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Show 1921 THE OUTLOOK 301 THE INDUSTRIAL LEGISLATURE OF ROCHESTER'S CLOTHING INDUSTRY At the extreme left are Dr. Leiserson and his secretary; center, labor managers representing the employers; right, shop chairmen and union officers ness, he was told that there was no place for him. He appealed his case to the Industrial Court after trying for two weeks to get his job back. The employer declared before the Court that was a poor cutter and that he was discharged for incompetent work. Dr. Leiserson ruled: "Even if it were true that 's work was poor and below normal in production, such charges cannot be entertained at the present time. himself was not told that there was any dissatisfaction with his work. On the contrary, one week before he became sick his wages were raised from $30 to $35. It is therefore ordered that be reinstated in his old position and that he shall be given two weeks' back pay. He lost three weeks, but one week was due to sickness." An employer could not make sickness an excuse for discharge. These cases of discharge are comparatively simple. The real test of the Rochester plan comes when both sides are called upon to reach an understanding about stoppages, loafing, and lockouts. One warm morning last August an older and two younger men were pressing coats in a hot little room on St. Paul Street. The elder was the father of both the younger men. About eleven o'clock he leaned over from his machine and said: * "Cut out he hustlin', kids. Ve ain't gotta do more dan 44 coats this week. I says it's hot enough." The two young men were obedient sons. The employer begged for increased production in vain. Finally he took the case to the Industrial Court. The judge said: "You can't cut down production without a real reason. It's too bad about the weather, but if I allowed you to take the weather as an excuse you would find it too cold in winter and too hot in summer. You pressed fifty coats a week all last year and all other pressers in Rochester are doing the same. You are entitled to $41 a week for pressing fifty coats, and if you fall below that amount you will have to lose 82 cents for every missing coat." The agreement has put a stop to strikes. When a few workers forget themselves and break loose from discipline, what happens is politely called a "stoppage." The workers must pay for stoppages. Last spring the fancy of seven armhole basters lightly turned to swimming-holes and pastures green. They had an argument with the management of a large Rochester shop and promptly left the shop for a day's vacation. What happened was summed up in the decision of the Industrial Court: "When workers cannot agree with the management on any question of dispute, it is provided that they shall make com plaint to the union, and if the union cannot adjust the m: iter it can be appealed to the impartial chairman. By quitting work in a body these armhole basters violated the agreement against stoppages. Whatever may have been the merits of the dispute in question, no stoppage is justified under the rules made by the union in agreement with the manufacturers. The armhole basters will therefore make up the time they lost by working overtime six and one-half hours, and they shall be paid straight time for this work." The judge is just as stern when the employer attempts a lockout. In September an employer who was running a small clothing shop, wanted to get out of an agreement he had voluntarily made to keep his pocket-makers working if the rest of the shop was working. He had bungled the assignments of work to the various parts of the shop in such a way that Saturday morning arrived and the pocket-makers had no work to do. He had agreed to give these pocket-makers continuous work, but he tried to evade his agreement by laying off the entire shop. The workers appealed to the Industrial Court for their Saturday pay. The judge said: "To shut down a shop, hold back production, and make innocent employees suffer a loss of wages when the fault lies in the management of the shop is entirely unjustified. The workers must be paid for Saturday morning." It cost the employer about $500. The most important part of the Rochester plan is its flexibility. Clothing plants are constantly changing; new machinery is being introduced; short cuts are being invented; the whole standard of values in the clothing market is going up and down like a chip on the waves. How are you going to establish "normalcy" in such a whirlpool of price-cutting and competition? "We must face the actual facts of industry and provide for them in our constitution," said the leaders of both workers and manufacturers in Rochester. So they wrote passages into their agreement which make the Labor Adjustment Board a real industrial legislature: "The Board shall have the authority to make such rules,' regulations, and supplementary arrangements, not inconsistent with this agreement, as may be necessary to carry into effect the principles of this agreement, or to apply these principles to new questions whenever they arise. "Upon petition of either party, the Labor Ada^tment Board shall have the power to uotexinine whether important changes have taken place within the clothing industry, or in industrial conditions generally, which warrant changes in general wage levels or in hours of work; and if it is decided that such changes are warranted, negotiations shall begin between the narties hereto. In the event of a disagreement, the question shall be submitted to arbitration." So the door is opened to scientific management and to wage adjustments in times of financial crisis. "Our cooperative enterprise," says Dr. Meyer Jacobstein, labor manager of the Stein- Bloch Company, "is laying the groundwork for the introduction of scientific management methods in a very salutary way, because when new methods are introduced to-day they are done with the willing consent of the workers, and not imposed upon them arbitrarily and autocratically. We are preparing the soil which will make it easy for the production experts to reap the harvest when the proper time arrives. In a word, we are constantly 'selling' the concept of scientific management to the workers not by thrusting it down their |