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Show RUT WORKERS GRAHTEOIiiCREASE NEARLY TWO MILLION MEN AND WOMEN GRANTED RAISE IN WAGES. More Than Three Hundred Million Dollars a Year Added to the Payrolls Pay-rolls of Railroads, Increase Retroactive Re-troactive to Last January. Washington. General increases for nearly two million railroad employees were announced Sunday by Director General McAdoo effective next Saturday Satur-day and retroactive to last January 1, carrying out substantially the recom-mendaljons recom-mendaljons of the railroad wage commission. com-mission. The aggregate of the increases in-creases probably will be more than $300,000,000 a year, half of which will be distributed withiu a few weeks as back pay in lump sums ranging from about $100 to nearly $'-00 each. The director general departed from the wage commission's recommendations recommenda-tions in the following particulars. The principle of the basic eight-hour day is recognized, but owing to the exigencies of the war situation, hours of employment are not actually reduced re-duced and overtime is to be paid pro rata; future adjustments of pay are to be made on the basis of eight hours. In addition to the ordinary scale of Increases day laborers employed mainly main-ly on track work are to get at least 2i cents an hour more than they received re-ceived last December 31. A minimum of 55 cents an hour is established for the shop trades, including includ-ing machinists, boilermakers and blacksmiths black-smiths ; and, Women are to receive the same pay-as pay-as men for the same work and negroes are to get the same as white men for similar employment. To work out a multitude of Inequalities Inequali-ties of pay among employees doing similar work in different localities and other injustices caused by varying rules of employment and condition of organization, the director general created a new board on wages and working conditions, consisting of three labor representatives and three railway rail-way executives, which will conduct extensive ex-tensive Investigations and recommend wage and other employment changes. |