Show NEWS BEHIN ball M e bar PAUL LON released by western newspaper union DECLARED OLD IDEAL washington although the full employment bill is being pushed through congress into law by a preponderant favor tor for it and there is no objection to the basic hopefulness of its theory no one seems to know what it means or even where it came from by great odds it is the most uncertain and clarified im piece of legislation of my time here I 1 have been calling it a CIO bill because the CIO has campaigned for it in the usual expensive and prepossessing nian man i ner which obscures other backing and monopolizes the he publicity but CIO planners planner s did not write it the numerous senators whose names are attached as co authors will give you little satisfaction if you inquire where they got the notion of passing a law proclaiming the right to work which has always existed legally constitutionally and by custom the original draft of their bill was probably composed as nearly as I 1 can ascertain by the farmers union farthest left of the three farmers lobbies and often called the farmer branch of the CIO but of all things the farmers need right now a law declaring their right to work must run behind help shortages equipment shortages price fears and practically every other existing agricultural consideration the farmers union people will say they got the idea out of a speech mr roosevelt made in in which he mentioned a lot of rights including the right to work but mr roose velt did not say there ought to be a la law v and before he mentioned the maffe matter r it had gotten into a resolution of an international labor office meeting in philadelphia sir william beveridge whose vast social security hopes were swamped in the last election was an ardent champion of legislation to declare the right to work boing behind and beyond him an investigation will bring you to the fact that such a right is declared in the soviet russian ia constitution there it has some meaning because under a dictatorship fixing salaries controlling hours renting homes and even cooking and charging for the workers meals while restraining the worker from freedom a law promising to share whatever er work the be government gives is a realistic right but this is all far behind american ideals and rights which already go much further promising among other things freedom of work at one place or another and the right not to work even this would not be so perplexing except that both sponsors and amanders of this right to worlo work bill agree it carries no leial legal rights coauthor thomas of utah may not have been pinned down on that point yet but coauthor co author murray and amender taft and all the others seem agreed no citizen could sue an employer or the government for a job or get out an injunction or that a labor union could sue or get the courts to make someone establish jobs or wages hours or anything this they all say is just a declaration of policy by congress no matter how it is worked its authors particularly deny that it is a trick to establish a legal basis for a whole new conception of law in which the unions or individual workers could build up decisions through this new supreme court to indict the LIM government or employers and perhaps establish criminal penalties it if it does docs not do this then what does it do well its sponsors rather frankly indicate they look on it as a political propaganda step establishing a pol i icy y peg upon which they can hang future legislative demands particularly they want big spending appropriations made in the future and they will then say the policy of every man a job has been established so this appropriation must be made to give him a job or they can build up a demand that the aluminum company be broken up for that reason or that all black hair be made white because it would create jobs in the hair dyeing industry this makes it seem unimportant bee because use congress retains the right to appropriate or not appropriate regardless of this undefined declaration of an policy frankly then I 1 do not know what it means except that everyone will ask for government funds A decline in work week is another provision plans to cut the government work week again from 40 it was vas 48 to 30 have already been proposed in bills this keeps salaries where they were and prevents normal utilization of the talents abilities and aptitudes of the nations manpower it does riot increase purchasing power or create more employment opportunities it merely shares the work less wark for the nation as a whole therefore less productivity and less tax revenues to sustain a high economy needed tor for I 1 buu full employment |