achieved permanent protection; about 27 million fully insured now have temporary retirement and survivors protection for themselves and families and are working toward permanent protection; and 7,700,000 currently issued now have temporary survivors protection for families and are working toward permanent retirement and survivors protection. Some 710,000 are now retired and drawing benefits. Mr. Altmeyer explained that the permanently insured workers fall into 3 groups: (1) those who completed the required 40 quarters of coverage but are under the retirement age of 65; (2) those very close to 65 who achieved permanently insured status with fewer than 40 quarters of covered employment at wages higher than the specified $50 minimum for qualification; and (3) persons who are now 65 or over and fully insured. Eligibility for future benefits, as well as the benefit amounts of the 27 million fully insured, will depend to a great degree on their continued employment in work covered by the Social Security Act. Currently insured status is gained by working in covered employment half of the last 3 years of the worker's life. Only survivors benefits for children and widows caring for them are payable on the account of a currently insured worker. ¶The recent integration of the placement functions of the National Roster with those of the USES National Clearing House puts local offices in a position to take part to a greater extent than ever before in the placement of scientific and professional personnel. The National Clearing House will operate through the 1,800 local State Employment Service offices so that registrants with executive, professional, or scientific qualifications may be placed in contact with employers in need of their services anywhere in the United States or overseas. "With this amalgamation of the placement service of the National Roster and the National Clearing House," USES Director Robert C. Goodwin said, "the USES is better prepared to meet the need of employers for scientific, professional and executive personnel. The immediate objective is qualitative, rather than quantitative placements." The National Clearing House keeps an active file at the national office in Washington of professional, technical, and managerial job orders, which are received from local offices throughout the country after local offices have exhausted efforts to fill the positions locally. Likewise, when the local office has a qualified registrant which it cannot place locally, the application is sent into the national office by air mail. This serves to bring together at one central point job orders which cannot be filled locally and applications of highly qualified professional people. The Nation has a new permanent organization pledged to year-round efforts to promote employment of the handicapped. Known as the National Committee for Employment of the Handicapped, the new committee is an outgrowth of a similar temporary committee which functioned in connection with the 1946 observance of National Employ the Physically Handicapped Week. This temporary committee, formed from veteran, labor, professional, business, civic, and religious groups, acted in an advisory capacity to the Federal Interagency Committee for Employment of the Physically Handicapped, which coordinated the efforts of several agencies to make the week-long drive a success. The "Week" brought results. The United States Employment Service reported that October placements for the handicapped had increased 38 percent over September, while the Veterans Administration indicated that the number of disabled veterans in training, either in school or on the job, had jumped from 116,324 in September to 159,563 in October. Backers of the committee saw in these gains a call to action to "more thoroughly organize a job placement program on a national and community basis." Hence the organization of a national permanent committee to maintain public interest in employment of the handicapped. Maj. Gen. Graves B. Erskine, USMC, head of the Retraining and Reemployment Administration, is chairman of the new committee. Labor Exchanges Abroad... HE public employment service systems in the United States have the experience of other industrialized THE; comparison, for inspiration, for guidance. Below are accounts of employment exchanges in countries with widely diversified characteristics: highly industrialized England; huge, sprawling Canada; the still-farm country of Chile; defeated Germany and Japan. Yet regardless of the economic or social conditions of the country, each has its employment exchanges, each striving to provide basically the services to which our own public employment offices are dedicated. Employment exchanges are now an accepted part of the economy of modern industrialized nations. They now recognize that the hiring process, in peacetime as well as wartime, is one which can be served efficiently by a public employment exchange. With the coming of the Industrial Revolution, unemployment insurance programs were developed to lessen the impact of the unemployment accompanying the factory system. The need for a public employment exchange to provide a work test became immediately necessary. And when disaster strikes, as it did in Germany and Japan, destroying nearly all the productive capacity of a people, among the first functions that must arise if the shattered nation is to be rebuilt, are the employment services. For support of this contention, read the articles below. J LABOR EXCHANGES IN JAPAN By EDWARD D. HOLLANDER APAN is a country about as big as California, but with eight or nine times as many people, most of them crowded onto narrow plains between the sea and mountains; a country with a plenitude of manpower but dependent on other lands for metals, oil, coal, and other materials resources; a country trying to feed 77 million people with the products of about as much farm land as is found in Michigan; a country with modern factories, where handicraft still flourishes; a land with a network of steam and electric railways where people pull carts by hand and carry wares on their back; where farmers pump water out of irrigation ditches by treadmill in the shadow of high tension power lines. These characteristics are reflected in labor market conditions that resemble more nearly those of nineteenth century England than twentieth century America. The Japanese economy, even before the war, absorbed enormous quantities of labor, yet labor was plentiful, cheap, and not very demanding, and customs and institutions conspired to keep it so. "Feudal" is a word often used to describe the position of the Japanese worker, but it resembled Western feudalism less than it did the paternalism of the Western economy as it emerged from the handcraft stage during and after the Industrial Revolution. As in the West, paternalism, robbed of its benevolence, followed the workers from family shops into factories. Factory employers made the same demands for long hours at low pay as did the heads of the family work shops; they often restricted the workers' freedom of movement and contract as much. But, they shed most of the responsibility that the family head assumed for his family workers and apprentices. Unions were rare and frowned upon, and the high birth rate and abundance of willing replacements from homes and farms kept labor docile. Even where contract or indenture did not bind the Japanese worker to his employer, economic necessity and social pressure often did. Living in company housing, or tied by company loans, or immobilized on a little piece of land that meant the difference between survival and starvation, the Japanese had no choice but to take what he got. Nevertheless, even before the war (which for the Japanese began in 1931) the spread of Western forms of production and distribution was undermining the economic and social bases of traditional labor market FOR first-hand observations on the Japanese Labor Exchanges Serving on the same committee was J. F. Wellemeyer, on leave from the USES, who also contributes some close-ups on employment activities in the Far East. practices; and there was a steady trend toward the development of employer-employee relationships more nearly like those of the West. These changes did not necessarily improve the status of the Japanese worker. But they did tend to develop labor market relationships somewhat as we know them, with increasing freedom of both employer and employee to contract and to terminate the relationship. And as part of this trend the Japanese labor exchanges were born in 1921. The war superimposed on the Japanese labor market a pattern of rigid regimentation. The paternalistic relationship of employers and employees was adapted to make the former the officers and the latter the soldiers in a "production army." Labor bosses became the "leaders" of a casual "labor front." The typical labor boss assembled a gang and would provide workers for any common task at a fixed daily rate for each man in the gang. The money for wages, how ever, was paid to the labor boss, who, in turn, paid the workers somewhat less. In many instances, these labor bosses were organized under "super bosses" and the total take of the combination was enormous. One boss of dockside workers was reported to take in 90,000 yen a day. Evidence showed, too, that these bosses were often tied in with underworld activities and had begun to infiltrate the political parties. The labor exchanges under police control, became the machinery for the allocation of manpower for war production, paralleling the allocation of materials and facilities. A Disorganized Labor Market After the surrender, the Japanese economy-and with it the labor market-fell apart. Production of war materials stopped, and conversion to the pursuits of peace was slow. The shortage of basic raw materials-iron, ore, coal, and cotton, notably and the damage to plant facilities (many which escaped bombing had been dismantled for scrap metal) held production to a trickle. As the legal channels of food INTRODUCING SUPERVISION IT is interesting to note that the Japanese, prior to the visit of the committee, did not seem to understand the idea of supervision. In numerous discussions with Japanese officials we found that when the word "supervision” was mentioned in English the interpreter would end up talking about "encouragement." It developed that when a superior official would visit one of the local labor exchanges he would sit down with the manager and "encourage" him to do certain things if the conversation developed along appropriate lines. This encouragement would be given during the drinking of tea, a rite that accompanied every business discussion of any importance. Needless to say, the Japanese Ministry of Welfare officials were thoroughly briefed by the committee on the meaning and the technique of administrative supervision.-J. F. Wellemeyer. dried up, people were forced into the black market to supplement their rations. In the face of shortages of nearly everything, prices climbed, and wages followed in frantic but hopeless pursuit. Under these conditions, the labor market was thoroughly disorganized. Unemployment, traditionally very low in Japan, increased alarmingly. Yet most of the unemployed were not actually idle. They were busily engaged cultivating gardens on the ruins of burned-out cities; building shacks of scraps of metal and lumber; trading in the black market; foraging through the countryside in search of farmers who would barter food for household goods. Problems of Peacetime Operation It is in this atmosphere that the Japanese labor exchanges have tried to pull themselves together for peacetime operation. Although the law of 1921 called for the operation of a Nation-wide system of free public placement offices, these exchanges for some years were municipally operated under a regulation which required every community of more than a certain size to maintain one. As Japan prepared for war, the labor exchanges were united in a single system under national administration. During the war, the system under police control, became one of the principal mechanisms for controlling the allocation and distribution of manpower for war production, and the exchanges were closely intermeshed with the wartime labor front organizations. This relationship carried over for a few months after the surrender and after the dissolution of the labor front; but by mid-1946, after the transfer of the labor exchange system from the police to the Ministry of Welfare, the connection except for sporadic occurrences, seemed to have been largely dissolved. Although set up as a national system, the 600 Japanese labor exchanges, with some 9,000 employees, are largely administered through 47 separate prefectural governments. Organized under labor sections attached to these prefectural governments, the local exchanges are headed up functionally in Tokyo in the Employment Division of the Ministry of Welfare, which has been inadequately staffed with but 60 individuals. (The Japanese Government has no Ministry of Labor.) The set-up, however, has been far from satisfactory since the prefectural chiefs of labor sections report to the governor, who, in turn, reports to the Home Minister. If the chief of the Employment Section in the Ministry of Welfare desired to issue instructions to local offices, they were forced to send them to the Minister of Welfare, who sent them to the Home Minister, who forwarded them to the prefectural governors, who turned them over to the chiefs of labor sections, who, in turn, notified the local office managers; that is, unless any of these people had some objection to the instructions. Obviously, the need was for a direct field organization which would provide for bypassing the prefectural governors by placing a labor representative on a regional basis to supervise the local exchanges directly. 手練に輪現する事。 集められる者が準備を る事、最後に情報を容易に取り 又は實行 此れは唯要す ない事。此れを時間通りに提出す 有らゅう報告は唯特定な用途 要途 Reports of all kinds should contain only information that has a specific use. They should be collected no more than necessary. They should be sent only to those officials who need them. They should be submitted on time. Finally, they should be prepared by the persons having easiest access to the information, and should be provided for in the operating procedure. In form and function the Japanese labor exchanges bear a strong family resemblance to their cousins in the West, especially in the United States. Registration, order-taking, selection, and referral are performed in much the same way as in the States. All applicants are registered; in general labor exchanges by self-registration; in casual exchanges by a permanent identification card. Orders are recorded on a standard form, and filled almost exclusively through spot placement. Neither applicants nor employers are very exacting in their occupational specifications, and the exchanges have been operating without a standard system of precise occupational classification. The selection process is facilitated by the use of a sort of written personal history, which every applicant carries with him as a matter of custom. It is curious that with the use of this information and a spot placement procedure, the Japanese labor exchanges nevertheless go through the routine of filling out application cards for applicants who are not referred to jobs. These applications are kept "for future reference," but because of the peculiarities of Japanese writing, which defies alphabetizing, they are not filed by name and seldom by occupation. Usually they are filed by date of receipt and therefore rarely referred to. The exchanges maintain continuous and often close relationships with employers. These relationships, however, are casual and not recorded for purposes of planning and management. The service to employers nevertheless seems to be satisfactory, in quality at least: 50 to 75 percent of applicants referred to jobs are hired. Casual labor exchanges (nearly 100 of them) operate on the principle of a shape-up. Each casual exchange has a large group of casual laborers who consider themselves attached to it and who return to it whenever they need to be placed. Of the 2,000 or 3,000 casuals attached to an exchange on any given morning, perhaps 200 or 300 will turn up for reassignment; the remainder will report directly to the employers for whom they have been working by the day. The selection of workers from the shape-up to fill the day's orders is also casual. The applicants sometimes sort themselves roughly by occupations, in parallel lines. The orders are read aloud and the applicants are referred on the basis of first-come-first served, or selected by the you-you-and-you method. One instance was observed of a more formalized procedure: the placement official collected the identi fication cards of the competing applicants, threw them in the air, and selected those which landed face up. At least it can be said for this that it is easier than selection by rotation and more honest than selection by favoritism. The Japanese labor exchanges offer few special services. They are forbidden by Allied directive to offer any preferential services to veterans and they offer only vague "encouragement" to physically handicapped, unsupported by any defined program or procedure for placing them in suitable work. They offer no formalized counseling service, as such. Neither has Japan an unemployment insurance system. Workers laid off are customarily compensated by a separation allowance which is not a legal obligation of the employer. The labor exchanges have no responsibility for social insurance or assistance, although it has been proposed that they be made the channel for the placement of workers on public work projects. The exchanges are often au REPORTING THE JAPANESE WAY ONE report of the Japanese Employment Exchange had to be prepared every month by each office, summarized in each prefectural office and again, resummarized in Tokyo. This report contained between 50 and 60 lines and something over 30 columns for a total of more than 1,500 items. National summary operating reports were running about 4 or 5 months behind the reporting month. Although this was the most difficult report, it was only one of perhaps 15 or 18 regular reports prepared by local employment offices. The American committee recommended that this cumbersome report be canceled and that a reporting system based on information needed by a well-managed local office for operating purposes be established. There was no system of reporting local labor market conditions; headquarters information on the subject was derived from census materials, special registrations, and the like, and was on the whole completely inadequate. A limited system of local labor market analysis was recommended and a sample labor market analysis of a small manufacturing center was prepared for guidance of Japanese officials.—J. F. Wellemeyer. thorized to issue tokens for supplemental rations for heavy labor, especially to casuals. The exchanges do have a fairly well-developed system of interexchange and interprefecture clearance. Also, they maintain close working relationships with the public schools in "guiding" and placing school graduates. More Jobs Than Workers The labor exchanges in Japan are confronted with the anomaly of critical labor shortages in the midst of mass unemployment. In the spring of 1946 most Japanese labor exchanges had an excess of openings over applicants. Employers themselves reported the same reluctance of workers to apply for jobs. The labor exchanges have been carrying on aggressive national recruitment campaigns for coal minersalways hard-to-fill jobs, and especially difficult to fill under conditions existing in Japan today. Aggressive action has also been needed to man fertilizer and textile factories. In such campaigns, the labor exchanges have employed modern methods of advertising and recruitment, emphasizing the special inducements by way of transportation, housing, and extra rations, and have set up special facilities for handling applicants. These methods have been fairly successful, especially insofar as they have emphasized the availability of housing and rations. How to break the hold of the labor bosses is one of the necessary and pressing problems of Japan's employment officials. To some extent, especially in the most important labor market areas, this has been accomplished by the extension of the casual labor exchanges. In other areas the bosses have used their political and economic influence to block the opening of casual exchanges or to harass their operations. However, the Japanese Government is committed to the total eradication of this labor-boss system. Recruitment and placement of Japanese civilian labor for the Allied Occupation Forces has top priority in the labor exchanges. The workers are supplied on requisitions of military government officers to the Japanese Government, and recruited and referred by the labor exchanges. After some difficulties in the early months of the occupation, the labor demands of the Occupation Forces-often inflated in number and extravagant in utilization-have been satisfactorily met. In some cases, the prefectural offices have used labor bosses to recruit for the occupation; and occasionally methods of duress and compulsion have been used. But both of these methods have been interdicted by the occupation authorities. Manpower is Japan's greatest asset. Her reconstruction depends very largely on how that manpower is mobilized for essential production and distribution. This overriding objective furnishes an incentive for development of a labor exchange system adequate to cope with Japan's myriad employment problems. EMPLOYMENT EXCHANGES IN GERMANY By LEO R. WERTS and DENIS A. COURTNEY Office of Military Government of Germany (U. S.), Manpower Division tion of labor in National Socialist Germany was one of severe and increasing regimentation. -During the 20's, the typical employment service functions were handled by a nation-wide system of regional and local labor offices loosely coordinated into an organization known as the Reich Institute for Labor Placement and Unemployment Insurance. Under this system the regional labor offices enjoyed a considerable degree of autonomy. They were not, moreover, purely government bodies; employers, employees, and government had equal representation in their administration. The establishment of the German Labor Front in 1933 and the promulgation of a new basic labor law in 1934 placed control of employment and working conditions in the hands either of management or of the State. Finally, in 1937, the last vestige of autonomy was removed from the employment service by the absorption of the Reich Institute into the Ministry of Labor. With absorption, the administration of the labor offices lost its tripartite character. They became a mere part of the centralized state mechanism for total mobilization of German manpower for war. When military government began its job in 1945, the elaborate mechanism of labor administration was just a part of the rubble-heap that was Germany. But before streets could be cleared, food moved, or utilities patched up, the beginnings of a new employ. ment service had to be dug from the ruins in order to LEO R. WERTS has long been identified with the United States Employment Service. He is a former official of the Illinois State Employment Service and during the war headed the important Field Service of the War Manpower Commission. |