The Threat of G.A.W.

The call to arms was sounded last week by President Joseph E. Moody, of the Southern Coal Producers Association, before a Chicago meeting of the American Trucking Associations. Small businessmen, he said, must unite, raise "real money" and fight as a unit against the guaranteed annual wage. "The huge reserves necessary to guarantee even 26 weeks' unemployment assistance as low as the Ford and General Motors contract call for, just aren't possible for new and small businesses. And don't think these guarantees won't grow. We in the coal industry remember only too well what happened to us . . . In 1946 a contract [was] signed for the payment of 5-c- a ton royalty into a welfare fund. Today, the welfare tax is 40-c- a ton."

Now, said Moody, coal's fringe benefits account for 31% of the industry payroll, thus help to price coal out of the competitive market. Results: the industry employs only 200,000 men today against 400,000 in 1946-47, produces 392 million tons against 630 million tons eight years ago, and "owners have gone out of business by the hundreds."

Overall. Moody estimated that the recent trend to fringe benefits has added $43 billion a Dually to the U.S. labor bill, or one-fifth of the total.

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