new
shock brigade, the poster remind-
ed employees that “we have
pledged our word through the
prime minister that, come what
may, we shall smash Hitlerism,
side by side with the Soviet peo-
ple.

“Let us show that we fully un-
derstand the responsibility this
puts upon us. German fascism can
and will be’ smashed if we in the
factories now take the offensive,
as our comrades in the armed
forces need maximum production
for the second front.”

In one week production was up
to a record figure, and is now
leaping ahead so much that an
extension has had to be made so
that three shifts could operate
in the department previously

+ to its proper

causing the bottleneck. Satisfied
with the results, the management
is encouraging formation of other
shock brigades throughout the

- plant,

WW a North-eastern aircraft firm,
another all-departmental shock
brigade has had initial success,
Pledged to ‘increased production,
good timekeeping, no absentee-
ism,” it successfully made up for

the absence of six girls on sick

keeping production up
level and claimed
100 percent attendance and good
timekeeping for the brigade mem-
bers.

Workers in another plant, not
satisfied with generally increasing
production, worked out a scheme
whereby a squad of skilled oper-
ators would stand by for any em-
ergency. These men will be cap-
able of working all the machines
in the plant and will be able to
step into the breach anywhere at
any time.

leave by

In this gun plant, production
has risen 500 percent, regularly
smashing monthly schedules,

through the joint planning of the

general manager and shop stew-
ards’ committee,

Eighteen months ago, with no
other factory in the country will-
ing to tackle production of this
particular type gun, the plant
Started up with very little me-
chanical power and no heating.
Workers had to keep braziers go-
ing through the night shifts and
wear overcoats to keep warm.

By January this year, produc-
tion had leapt 100 percent, and
when machinery was installed, it
increased 200 percent. A few
months later, it had reached 500
percent, an increase which has
been maintained ever since.

e
TE WS of the management on
the outstanding work done by
employees should be proof enough
ta. other companies that coopera-
tion will pay with increased pro-
duction. :

“Tm going to cut out high fa-
lutin’ talk and say in plain lan-
guage that without the existence
of our joint production committee
and the help of the shop stewards,
we would have stuck in the mud,”
said the general manager. ‘‘As it
is we've hit the target for six
m successive months, and we are

and in July the government adopt-
ed the report*on regional produc-
tion boards made by a committee
of 15 representatives of labor and
management under the chairman-
ship of Sir Walter Citrine, TUC
president. Britain’s economic mob-

ilization for war
stage, :

W orkers

well on the way to breaking new
records.”

Bottlenecks in the plant are
usually settled by workers on their
day off, which is Saturday. On one
particular Saturday, 160 men yol-
unteered to go to finish a special
clearance job.

The attitude of this particular
company to overtime pay is an
example which might well be fol-
lowed by .companies in other
countries in the interest of the
United Nations’ war effort.

“We think it important, that
workers have the opportunity of
shopping, and although work
means the payment of double
time, it doesn’t matter provided
we get the guns,’ declared the
general manager. “It’s guns we
want and it’s guns we'll get.”

@

ESPITE these excellent re

sults, there are still companies
reluctant to recognize the advan-
tage in increased production to
be obtained by cooperation with
workers. This was shown very
clearly by charges made by shop
stewards in a large factory in
South Wales, which has consist-
ently refused to have anything to
do with a production committee.

Workers claimed that the man-
agement installed microphones in
places where they held meetings
and took down every word utter-
ed by them.

At a meeting of over 70 shop
stewards, attended also by organ-
izers of the Amalgamated Engin-

reached a new

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