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314      THE COMMUNIST

New York Times (February 11) after quoting as one of the provisions of the agreement: "strict enforcement of the 40-hour week." citing the following:

"No changes in wage scales except overtime rates. Time and a half for overtime on Saturday for piece workers. Single time for piece workers and double time for week workers in overtime operation during the week."

In other words, though the 40-hour work week will be "strictly enforced" overtime without limit will be permitted, while piece workers, who form the overwhelming majority in the industry, will be paid single time for extra work during the week. And this at a time when thousands of dressmakers are walking the streets unable to find work!

Schlesinger has done the job: he has given open and official sanction to the sweatshop.

But "one woe doth tread upon another's heel, so fast they follow." Not only did the dressmakers fail to respond to the social-fascist "strike," but dissensions arose among two of the employers' groups, the contractors and jobbers. The jobbers' group was from the first intractable: the contractors' association is weak, so why should the jobbers bind themselves not to make the best bargains they can outside the contractors' group? With Schlesinger's whole social-fascist edifice thus threatened with collapse, Wall Street's energetic representative, Lieutenant-Governor Lehman, was once more hastily called in and he managed to patch up an agreement which means practically nothing, since both groups are permitted to deal with independent employers who are not parties to the agreement with the I.L.G.W. Since the third employers' group, the "inside" manufacturers, employ only a small percentage of the workers,it is evident that even the betrayal agreement arranged by Schlesinger is hardly more than a scrap of paper, binding no one. 

To sum up: in contrast to the cloak "strike" of last July, the fake dress stoppage of February, despite "the sympathy of the inside employers" and "a very benevolent interest on the part of the state and city officials" (Norman Thomas, New Leader, February 22), resulted in serious losses for the I.L.G.W. This can only in part be explained as due to the weakness of the bosses' association and internal dissensions among them. The real reasons lie in the correct, aggressive policies, free from fractional wrangling and opportunism, pursued by the Needle Trades Workers Industrial Union and in the increased militancy of the workers as a result of the worsening of their conditions during the present severe economic crisis. The appeal of the N.T.W.I.U. to all workers in shops under its control to remain at work and to all locked-out workers to join in a struggle.