Vol. 81/No. 48      December 25, 2017

 

25, 50 and 75 Years Ago

December 25, 1992

MONTREAL — Seventeen of the biggest companies in the Quebec Men’s Clothing Manufacturers’ Association locked out 3,000 members of the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union December 7. The garment bosses had threatened the lockout if union members rejected their demand for major concessions in contract negotiations.

The garment bosses aim to drive out workers with higher wages and seniority by tying seniority to the machines. If the machine is eliminated, the operator’s job will also be eliminated. Those laid off would be denied recall rights. The bosses are also pushing for the right to lower hourly wage rates.

Another demand would give the employers the right to fire any union member who doesn’t work the previous agreed to voluntary overtime on the grounds that this would constitute an “illegal strike.”

December 25, 1967

After nearly a year of debate, Congress has passed the 1967 Social Security Act Amendments. Trumped up as a big gain for the aged, the amendments do little in that regard and actually have brutally slashed welfare payments. And through the tricky Social Security setup, what the amendments boil down to is a concealed general tax increase to go toward paying for the Vietnam War.

The amendments raise minimum social security payments only 13 percent. This brings the average benefit for retired workers to $1,150 a year. These payments are far below levels recognized by the government as minimum subsistence.

At the same time the new social security amendments substantially increase social security taxes and take steps to remove hundreds of thousands of the neediest men, women, and children from federal welfare rolls.

December 26, 1942

“Consumers are being gouged not only by direct price increases, but by an amazing variety of schemes hatched by businessmen to impose hidden, direct ‘raids’ on workers’ pocketbook,” said Labor, the railroad union paper, on the basis of a recent survey conducted by the Department of Labor.

The favorite devices are the following: Cheapening quality without lowering the price; the addition of “special charges” which were not made before; the dropping by manufacturers of cheaper lines of products and the substitution of more costly ones; the manufacture of so-called “new” products, differing very slightly if at all from products formerly turned out; fake “upgrading.”

These schemes have been so widespread, according to the Labor Department, that they are “considerably more significant for many products than actual changes in formal price quotations.”  
 
 
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