'Put Our People Back to Work'

As a boy in Jackson, Miss., F. (for Freddie) Ray Marshall, 48, got up at 3:30 a.m. to milk the cows. His line of work may have changed since--today he is an economics professor at the University of Texas at Austin--but not his long hours or his determination. When he reaches Washington in January as the Carter Administration's Secretary of Labor, it will be "with my feet running."

Marshall certainly wasted no time in outlining his agenda. He said he would present to President-elect Carter the "strongest case" for repealing Rule 14B, the Taft-Hartley Act's "right to work" provision authorizing states to void labor contracts requiring workers to join unions. This, in Marshall's view, would be part of an "equitable solution" under which workers could henceforth be compelled to pay dues but not to join unions. (Carter has not called for the repeal of 14B but has said he would sign a repeal if passed by Congress.) Marshall also denounced existing job-training programs as mere "income maintenance plans that leave participants with no skills." He would replace them with apprentice programs, particularly for women and minority groups.

Born in Oak Grove, La., Marshall was sent at about the age of twelve to a Baptist orphanage in Jackson, Miss., along with his four younger brothers and sisters, after their mother died. At 15, he ran away and got a job making dentures in a dental factory. After a few months, he lied about his age to get into the Navy and served as a radioman in the Pacific during World War II.

After the war, he enrolled at Mississippi's Millsaps College and was almost bounced when officials discovered he was an eighth-grade dropout. He later went on to earn a master's from Louisiana State University and a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley.

Except for a year in Finland on a Fulbright grant and a semester at Harvard, he has taught only in the South (Mississippi, L.S.U., Kentucky and now Texas). Among his few avocations is playing Frisbee with his wife of 30 years. Pat, and their five children.

Training Programs. The key problem confronting Marshall and the Department's 14,000 employees will be, as Carter put it, "to put our people back to work." Marshall calls for vastly expanded training programs, arguing that people should be trained for more than one job, so that in a recession they can find work outside their original field. In a familiar liberal argument, he challenges the contention that reducing unemployment need be inflationary. "Which is the more inflationary," he asks, "paying unemployment insurance or putting people in work-training programs where they are producing for the economy?"

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