Social Security

Two days after election the U. S. Social Security Board made public its plans for registering workers and employers for the old-age pension tax. These plans called for delivery next week of registration blanks for employers, which must be filled in and returned before the week is out. The following week, blanks will be issued to some 26,000,000 employes, must be returned within two weeks.

Employers' blanks call chiefly for name, address, business and approximate number of employes. Employes' blanks do not call, as Republican propaganda suggested, for statements of employes' religion, income or other intimate data. Chief information demanded is the employe's name and address, the name and address of his employer, his date and place of birth, his parents' names, his sex and color. Although registration forms are labeled "Application," they bear, like income tax blanks, the imprint of the Bureau of Internal Revenue.

After the registrations are received each employe will be issued a numbered identification card. Not tags (they have no strings) nor discs (they are not round), these cards will bear a triple hyphenated number, the first digits designating an area, the next an industrial group, the third an individual. Lest workers feel they are being numbered like convicts, each number is called an "Account Number" and the published regulations say, "You may have your account number changed at any time by applying to the Social Security Board and showing good reasons for the change."

With the campaign controversy over, the nature of the registration thus settled, the beginning of a new controversy raised its head: labor leaders prepared to urge the American Federation of Labor convention next week at Tampa to demand that Congress place the whole old-age pension tax on employers instead of splitting it half-&-half between employer and employe. This they proposed in vain when the Act was originally passed. Now they hope to succeed, being buttressed by the arguments of many Republican employers who before election stirred up resentment against the tax "pay deduction." Since the great majority of employers will shift the tax to their customers, Labor as the largest consumer will pay most of it anyhow. But it would be an indirect tax; the ordinary employe would not be aware of his "pay cut," and at least part of the burden would be shifted to farmers and other unbenefited consumers.

Some employers, glad to conciliate labor, may not be wholly averse to such a change. In Chicago last week Mills Novelty Co., manufacturer of automatic vending and gambling machines, announced it would boost the pay of its 2,600 employes enough to compensate for the 1% pay-envelope tax. Said Fred H. Mills: "Following the tremendous vote of confidence given the President by the nation, we are sure that business is going to improve considerably. We believe that our company will be more able to bear the added burden of the tax on wages than our employes and we are, therefore, absorbing their share. We think that our workers should not have to worry about a tax on their wages."

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