able to absorbe all of them unless there is more defense business than we have now.

Dr. LAMB. Mr. Roberge.

Mr. ROBERGE (Ford). We hope to receive defense orders that will assist greatly in absorbing some of the employees laid off, but it is difficult to say just what they will amount to, because the orders are not firm at the present time.

Dr. LAMB. Is that business still in process of negotiation with your company too, Mr. Wilson?

Mr. WILSON (General Motors). I would like to point out that more than half of the reduction in employment in the automotive industry is going to be in General Motors alone, so that we have more than half of the problem.

The present defense orders we have on hand, and the increased quantities of material we are organized to produce, will not begin to reemploy the people that we had employed last June.

We have been actively working with all interested Government agencies to obtain more business, and have been since the beginning of the emergency a year ago in June, and we have projects in hand now and are submitting proposals on additional projects. But as the matter stands right now, we don't see the end on reemploying all the people who are going to be laid off.

Dr. LAMB. Mr. Hill.

Mr. HILL (Murray Corporation). We should be able to absorb all our male employees by the early spring of next year. I expect we will be embarrassed because we have a considerable number of female employees who may not be adaptable to the aircraft work. We will use as many of them as we can, but we may have some difficulty absorbing them.

From then on out, we may have to pick up some other employees outside our own organization.

Dr. LAMB. Mr. Weiss.

Mr. WEISS (Packard). We do not anticipate that there will be any lay-offs. In other words, our defense program will absorb practically all of our car people.

Dr. LAMB. And Mr. Waldron.

The CHAIRMAN. May I interrupt for a moment. Mr. Hill, what is the Murray Corporation of America?

Mr. HILL. We manufacture a large number of metal assemblies for automobile bodies, chassis and frames for automobiles, and we have a substantial contract for airplane wings and airplane parts. In addition, we manufacture cushion springs and wire products. That is where this large percentage of women is employed, and we anticipate a big reduction in that business.

Mr. WALDRON (Hudson). We anticipate by March 1 we will absorb all our male employees and perhaps some of the female.

TESTIMONY OF C. C. CARLTON, MOTOR WHEEL CORPORATION, AND PRESIDENT, AUTOMOTIVE PARTS AND EQUIPMENT MANUFACTURERS ASSOCIATION, DETROIT, MICH.

Mr. CARLTON. I would like to answer that question. I understand this discussion is rather informal.

Dr. LAMB. Certainly, we would like to have your answer.

Mr. CARLTON. Speaking for the Motor Wheel Corporation at Lansing, Mich., I would like to express a slightly different viewpoint.

Our greatest reduction in employment has already occurred. About 25 percent of our 2,500 men are now laid off. We will have Government work that will pick up a small part of them between now and January, but eventually, despite anything that we may now have in the way of Government orders, about 25 percent of our people will be continuously unemployed.'

TRANSFER OF WORKERS TO DEFENSE PRODUCTION

Mr. CURTIS. What is your policy with regard to transfer of workers from civilian production to defense work, and how is it working out? Mr. CARLTON. In the beginning of the work on our first defense orders we could not transfer men because we were then running 100 percent in the automotive industry; therefore, we were compelled to hire new men for defense orders. As the reduction in automobilepassenger-car business occurred, we could absorb our own men, our regular employees. However, the seniority situation handles that pretty well because our own people will all be eventually employed; that is, our older employees will all be employed on defense work as far as the defense work will go.

Dr. LAMB. And Mr. Conder?

Mr. CONDER (Chrysler). The great majority of our employees on defense work now have been transferred from the automobile plants. We have endeavored to select them on the basis of qualification by their experience in the automobile plants to do the job in defense plants. Mr. CURTIS. Have they been transferred with or without training under the defense program?

Mr. CONDER. So far we have been able to find employees who have had sufficient experience on similar types of work in the automobile plants to place these men on the jobs in defense plants, and give them what training they needed there.

Mr. CURTIS. How many have you transferred?

Mr. CONDER. You are referring to both salary and hourly-rate employees?

Mr. CURTIS. Yes.

Mr. CONDER. Approximately 400.

Mr. CURTIS. Mr. Roberge, what is your answer to this question? Mr. ROBERGE (Ford). As rapidly as the defense work progresses in our organization, we transfer men from our automobile operations to defense operations, and they are given training, of course, before they proceed on that work.

Mr. CURTIS. How much training?

Mr. ROBERGE. Sufficient to qualify them for the job that they are taking over.

Mr. CURTIS. What is the average length of the training?

Mr. ROBERGE. I couldn't tell you.

Mr. CURTIS. What are the maximum and minimum?

Mr. ROBERGE. I don't believe I could tell you that. It depends on the particular skill of the man and the job that he is going on. Mr. CURTIS. How many have you transferred?

In a letter received subsequent to the hearing, Mr. Carlton supplied the committee with additional information on this point, as follows: "That statement was true to the best of my knowledge and belief the day I made it, but additional United States Government orders now on hand indicate that by the end of November and from there on to an indefinite period, we shall be able to employ all Motor Wheel labor. In other words, the serious reduction of employment due to the mandatory curtailment of passenger-car production will all be taken up approximately by the end of November by additional Government contracts which we have received."

6,000 WORKERS TRANSFERRED

Mr. ROBERGE. About 6,000.

Mr. CURTIS. Is the plan working out all right?

Mr. ROBERGE. Yes.

Mr. CURTIS. Mr. Wilson?

Mr. WILSON (General Motors). The way the corporation runs its plants, the various divisions have seniority set-ups by plants. Some plants also have seniority set-ups by occupational groups within plants.

EMPLOYEES RETAIN SENIORITY RIGHTS

When we started our first defense operations, some of the employees were somewhat loathe to be transferred over to defense for fear the defense job might run out and then they would be out of their regular work; so we worked out a plan under which an employee transferred to a defense department or a defense plant keeps his seniority in the old plant and acquires seniority in the new plant from the time he starts his new work.

We did that a great many months ago, during the period from June 30, 1940, to June 30, 1941. We employed about 80,000 additional people in our various plants over the country, so that it has been only recently that we have had much of a problem with any laid-off employees or any problem of transfer. We have had no trouble finding suitable employees for the work. We have picked out the people we thought could do the work best on defense projects, and transferred them, or hired new employees.

In two places we did get cooperation from the local schools in training, at our Allison engine plant in Indianapolis and in connection with our machine-gun plant in Flint. In both of those places we specially trained new employees for the work.

EMPLOYMENT POLICY OF GENERAL MOTORS

Following the announcement of the large cut in business, we immediately put into effect an order that

no new employees are to be hired on defense or any other work in any plant in any city where General Motors employees with seniority who can do the work are laid off.

Former General Motors employees without seniority will also be given preference on work they can do in new defense activities, provided they make application for such work.

That is the present General Motors policy.

Mr. CURTIS. Would you say then, that by and large your transfer system is working out very well?

Mr. WILSON. I know of no problems in connection with it now. We also have an agreement in our union contracts covering the transfer of employees within plants, so far as our regular work is

concerned, and there is no reason why that same clause doesn't amply take care of the transfer of employees from nondefense to defense work.

Mr. CURTIS. Could you state how many have been transferred? Mr. WILSON. I don't know.

Mr. CURTIS. Mr. Hill, what is your policy with respect to transfer of workers from civilian production to defense production?

NEW WORKERS HIRED FOR DEFENSE PRODUCTION

Mr. HILL (Murray Corporation). Our defense contracts started while our automobile work was at a peak, so we were unable to transfer people. We went outside and started to hire new people.

Some of these were very highly skilled people, such as draftsmen, engineers, laboratory and material-testing men, and aircraft engineers. However, since the cut has been made in automotive production, we have adopted a policy of not hiring any outside workers at all unless we cannot find a properly qualified man in our own organization.

Recently we have attempted to follow a new plan. When men are laid off in automotive production, we lay them off temporarily, and then, as rapidly as we can we transfer our oldest men from our civilian work into defense work, we hire back our employees with less seniority who have been laid off. That is the plan we are attempting to follow at the present time.

When we decide to transfer a man from civilian work to defense work, we give him the opportunity to decline. If he declines, he does not get another opportunity until the next time we call up more men, and when he goes to defense work he cannot "bump out," as the union says, any men of lesser seniority who are in the defense work.

Mr. CURTIS. Does he retain his seniority in his civil work?

Mr. HILL. Yes, sir: and he builds up a seniority in the defense work. Mr. CURTIS. Mr. Weiss.

EMPLOYMENT POLICY OF PACKARD MOTORS

Mr. WEISS (Packard). In the first defense project that we started, which is now in operation, almost all the workers were taken from the car shops. There was hardly any hiring from the outside at all. On the next project, though, which is much larger, for the preparatory work we had to build up our tool rooms and that sort of thing, and we did employ quite a number of draftsmen and tool designers from the outside, in addition to those we had. But on production jobs we are transferring men from the car shops to the defense jobs every day, and have been for the last several months.

Mr. CURTIS. What defense work is the Packard Motor Co. doing? Mr. WEISS. Building marine motors for the mosquito fleet and Rolls-Royce aircraft engines for both England and the Air Corps. Mr. CURTIS. Have the skilled employees that you transferred had to have some additional training?

Mr. WEISS. Not the skilled men, so much, but we have had to give some training to the men on the production jobs.

Mr. CURTIS. The lesser skilled?

Mr. WEISS. They are what we call semiskilled people, and even in some of those classifications we don't have enough in the car division trained to do the work, and we have to build up training programs from people from other classifications in that particular work in order to get a sufficient number.

Mr. CURTIS. Mr. Waldron.

HUDSON MOTOR'S TRAINING PROGRAM

Mr. WALDRON (Hudson). We started last February on quite an extensive training program, and we utilized about 20 schools in town, plus 1 of our own, in training our present or our former personnel, some of whom have been transferred. Some of our automobile workers have been transferred into the ordnance plant as the machines were delivered and installed, and that has gone along very satisfactorily.

They are transferred according to the plan I submitted with my brief to the committee.1

Mr. CURTIS. What is the Hudson Motor Car Co. making?

Mr. WALDRON. We are making 20-millimeter guns and a large number of ordnance parts in a newly erected plant on the outskirts of town. Also a section of the Martin bomber, and pistons and rocker-arms for Wright Aeronautical Co., and ailerons for Republic Aircraft Corporation.

Mr. ARNOLD. Mr. Carlton, I will direct this question to you, and it may be that you will want to conduct a panel discussion on it. If you do, please feel free to do so, because Mr. Thomas didn't hold back this morning. He spoke what was in his mind.

In his statement, Mr. Thomas, of the U. A. W., testified that the major responsibility for the prospective reduction in employment in the automobile business rests with the industries themselves.

The union's contention was, apparently, that the industry preferred to extend a prosperous automobile season rather than convert its facilities to defense production. In order that the record may be complete, I should like to have you gentlemen indicate what proportion of your normal civilian facilities has been converted to defense production.

PERCENTAGES OF EMPLOYMENT IN DEFENSE WORK

Mr. CARLTON. That question, of course, will necessarily have to be answered by each individual company; but for my company (Motor Wheel) I will say that about 25 percent of our people are now employed on defense work, or will be by the 1st of October.

I am at a loss to understand why the first statement was made. All the companies with which I am familiar first offered their services in every possible way to every branch of the defense effort.

If you didn't get business that way, you then went at it as any salesman would-sell the Government your facilities. I know, as far as our company is concerned, we have done everything within our power to get additional business. We are still working at it, and hoping for additional business to keep our total number of employees working and our total sales volume up.

1 See p. 7354.