existing contracts with the four companies providing ferry service. The proposed contracts provided that each employee be granted 1 month's dismissal pay for each year of service or major fraction thereof, the amount of monthly pay to be the average earned over the past 5 years. This amount was to become payable on dismissal in either a lump sum or 12 monthly installments. Early in the negotiations with the Southern Pacific Co. and the Northwestern Pacific Railroad the services of the National Mediation Board were invoked by the unions. The Board did not mediate in the cases of the Key System and the Southern Pacific Golden Gate Ferries, as these companies are not subject to the Railway Labor Act. After months of mediation, the Board urged arbitration upon the parties to the dispute. The matter was not brought to arbitration, however, since the Southern Pacific shortly thereafter signed an agreement providing for dismissal compensation. The Northwestern Pacific case was continued in mediation until talk of a strike and of an emergency investigating board, as provided by the Railway Labor Act for threatened interruptions of interstate commerce, led to an agreement identical with the one signed by the Southern Pacific. This agreement represents the first extension of the principles established by the national railroad dismissal-wage agreement to other employees of the signatory carriers. The protection provided by the agreement with these two railroads applies in case of complete abandonment of ferry service, as well as for 6 months after the beginning of partial traffic diversion. Four alternatives are provided for workers relieved of their positions: (1) Employees of 65 years of age or over may be retired on a pension at the discretion of the employer. (2) For other workers whose jobs will be eliminated the employer may provide other employment, reasonably comparable to the present positions in the San Francisco Bay district (unless another location is accepted by both parties), 1 month's employment to be given for each year of service or major fraction thereof. (3) Employees who wish may accept outside employment, with the guaranty that the ferry company will make up any difference in earnings. (4) Workers not covered above may, at their option, accept a cash allowance in lieu of continued employment, this option to be good for 30 days after traffic is first diverted over the bridges. Cash allowances are on the following scale: 15 years' service or over. More than 10 and less than 15 years' service __ Cash allowance 12 months' pay. 11 months' pay. 1 month's pay for each year of service or major fraction thereof. The monthly rates of pay are left for subsequent determination by a joint investigation. The Key System and Golden Gate Ferries agreements differ slightly from that signed by the two railroads for their ferry service. While no retirement provision is made in the Golden Gate agreement, on the Key System disabled employees or those of 64 years of age or over may be retired on a pension. The Golden Gate agreement limits the benefit employment to a maximum of 18 months; on the Key System there is no limitation as to the period of such employment. Both companies undertake to make up any difference in earnings due to lower rates or intermittent employment on the job. Monthly rates of benefit pay for each employee on the Key System are the average of earnings between January 1, 1936, and the inauguration of bridge service. On the Golden Gate Ferries the amount. is the established rate on the position last held. Estimates of the number of workers who may benefit from the provisions of the agreements are not available. It is probable that not all the present workers will suffer loss of their present employment. Legislation Providing for Dismissal Compensation in Ecuador 1 D ISMISSAL compensation, at the rate of 1 month's pay for each year of service up to 25 years, for workers in Ecuador who have been employed in the same enterprise for 5 or more years was established by laws of October 6, 1928, and amended by those of January 21, February 21, and April 6, 1936. These laws apply to both manual and office workers but not to agricultural workers, domestic servants, nor to family groups working at home. Labor contracts are effective for not to exceed 3 years if written or 1 year if verbal, but continue to be binding after date of expiration if the worker continues to discharge his duties with the knowledge of his employer. The labor contract is terminated with no further obligation on the part of either employer or worker for the usual reasons for the termination of contracts, and also upon expiration of the contract period, conclusion of the work, force majeure, and the death of the worker; but upon the death of the employer his heirs are required to carry out the terms of the contract. Either employer or worker may terminate the contract before its date of expiration by compensating the other, the employer by paying the worker 1 month's wages if the contract period does not exceed 1 year and 2 months' wages if the contract period exceeds 1 year, and the worker by paying the employer half of these amounts. If the total length of service covered by a contract and its extension All the laws referred to are to be found in the Registro Oficial (Quito), June 3, 1936. The laws passed in 1928 are given in translation in U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Bulletin No. 559, Labor Legislation of Ecuador (Washington, 1931), pp. 13-23. 93855-36-5 exceeds 5 years, the worker is entitled to dismissal compensation as stated above even though his services are terminated by the fulfillment of a contract for a fixed period or by proper advance notice. The employer may dismiss a worker at any time by paying the indemnity specified for dismissal, but he cannot discharge more than 2 workers at the same time if he employs 20 or fewer persons nor more than 5 if more than 20 persons are employed in his establishment. A contract for an indefinite period may be terminated by the employer upon 1 month's written notice, or by the worker with 15 days' notice. Failure to give such notice obligates the employer to pay dismissal compensation at the rate of 1 month's pay if the worker has not been in his service continuously for more than a year, and 1 month's pay for each year of service over 1 year; or the worker to provide a substitute, to repay 15 days' wages, or to work for his employer for that length of time. An employer may discharge a worker or a worker leave his employment without notice or compensation by giving 3 days' notice to the labor inspector, for reasons which the inspector approves. Approved reasons for dismissal are the worker's dishonesty or immoral conduct, grave insult to or physical attack upon the employer, serious failure to perform duties, insubordination or inciting others to insubordination, absence from work for more than 3 days without just reason, and engaging on his own account in a business similar to that of his employer. Approved reasons for the worker leaving his work are dishonesty or immorality on the part of the employer, gross insult to or acts of violence toward the worker, and the employer's serious failure to discharge his contract obligations or to comply with the provisions of the industrial accident prevention law. Under the circumstances cited above which justify the worker in leaving his employment, the competent judge may at his discretion fix compensation to the worker at an amount not to exceed 50 percent of his wages for the unexpired period of the contract. Labor agents who take Ecuadorean workers out of the country must pay their return fare. When an establishment is closed through force majeure, no compensation is due the workers. In case of bankruptcy, however, the workers have a preferred claim for their wages at the rate specified in their contract, or if there is no contract, at current rates. EMPLOYMENT CONDITIONS AND UNEM PLOYMENT RELIEF Employment Possibilities in New Industries HE prospect of the absorption of large numbers of the unemployed in new industries is far from encouraging, according to a recent study of population distribution, made under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania. The great possibilities in the way of job opportunities in new industries form a popular subject of discussion but one that, these investigators caution, calls for more critical analysis than has been expended upon it. To the question "What are the chances of a deus ex machina appearing from these quarters" the report replies in part as follows: Airplanes, the photoelectric cell or electric eye, television, air-conditioning, prefabricated housing-these and others capture the imagination. The hope is, of course, that "some industry" will provide a stimulus similar to that given by the automobile and the radio in the more recent past, and by railroad construction in former times, and that a baby industry may be in the incubator in some of our engineering laboratories and not yet disclosed to the public. In connection with the study from which the information in the present article is taken, a consulting engineer made a survey of industrial research laboratories. Some 300 replies to his inquiry indicate that although the program of industrial research has emphasized the development of new products, there are few possibilities of "large new industries coming into existence in the immediate future which will cause huge shifts in present unemployed labor." This engineer also reports that in the past 10 years more inventions and products have come from industrial and scientific laboratories than from the old type of inventor carrying on his work alone. In the event the new products should develop into "new industries", they would probably tend to provide more continuous employment for the labor forces connected with the establishments which support such laboratories rather than to absorb large numbers of persons who are now jobless. As a matter of fact, some so-called new industries will have a negative effect, at least on employment in manufacturing as a whole. The photoelectric cell, for example, is now "technically reasonably perfect and undoubtedly on its way to wider application." Its manData in this article are from ch. VIII, Migration and Economic Opportunity-the report of the study of population redistribution, by Carter Goodrich and others. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1936. ufacture will provide some work for the persons making these instruments and making the machines for their manufacture. This increase in employment, however, will be more than counterbalanced by the reduction of workers in sorting, grading, and control operations in a very large number of industries in which this device will be used. In general, the progress of chemical technology by the displacement of other products will also reduce existing and potential employment opportunities in other industries at a rate not nearly compensated for by new job opportunities offered. Among other conclusions reached in the study are that new methods in construction in the building industry have also had similar effects. To provide the same amount of new housing approximately similar in quality to those built in the period 1923-29, factory prefabrication methods will result in reducing the number of men required in that period. Unless the standard of living rises as a whole beyond the increase in over-all productivity derived from new methods and new industries, employment will dwindle rather than expand. Air-conditioning may be considered such an expansion of the standard of living. Although only a combination of the well-established heating and refrigerating industries, these adequately controlled temperature and humidity conditions throughout the year in homes, offices, and factories will be an absolute improvement and will go beyond what even well-housed people have been accustomed to demand. If a sufficiently great number of people insist on and are able to pay for this improvement, we shall have a new industry employing more wage earners. But it is hard to make any quantitative estimates before the process of manufacturing the necessary machinery has been put on a mass-production basis and perfected so that its present high price can be reduced and a sufficiently large field to dispose of the output is found. Airplane manufacture is a new industry. According to the report under review, in 1929 it employed only 15,000 wage earners and this number declined 50 percent as a result of the depression. Subsidies from the Government have multiplied the construction of large transport planes which "are potential or auxiliary military craft.” Volume possibilities lie, however, in the manufacture of sport planes. The task of overcoming the physical limitations and prejudices of individuals as airplane pilots will not be as easy as that of education of automobile drivers. Possibly the future of aircraft involves more problems than the automobile industry confronted at the beginning of its history. The major problem "is to find a potential demand which will financially justify the development work and high initial plant obsolescence involved in getting the aircraft industry on a mass-production basis." It is also maintained in the study here quoted that people who talk of the tremendous potentialities of new industries very seldom base 2 According to the U. S. Bureau of Census report on the Biennial Census of Manufactures, 1933, the average number of wage earners for the year in the manufacture of aircraft or of aircraft parts in 1929 and 1933 was respectively 14,710 and 7,816, exclusive of Government establishments. |