Motor Code

Behind all the whooping headlines, NRA's biggest concrete achievement last week was President Roosevelt's signing of the automobile code. It was the fifth major industry to be brought under a permanent trade agreement, which affected some 300,000 factory workers, promised new jobs for some 40,000 more.* The motor code was flown by Army plane from Washington to the President's home at Hyde Park in the lap of Miss Frances ("Robbie") Robinson, pert secretary to Recovery Administrator Johnson. The President mulled over it in his cubby-hole study, talked with General Johnson by long-distance telephone, finally squiggled his name to it.

To comply with the collective bargaining requirement of the law and at the same time to keep their plants non-union the motor makers got this provision into their approved code: ''Employers in the industry may exercise their right to select, retain or advance employes on the basis of individual merit, without regard to their membership or nonmembership in any organization." Wrathfully organized labor pointed out that "merit" would be made a cloak behind which manufacturers would discharge union workers. NRA's Labor Advisory Board reluctantly accepted the stipulation, warned that it was no precedent. But other non-union code makers in Washington quickly took their cue from the automobile industry, began writing "merit systems" into their labor agreements.

In work & wages the automobile code was slightly better than the NRA average of 40 hours per week and 40-c- per hour. It provided a 43-c--hour minimum wage in all big-city plants. The average work week was set at 35 hours. Because of the seasonal peaks and valleys of automobile production provision was made that employes might be worked a maximum of 48 hours a week during such periods so long as time during slack periods was scaled down to keep the average. Office help was put on about the same minimum basis as the President's Re-employment Agreement--40 hours a week at $15.

Still to be heard from was sly old Henry Ford, who had not signed his industry's code, had not given an inkling of what he proposed to do. He had ten days in which to make up his mind whether he would: 1) voluntarily subscribe; 2) be forced in by Presidential license; or 3) go the trade one better in a code of his own.

Other doings of the Blue Eagle last week:

P:General Johnson started fresh rumors of inflation when he complained that commercial banks were not helping along the NRA program with credit. He planned to take the matter up with the Federal Reserve Board and Reconstruction Finance Corp.

P:In an effort to clear up misunderstandings about the law's collective bargaining clause General Johnson explained: "The words 'open shop' and 'closed shop' are not used in the law and cannot be written into the law. These words have no agreed meaning and will be erased from the dictionary of the NRA."

*The other four majors coded: textiles, steel, oil, lumber.

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