OCR Text |
Show OPA RULINGS RESULT IN FEWER JOBS At least 8,700 persons will lose their jobs in the factories of Bridgeport, Conn., unless wartime controls are eased by Feb. 15th, according to an impartial factfinding fact-finding survey recently made by a firm of management engineers. These jobless would account for 14.8 per cent of the current total employment of 59,000 in the industrial in-dustrial plants surveyed, the report re-port said. I Would Be More Jobs . . . It showed that OPA ceilings, "squeezes and regulations" have caued unemployment in 34 per cent of all manufacturing plants in the area, and that if it were not for the OPA the plants would be offering jobs to 3,400 more men or women. Indicative of conditions in all industrial communities of the nation, na-tion, rises in manufacturing costs were shown to ' have risen from i ten to 100 per cent, with an overall over-all average of 29.4 per cent, since price freezing began in 1943. ""If labor's proposed 30 per cent wage increase, without corresponding corre-sponding price advances, were to become a reality, 96 per cent of the Bridgeport area's leading industrial indus-trial plants would have to shut down either immediately or within with-in a short time, the fact-finders reported. |