Ford to extend UAW contract to bomb plant
At least 60,000 men will be employed at Ypsilanti, Michigan
Detroit, Michigan (UP) –
An agreement, under which provisions of the Ford Motor Company’s union shop checkoff contract with the United Automobile Workers (CIO) would be extended to employees of the firm’s vast $58,500,000 bomber plant near Ypsilanti, Michigan, was disclosed today.
Ford personnel director Harry Bennett said no new contract would be required but that the 60,000-70,000 men eventually to be employed at the plant will be blanketed under the existing agreement with the UAW-CIO. Union sources confirmed the plan.
Extension of the agreement which already embraces 120,000 Ford workers throughout the country followed disclosure by CIO president Philip Murray last month that he had conferred with Ford officials on the matter during the CIO national convention.
Although present orders call for Ford to turn out 75 completed bombers and 100 complete sub-assemblies a month, they are expected to be stepped up considerably in view of the war against Japan, Germany and Italy. The bomber plant, which with the airport cover 975 miles, can be geared to build a four-motored bomber every hour.
‘I’ll go where my husband goes,’ says U.S. citizen wed to Nazi naval attaché
American wife of German envoy declares ‘I won’t go home’
By Evelyn Peyton Gordon, Scripps-Howard staff writer
Washington –
I telephoned the California-born wife of VAdm. Robert Witthoeft-Emden, German naval attaché here. A solemn but pleasant admiral answered the phone personally.
“Darling,” I heard him summon his wife.
I asked her:
Are you an American citizen?
“Yes,” said Frau Witthoeft.
What will you do when members of the German staff start for Europe?
I will go where my husband goes. Wouldn’t you?
At Warrenton, Virginia, is the Countess Caracciolo di Melito, visiting her father, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Oscar T. Crosby.
Miriam Crosby married her handsome Italian count at Naples in 1915, a few days after Italy declared war on Germany. She is an Italian citizen. Her husband is in unoccupied France on a repatriation commission, and their son, Ludovico, is in the Italian Navy. She has been in this country nearly two years.
For some weeks, the countess has been consulting the State Department and the Italian Embassy about her status, and both have advised her not to worry. But today the situation is more complex. Will she return to an Italy which at the moment is empty of both her husband and son? Can she remain at her father’s estate? Can she be interned?
Up in New York are Signore Lais and her daughter, Edna. Signora Lais is the American-born wife of a former naval attaché of the Italian Embassy. When Adm. Lais was recalled to Italy months ago because of a “leak,” his wife and daughter remained in New York. But they are Italian citizens, or were at least until recently.
In a beautiful villa in Florence, Italy, is Signora Rosso, the former Frances Wilkinson Bunker of Washington and Chicago. When she was married in Paris a few years ago to the then Italian Ambassador at Moscow, she became an Italian citizen, and eventually her assets in this country were impounded. Her ex-husband, Arthur Bunker, an OPM dollar-a-year man, has had no word from her. Neither has their daughter, Adele, who is selling Christmas books at Brentano’s.
Frau Thomsen, wife of the German Chargé d’Affaires, was not answering the telephone. Some time ago, when there was a threat that diplomatic relations would be broken, she said:
I won’t go home – ever. I won’t go back to that place.
Nobody believed that she felt as she often said she felt about Hitler. These next days will tell whether the titian-haired Hungarian Bebe Thomsen was only acting a part.
U.S. to recruit closed plants as arms works
Government will utilize factories shutdown by shortages
By John W. Love, Scripps-Howard staff writer
Washington –
Until the government gets a better slant on the present supplies and future flow of vital materials from the Far East, severe reductions will be applied to all the civilian industries using them. That appears to mean practically all metal industries.
The new case of factory shutdowns thus created, it is disclosed, will be utilized to turn over still more of these plants to armament manufacture. The emphasis is now definitely swinging to such conversion. Though a number of new plants are yet to be erected, the transformation of existing works is to be the main order of expansion in arms production for winter and spring.
Certainties of heavy disemployment in any circumstances for intervals of weeks to months, plus an imperative need for every tool which can be utilized are ending the long argument over whether planes and tanks should be turned out in revamped old plants or in specially designed new ones.
Auto rationing seen
For these reasons, members of the auto industry here would not be surprised to see the manufacture of passenger seats cease altogether by March, if not sooner. Rationing of new cars is expected in any event, with buyers required to have priority tickets.
Makers of cars were notified yesterday they could produce 102,000 passenger models next February, or a little more than a fifth of last February’s output, but the order temporarily stopping the sale of tires at retail impressed them more.
This order is expected to be followed by others which would husband the strategic metals derived from Chinese, East Indian and Philippine sources. Though all of these, except tin, can be obtained from American or nearby sources, time is needed to open new mines and enlarge others, and the risks are regarded as too great to permit chances to be taken until the whole story is known.
Agencies study supplies
Half a dozen agencies in Washington have been going over the American outlook for supplies which have been interrupted by the Pacific War, and in today’s meeting of the Supply, Priorities and Allocations Board, under the management of Donald M. Nelson, all this information was being brought together.
Orders similar to that applied to tires would remain in effect either until the naval situation cleared somewhat or the government determined the assured American supply.
May centralize purchasing
Out of the present uncertainties may come a centralized importing agency under RFC management, government takeovers of warehouse space for storing the materials it is about to acquire, and general standardization of the civilian goods still allowed to be made, from refrigerators on down.
Another upshot may be centralized purchasing by the Army, Navy, Maritime Commission and Lend-Lease.
Machinery adaptable
The uncertainty is partly the result of incomplete reorganization of the OPM and its related supply agencies. Further moves in this process are expected next week or the week after.
In the movement to convert existing plants to the production of arms, defense agencies have collected a quantity of information on the mechanical resources of these plants. It is understood that in the Chevrolet works in Buffalo, now being converted to make airplane engines, about 30% of the machinery is adaptable.
In a typical Detroit assembly system, about 40% of the machines and machine tools can be used to make bomber engines; about 50% can be used to make tanks; for machine guns, the proportion is lower. The rest of the tools would be greased up for storage.
Known as the Reuther Plan – for the officer of the United Auto Workers who proposed it – the conversion movement has not been so enthusiastically supported by workers in the industry in recent months because of the layoffs required during the changeover, and the discovery that fewer men would be employed afterward than before. This number may be increased, however, by running the plants day and night.
CANDIDLY SPEAKING —
Women needed for defense jobs, but not as wardens
They can be ‘much more valuable’ in other posts, officials say; work categories listed
By Maxine Garrison
WANTED: 500 first-aid instructors.
500 volunteer housing canvassers.
200 ambulance attendants.
200 water safety guides.As many stenographers, typists and file clerks as are available.
NOT wanted: Women air-raid wardens.
There, in a classified ad nutshell, is the story of Pittsburgh’s Civilian Defense needs at the moment.
The great preference of women applicants for air-raid warden posts, coming on top of the fact that there have been 3,000 applicants (both men and women) this week alone, complicates matters at Civilian Defense offices in the City-County Building.
Men are preferred
It is explained that air-raid wardens are not the most immediate need and, besides, men are preferred for those posts.
But that women need not feel slighted… […]. Instructors are needed for the primary first air course (an instructor must have completed the first two courses).
There is an immediate call for canvassers to compile lists of available houses, apartments and rooms for defense workers. There is a shortage of ambulance attendants (who require first-aid training in such matters as lifting a patient from stretcher to ambulance).
Rush of clerical work
Water safety guides will be those people who can swim well and can handle small river craft in case of emergency.
The 3,000 applications within a week makes it clear why stenographers, typists and file clerks are wanted.
In brief, say Civilian Defense authorities:
We do want women – lots of them. But we don’t want women air-raid wardens, and we hope they’ll understand how much more valuable they can be in other capacities.
For efficiency’s sake, Pittsburgh’s Civilian Defense organization next week will inaugurate a method used here, as far as is known, for the first time in such work. To facilitate the enrollment of thousands of department store workers, registration centers will be set up in four downtown department stores.
Donate Christmas boxes early, Henderson urges
Washington (UP) –
If you’ve received any packages marked “Don’t Open Until Christmas,” please ignore that injunction.
That appeal was made today by Price Administrator Leon Henderson who asked that gift boxes and wrappings be contributed to the national waste paper collection campaign.
Mr. Henderson explained that paper board is in great demand to package war materials and the “raw material” from which it is made is used paper and cardboard cartons and boxes.
U.S. in seventh war
By the United Press
The United States was engaged in its seventh war today. They are:
War Started Ended Revolutionary War April 19, 1775 Jan. 14, 1784 War of 1812 June 18, 1812 Feb. 17, 1815 War with Mexico April 25, 1846 May 30, 1848 Civil War April 15, 1861 Aug. 20, 1866 War with Spain April 21, 1898 April 11, 1899 World War I April 6, 1917 July 2, 1921 World War II Dec. 11, 1941