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p The past decade saw the steadily intensified exploitation of the American working people. In its efforts to extract maximum profits, make American goods more competitive on the world markets and continue the arms race, monopoly capital has trodden heavily on the vital interests of the working class and all strata of working people in America.

p At the same time, the monopolists use their propaganda machine to cover up the growing social contrasts and class antagonisms in present-day America. The relatively high standard of living enjoyed by the working people of the USA, as compared with other capitalist countries—won as a result of many years of persistent struggle by the working class—is proclaimed by the ideologists of the monopoly bourgeoisie to be the consequence of capitalism’s " philanthropic mission”, the result of the transformation of a bourgeois country into a "welfare state”.

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p Thus, proponents of the socio-demagogic theory of the "welfare state”,—Alvin Hansen, M. Reder, Simon Kuznets, L. O. Kelso, M. J. Adler and many others—contend that in the last decades, allegedly as a result of a modernisation of the capitalist society, the standard of living of the population has been lifted "to undreamed-of levels of comfort and luxury”, a "high standard of living for all households has become a morally approved objective”, and "mass poverty has largely been wiped out".  [24•1  All this, these writers say, is the result of the fact that the US Government is engaged primarily in the redistribution of income in favour of the working people and does everything to promote their greater welfare and prosperity. Manipulating average standard-of-living indicators, those who advance such theories deliberately, and for quite understandable reasons, ignore the fact that so-called “prosperity” and “affluence” are in no way applicable to large categories of low-paid wage earners, to the huge army of the unemployed, to indigent agricultural workers, or to working people living in the country’s poverty regions.

p The facts of real life expose the falsity of any talk about "universal prosperity" under the present socio-economic system and force even the US Government to admit the existence of mass poverty.

p The ways and means by which the mighty monopolies intensify exploitation are varied. They include production automation and modernisation, layoffs and increasing labour intensification, reduction of highly paid jobs, rising taxes and prices and reduction of the working people’s real incomes, curtailing spending on social welfare and social insurance, infringing on the working people’s right to strike, etc. The working people’s situation has observably worsened in recent years as a result of this fresh onslaught against their rights by big business.

p The most acute problem in the USA after the Second World War has been unemployment, which has become an inseparable part of the "American way of life”. "The 25 bourgeois myth of ’full employment’ has proved to be sheer mockery,” the Programme of the CPSU has pointed out, "for the working class is suffering continuously from mass unemployment and insecurity.”  [25•1 

The dynamics of unemployment may be seen in the following table.  [25•2 

Year Gainfully employed population (mil. people) Number of unemployed (mil. people) Unemployment, per cent of gainfully employed 1947 59.4 2 3 3.9 1948 60.6 2.3 3.8 1949 61.3 3.6 5.9 1950 62.2 3.3 5.3 1951 62.0 2.0 3.3 1952 62.1 1.9 3.0 1953 63.0 1.8 2.9 1954 63.6 3.5 5 5 1955 65.0 2.9 4.4 1956 66.6 2.8 4.1 1957 66.9 2.9 4.3 1958 67.6 4.6 6.8 1959 68.4 . 3.7 5.5 1960 69.6 3.9 5.5 1961 70.4 4.7 6.7 1962 70.6 3.9 5.5 1963 71.8 4.1 5.7 1964 73.1 3.8 5.2 1965 74.5 3.4 4.5 1966 75.8 2.9 3.8 1967 77.3 3.0 3.8 1968 78.7 2.8 3.6 1969 80.7 2.8 3.5 1970 82.7 4.1 4.9

p The data presented above show that there has been no clearly defined tendency towards a drop in unemployment, either in absolute figures or in the percentage of gainfully employed.

p A characteristic feature of the US unemployment picture after the Second World War was that after each recession the number of unemployed grew, and even officially 26 proclaimed economic “prosperity” did not bring unemployment down to the level prior to the recession. The number of unemployed in 1952-1953 was 1.8 million (2.9 per cent of the gainfully employed population); after the crisis of 1953- 1954, it stood at 2.9 million (4.4 per cent). After the 1957- 1958 recession, the “backbone” of unemployment grew even more—to 3.7 million people (5.5 per cent), and in another two years, following the crisis of 1960-1961, it jumped to 4 million people (5.7 per cent). In early January 1961, the Kennedy Administration promised to reduce unemployment from 6.6 to 4 per cent. Despite the fact that unemployment did drop over the next few years, it remained considerably above the promised level throughout the period in which the New Frontiers course was being followed.

p President Johnson admitted in early 1965, that unemployment was still the number one problem. Between 1965 and 1969, unemployment dropped below the 5 per cent level for the first time since 1957. But despite the relatively higher level of employment, the actual number of unemployed in the 1961-1968 period averaged 3.6 million persons, compared to an average of 3.3 million between 1953 and 1960. The somewhat higher employment since 1965 was primarily the result of an increase in the size of the armed forces and the sharp increase in military orders connected with the escalation of the Vietnam war.

p In 1964, the armed forces personnel numbered 2.7 million men, while in 1968, this figure went up to 3.5 million,  [26•1  an increase of 29.6 per cent. Analysing the effect of the Vietnam war on the US economy, Business Week magazine wrote the following in October 1966: "In labour markets, Vietnam is soaking up additions to manpower at a remarkable clip. The number of men over 20 either working or seeking work has held level over the past 12 months. At the same time, the armed forces have taken over 40 per cent of the total increase in workers ... so far this year.”  [26•2 

p Defence industries as well as the armed forces themselves require more and more new workers. From July 1965 through October 1966, the aircraft industry increased its labour force 27 by 32 per cent, the communications industry (producing primarily for the Defence Department) by 16 per cent, the arms manufacturing industry—by 35 per cent.  [27•1  On the whole, the number of people working in war production between 1963 and 1968 grew from 2.4 million to 5.4 million. According to official figures for 1968, the total number of persons employed in “defence” production and in the armed forces was approximately 9 million, or more than 11 per cent of the gainfully employed population.  [27•2  In mid-1969, the situation on the labour market began to take a sharp turn for the worse as a result of the onset of another recession. Cutbacks in production, increased under-capacity operations and total shutdowns in a number of industries aggravated the employment problem. During 1970, unemployment went up 58 per cent, from 3.1 million to 4.9 million, and the average unemployment rate for the year was 4.9 per cent, as compared with 3.5 per cent in 1969.  [27•3  According to Department of Labour figures, the number of unemployed went up to 6 per cent in December 1970, and to 6.2 per cent in May 1971. Unemployment had reached the highest level since the December 1961 recession.  [27•4 

p A characteristic feature of the unemployment picture for 1969-1971 was that workers in all skill categories were hit, as well as office workers, engineers and scientific specialists. The number of unemployed white collar workers in early 1971 grew to 3.7 per cent, the highest level in the 13 years since separate statistics for this category of workers have been kept.  [27•5 

p Hardest hit, however, were workers directly involved in material production. There was a noticeable drop in the number of industrial workers employed in the ferrous metal, chemical, rubber, machine building, automobile and aircraft, and radio and electronics industries. By the end of 1970, the per cent of "redundant people" among industrial workers was 1.5 times higher than the average in the country, and among construction workers, it was 2.3 times higher.

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p It should be remembered, however, that government figures considerably understate the real scope of unemployment. Official statistics deliberately ignore many important factors without which the real picture of unemployment turns out markedly distorted. In a Saturday Evening Post article, American sociologist Ben Bagdikian showed how the real extent of unemployment is underestimated.

p “The national statistics on the jobless,” explained Bagdikian, "come from a monthly questioning of 35,000 households in 701 counties. The 550 interviewers for the Bureau of the Census are under strict orders to stick to the precise wording of their questionnaire. For every person over 14 who is not in school or disabled, there are two crucial questions:

p “1. ’Did you do any work at all last week, not counting work around the house?’

p “If the answer is ‘No’, the next question is:

p “2. ’Were you looking for work?’

p “If the answer is ‘Yes’, the person is counted as unemployed in the statistics.

p “If by ‘looking’ he thinks the questionnaire meant physically active in a search, or if he gave up looking during the week, then he answers ‘No’, and he is not counted.

p “The President’s Council of Economic Advisers thinks there are ’a million or more’ who . . . are out of work and wish to work but who don’t get into the statistics.”  [28•1 

p Such methods of counting the unemployed, say the authors of a manifesto put out by the Ad Hoc Committee on the Triple Revolution, "ignore the fact that many men and women who would like to find jobs have not looked for them because they know there are no employment opportunities. Underestimates for this reason are pervasive among groups whose unemployment rates are high—the young, the old and racial minorities.”  [28•2 

p A special study carried out by the Department of Labour in 1966 showed that in the slums of large US cities alone there are about 150,000 blacks between the ages of 25 and 64 who are not registered as jobless. Having lost all hope 29 of finding any kind ol a job, they have simply stopped looking.  [29•1 

p US statistics do not take into account the partially unemployed, nor anyone who had a temporary job for as little as one hour in the course of a week. Yet, in 1965, for example, the number of people working from 1 to 14 hours a week never went below the 3 million mark. According to the figures for February 1966, approximately 25 per cent of the working people in the United States were working less than 40 hours a week, and 6.4 per cent of them were working less than 14 hours a week. None of these people were reflected in the unemployment statistics.

p Despite the fact that unemployment in the country is obviously underestimated, the US monopoly circles, and above all the National Association of Manufacturers, have in recent years launched a campaign to re-examine the current method of measuring unemployment, contending that it has "steadily been altered to magnify the unemployment problem"  [29•2  and "distorts the actual condition".  [29•3 

p Heeding this criticism, the Kennedy Administration attempted to find an automatic “solution” to the unemployment problem by changing the existing methods of measurement.  [29•4  However, a government committee composed of six wellknown economists charged with determining whether official statistics overestimate the real scope of unemployment came to exactly the opposite conclusion. Their report, "Measuring Employment and Unemployment”, submitted to the government in the fall of 1962, pointed out that in many instances official figures underestimate the level of unemployment, sometimes by as much as 40 per cent. The committee’s report noted, for example, that in February 1961, 940,000 persons were registered as, employed on the basis that they had worked from one to four hours during the week covered in the survey.  [29•5 

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p The extent to which actual unemployment goes higher than rellceted in official government statistics can be seen from the following. Department of Labour figures for 1962 showed the average number of unemployed for the year to be slightly less than 4 million. But if we take into account the time lost by the 2.3 million people not working a full week and the 700,000 jobless who were not looking for work because it was hopeless to find it, then the real number of unemployed would have stood at 5.7 million, or 40 per cent higher than indicated in Department of Labour reports.  [30•1  A similar calculation made in 1965 by the California State Department of Finance showed that the state’s unemployment level was 11.7 per cent, that is, over twice as high as indicated by the official Department of Labour figures for California.  [30•2  Nation-wide, this would indicate that in the spring of 1965 there were 6 million and not 3 million unemployed in the United States.

p It has been repeatedly proclaimed in official statements by Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon that the government’s goal is to "abolish unemployment" and to "achieve full employment”. Just what the ruling circles of America mean by these terms, however, is quite vague. Unemployment, we all know, is a "condition of existence of the capitalist mode of production”,  [30•3  and to actually abolish it would by no means be in the interests of the monopoly bourgeoisie. Under the capitalist system, therefore, the "struggle for full employment" is aimed only at somewhat reducing the acuteness of unemployment, at preventing it from turning into an explosive social problem, but at the same time keeping it at a level high enough to fulfil the function of providing a reserve army of labour.

p Many US, economists who reflect the monopolies’ interest in having a permanent army of unemployed frankly state that the government should not strive to wipe it out completely. According to Columbia University Professor Arthur F. Burns, who was appointed by President Nixon to be President of the Federal Reserve Board, the absence of 31 unemploymcnt would be undesirable lor the society since it would limit the freedom of the labour force and the employers’ opportunity to select workers.

p Quite typical also is the assertion made by Joseph M. Becker, William Haber and Sar A. Levitan of the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research that unemployment is a consequence of the capitalist system’s “progressive” nature. "... It would, of course, be preferable to prevent unemployment entirely,” wrote Becker, Haber and Levitan in their joint study. "But for several reasons a modern industrial society must realistically expect to experience some unemployment at all times and must be prepared for occasional heavy unemployment. First of all, the task of preventing unemployment is enormously complex—involving, as it does, all major economic, political, and educational activities— and it is simply beyond our power to perform the task perfectly. Furthermore, the economy of the United States is characterised by a high degree of dynamic change, the inevitable concomitant of progress and of freedom. Both characteristics make for some unemployment, more unemployment than if our society were less progressive and less free.”  [31•1 

p Many American economists think along these lines. However, there is some disagreement as to the "acceptable level" of unemployment at which "full employment" may be considered to have been reached. Professor Joel Seidman, for example, feels that the figure should be 2 per cent,  [31•2  while eminent economist Milton Friedman, who is close to the leading circles of the Republican Party (he was the chief economics adviser during Goldwater’s presidential campaign in 1964, and in Nixon’s 1968 campaign), pushed the " acceptable level" of unemployment to 5.5 per cent.  [31•3  The prevailing opinion among American economists, however, is that full 32 employment will have been achieved ii the number of unemployed stands at 4 per eent of the country’s work force. Many supporters of this completely groundless criterion (for example, University of Chicago Professor Albert Rees) allow for the possibility that "full employment" may in the future be compatible with an even higher rate of unemployment, since "demographic changes in the years ahead will make a 4 per cent rate increasingly difficult to attain.”  [32•1 

p Analogous thinking underlies the economic policy of the US Government. In the 1950s, government circles felt that if the rate of unemployment did not go over 2 per cent, this could be considered as "full employment”; in 1961, this “ acceptable” limit was raised to 4 per cent.  [32•2 

p This latter rate was also officially proclaimed as “ acceptable” by the Republican Administration in 1969.  [32•3  In 1970- 1971, however, when unemployment figures soared (as a direct result of President Nixon’s economic policy which had programmed in a growth of unemployment as an “ inevitable” consequence of anti-inflationary measures), the Republican Administration discarded its previously held theory that an unemployment rate of 4 per cent is "the equivalent of full employment in a prosperous economy”. This widely accepted view, said Secretary of Commerce John Connally in July 1971, was a “myth”, "and such a rate had never been achieved in the past 25 years except in war".  [32•4 

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p Obviously, then, a definite and moreover a sizeable rate of unemployment in the United States is considered not only normal, but necessary, since it creates additional possibilities for the monopolies to enrich themselves and is a means of eroding the standard of living of the working class and its gains. For the working class, however, and all working people, unemployment means deprivation, hopelessness and immeasurable suffering.

p Unemployment as a grave social problem in the 1960s was characterised not only by its continuously high rate, but by its protractedness. Over a period of several years about half of the long-term unemployed were jobless for 27 or more weeks.  [33•1  According to data compiled by New York University Professor Daniel E. Diamond, unemployment went up 40 per cent between 1957 and 1962, while the number of people out of work for 15 weeks or more increased 100 per cent, and the number of those without work for six months or more went up 150 per cent.  [33•2  In the period from April 1970 through April 1971, however, the number of unemployed for 5 to 14 weeks increased by 45 per cent, and the number of jobless for 15 weeks or more showed an increase of 105 per cent.  [33•3 

p A major factor negatively affecting the employment situation over recent years has been technological and economic advances in US industrial production and, above all, the widespread introduction of automation. "Improvement in technology, signifying increased labour productivity and greater social wealth,” Lenin wrote, "becomes in bourgeois society the cause of greater social inequality, of widening gulfs between the rich and poor, of greater insecurity, unemployment, and various hardships of the mass of the working people.”  [33•4  The past 15 years have provided fresh evidence of the hardships that technological progress imposes on the working class in a society dominated by monopoly capital. Automation cuts down on jobs available in a number of industries, ousting workers from the sphere of production; 34 moreover, it affects not only industrial workers, but increasingly penetrates into the realm of office work, the banking business, transportation, etc.

p According to government estimates, automation weekly deprives approximately 35,000 people of their jobs, which amounts to 1,820,000 people a year.  [34•1  Other figures, cited at the Fifth Constitutional Convention of the AFL-CIO, show that not less than 51,000 jobs are abolished weekly due to automation.  [34•2  "And while figures on how much joblessness automation actually creates are the subject of much debate,” remarked Newsweek magazine, "the peril is very real for those who lose their livelihood to a machine.... Automation is becoming the most controversial economic concept of the age. Businessmen love it. Workers fear it.”  [34•3 

p Widespread introduction of new machinery and automation tends to break down former division of labour patterns; it makes many job categories obsolete and thus reduces the rate of employment in the older industries. Many parts of the country where traditional industries had been concentrated have become areas of chronic depression and unemployment.

p The impact that technological progress has had on the employment rate is most clearly seen in the industries to which automation came first. President of the United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America Walter Reuther cited the following facts in this connection at the 19th UAW Constitutional Convention. Between 1947 and 1963, auto production in the USA went up from 4.8 million to 9.1 million, that is, an 89.6 per cent increase. The number of workers employed in the auto industry during the same period, however, dropped from 626,000 to 572,000, i.e., by 8.6 per cent.  [34•4 

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p The introduction of automation and other technological improvements has also resulted in a sharp decline in the number of workers in the steel industry—from 625,000 in 1955 to 486,000 at the close of 1962.  [35•1  In the textile industry, the work force was cut by 310,000 persons between 1950 and 1964.  [35•2  The coal mining industry employed 600,000 workers in 1947; by the end of 1966, it had 100,000 workers, while the hourly output of coal had doubled.  [35•3  The work force on the country’s railroads was more than halved—from 1,400,000 in 1947 to 620,000 in 1967, with a significant increase in the volume of work done per man-hour.  [35•4 

p Between 1957 and 1962, over 80,000 communications workers and office employees were laid off, despite the rapid development in that industry.  [35•5  The unemployment rate among office workers has risen steadily since 1957; it went up from 2.8 per cent in 1957 to 4.6 per cent in January 1962—which amounts to over 466,000 persons.  [35•6  Similar changes have taken place in other sectors. An especially significant drop in employment has taken place in agriculture.

p Another result of structural changes in industry is a growing unevenness in joblessness among the various worker categories. Hardest hit are the unskilled and semi-skilled workers; the unemployment rate in these categories exceeds the overall average by two times and almost by one-third, respectively. An analysis of the US employment structure shows that while there is a multimillion-strong army of unemployed, industry has a constant need for skilled workers and specialists in certain definite fields. "The result is a paradox,” wrote the magazine US News & World Report in 1968, "unemployed by the millions while jobs go begging.”  [35•7  In his economic report to Congress in 1967, 36 President Johnson had to admit that the coexistence of vacant jobs and unemployed workers incapable of filling them is a bitter human tragedy and an unforgivable economic waste.  [36•1 

p The structural changes in industry brought about by automation aggravate the already grievous situation of those segments of the US population that are hired to an only insignificant extent for jobs requiring skills. This applies above all to the black population and to youth.

p For many years the unemployment rate among blacks has been over twice as high as among whites. The situation is even worse among those unemployed for long periods of time. Between 1960 and 1962, black people made up from 20 to 28 per cent of all Americans out of work for over 15 weeks. At the same time, they comprised only 11 per cent of the total number of employed.  [36•2 

p The average figures on unemployment among the black population are imposing in and of themselves; however, the situation in the poverty regions and the big city slums is catastrophic. Bureau of Labour Statistics data have indicated that at the beginning of 1971, unemployment among the black population in the poorest districts of 100 large US cities was 11.3 per cent.  [36•3  The situation of the Puerto Ricans, Mexicans and Indians is just as grievous. The unemployment rate for Indians on reservations fluctuates between 40 and 50 per cent.  [36•4 

The working youth of America also faces difficult problems. The fact that most young men and women have no special training and the fact that the demand for unskilled labour is steadily falling puts the country’s youth in an extremely difficult situation. The unemployment rate among young people has been for many years significantly higher than the unemployment rate among other categories of working people. US Department of Labour statistics bear this out clearly.

37 Rate of Unemployment Among US Youth, 1967  [37•1  (as a percentage of total labour force) Age and sex Total United States Urban poverty neighbourhoods Total ........... 3 8 6.8 Men ........ 3.1 6.2 16-19 years old ..... 20-24 years old ..... 25 and over . . . 12.3 4.7 2 0 23.5 7.5 4.3 Women . . 5 2 7.7 16-19 years old 13 5 23.5 20-24 years old 7.0 10 1 25 and over 3 7 5 3

p The number of jobless youth reaches dangerous proportions during periods of seasonal fluctuations in the work force, particularly when every new batch of high school graduates hits the labour market. In the spring of 1965, for example, according to the then Secretary of Labour Willard Wirtz, of the 4.2 million unemployed in the country, 2.2 million, or over half, were between the ages of 16 and 21.  [37•2 

p However, even these figures do not fully reflect the tragedy afflicting the young. A Department of Labour report published in 1964 admitted that unemployment among teenagers was significantly underestimated. To the 1.2 million officially registered as unemployed in 1963, for example, another 350,000 should be added to include those young people who were not actively seeking work, plus another 350,000 who were partially unemployed.  [37•3  Joblessness among youth also seriously affects the financial position of these families: figures for March 1964 showed that 500,000 teenagers were the primary earners in their families, and 200,000 were the heads of families. The annual family incomes of these two groups were extremely low—less than $2,200 on the average, as compared with a national average of $6,200.  [37•4 

p In extremely desperate straits are the nation’s young black people. Although blacks make up only 15 per cent of the 38 country’s youth between the ages of 16 and 21, 30 to 50 per cent of them are not going to school or working. A special nation-wide survey has shown that in some areas the unemployment rate among black youth reaches 60 to 80 per cent.  [38•1 

p The steadily high rate of unemployment among youth is cause for increasing alarm in the United States. "We waste more than a million kids a year,” said Judge Mary Conway Kohler of the San Francisco Juvenile Court. "As we once wasted natural gas and forests and topsoil, today we waste our most valuable natural resource—the productive power of young brains and muscles, the creative power of young imaginations and emotions. We waste them because we neither keep them in schools nor give them jobs.”  [38•2 

p A President’s Committee on Youth Employment, appointed by President Kennedy to work out recommendations, said in its report: "To hundreds of thousands of boys and girls between 16 and 21, the problem is immediate and desperate.... Other hundreds of thousands of boys and girls can look forward only to lives of drudgery and intermittent work.... For them the outlook is bleak. Life is empty, with survival the only incentive.”  [38•3 

p Some American researchers say that unemployment may present an even more alarming problem in the near future. The deteriorating economic situation will bring out even more sharply those social consequences of scientific and technological progress that adversely affect the working people. At the same time, automation will be developed even further, knocking new segments of the working class out of production and reducing the demand for labour power. By the mid-1960s, wrote the Wall Street Journal, automation had reached only 10 per cent of its potential capacity; in the next ten years, the level of automation in US production will go up to 30 per cent.  [38•4 

p Aware of the increasing anxiety among the working people over the consequences of the broad introduction of automation and other technological innovations into production and 39 fearing further aggravation of class tensions throughout the country, the US Government was forced to admit the gravity of this burning problem. Automation, declared President Kennedy in February 1962, is a very serious problem and is "the major domestic challenge of the 1960s".  [39•1  Responding to demands for decisive measures aimed at abolishing mass unemployment, the Kennedy and then the Johnson administrations undertook a number of legislative measures, among which the following may be singled out: the 1961 Area Redevelopment Act; the 1962 Manpower Development and Training Act, supplemented in December 1963, and extended in April 1965 to 1968; the 1964 Economic Opportunity Act; and a programme of legislative measures aimed at achieving the so-called Great Society.

p The major emphasis in the above legislation was on manpower training and retraining. There were increased appropriations for new job training for workers who had lost their jobs as a result of automation; vocational training with a minimum wage stipend was introduced for certain categories of men—heads of families and unemployed youth between 19 and 21 years of age—as well as vocational training in public high schools and some other educational institutions; so-called Youth Corps were organised to work in nature conservation camps; special job placement centres for youth were set up, etc.

p Underlying these government programmes was the notion that all unemployed or semi-unemployed workers could count on finding jobs once they had the necessary training. It is apparent, however, that neither improvements in the educational system nor intensified manpower retraining programmes can create new jobs and thus solve the unemployment problem rooted in the capitalist economy itself.

p Although the measures undertaken by the Democratic Administration were a step forward compared to what was done in this direction by the Eisenhower Administration, they were still essentially limited and brought about no radical changes in the system of vocation or general education. Funds earmarked for these goals were clearly insufficient; by far not all unemployed could go through a retraining 40 programme, and most of those who could, again faced the unsolved problem of where to find a job.

p Speaking at Brown University on April 6, 1965, George Meany said that it was impossible to solve the automation and unemployment problem through training and education alone. Without a broad economic policy aimed at solving basic economic problems, that is, without a policy for creating jobs, he said, training and education will merely result in the unemployed being better trained and better educated.

p The following are some examples of how some retraining programmes actually worked. Of the 431 workers laid off by the Armour meat packaging company in Oklahoma, only 60 were selected for a retraining course. However, only 20 of the 58 workers who completed the course were able to find jobs in their new field.  [40•1  At the same company’s Fort Worth plant, 165 of 650 laidoff workers were accepted for retraining. Of these, 117 completed the course, but only 41 could find jobs.  [40•2  Criticising a similar programme of “assistance” to the unemployed, President of the International Typographical Union Elmer Brown said in December 1964 that there was no justification for training workers in skills for which there are no job vacancies as this leads to an even greater overproduction of labour power.  [40•3 

p Other planned measures for job training or retraining, the youth programmes in particular, have upon implementation met with no better success. The programmes, limited in scope and ineffective in their results, became targets for sharp criticism in the country. The New York Times, for example, wrote in December 1964: "Some of the job programmes have met with shallow success, and some have produced cynicism, not excitement, in the people they were designed to serve.”  [40•4 

p Increasingly trenchant criticism has been levelled in recent years at the present unemployment insurance system. Laws providing for unemployment insurance benefits, enacted back in the 1930s after persistent struggle by the American 41 working class, are extremely limited and fail to provide any substantial guarantee against unemployment. "The low incomes of the unemployed,” wrote The Nation in June 1965, "are attributable in part to low unemployment insurance benefits and the limited duration of those benefits.” The magazine noted further that ”. .. large numbers of unemployed persons cannot qualify for any type of public income maintenance payments.”  [41•1 

p The existing unemployment insurance system is extremely complicated and confusing. It is governed by laws of the separate states and, in essence, consists of 50 systems, differing from state to state and without national standards. Despite persistent demands by labour unions, the Federal Government has not re-examined the unemployment insurance system for many years, while in the meantime, endless amendments to the state laws have set up many new barriers and limitations.

Not all categories of workers come under the unemployment insurance system. In 1966, for example, while 54.7 million persons were entitled to benefits in the event of unemployment, 16.3 million, or nearly a quarter of all wage workers were not covered by any kind of unemployment insurance.  [41•2  Yet the people in these excluded categories ( agricultural workers, domestic servants, employees of small firms, etc.) are the ones who are in special need of assistance.

Unemployment Insurance Coverage of Wage and Salary Workers for 1966  [41•3  (in million persons) Covered.......................... 54.7 Not covered........................ 16.3 Including: State and local government............... 7.8 Domestic service.................... 2.5 Farm and agricultural processing............ !’> Small firms...................... 1-8 Nonprofit institutions.................. 2.3 Others......................... 0-3 42

p A worker’s being covered by unemployment insurance does not necessarily mean that he will actually receive the insurance benefits if he loses his job. There are always a number of other stipulations besides being out of work that must be met. A laidoff worker must supply evidence that he did not quit of his own volition; that he lost his job for “valid” reasons, and not because of “misdemeanors”; that his state employment agency where he is obliged to register cannot offer him any kind of work. In addition, the unemployed person must supply a detailed description of what he did during the given week to find work, list, for subsequent verification, the addresses and telephone numbers of employers to whom he applied for work, etc. Non-compliance with any of these conditions is sufficient grounds for being denied unemployment benefits.

Because of the existing restrictions, year in and year out less than half of the fully unemployed throughout the country receive unemployment insurance benefits.

Fully Unemployed Not Receiving Unemployment Insurance Benefits, 1957-1966  [42•1  1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 (in per cent) 52 45 53 52 53 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 60 58 61 61 65

p According to data published in January 1969, the duration of unemployment insurance benefits varies from 22 to 39 weeks, depending on the state, and in most states (41) the limit is 26 weeks.  [42•2  Since the country is afflicted with chronic unemployment, such periods are obviously too short, for many unemployed persons lose their right to benefits long before they find work. In 1967, for example, 19 per cent of the unemployed had stopped receiving benefits even though they had not yet found a job.  [42•3 

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p The existing unemployment insurance system fails to satisfy the needs of the unemployed, since the average size of the benefits falls far short of the subsistence minimum as determined by the government. In 1964, 34 states had a minimum weekly benefit of $10 and a maximum of $35 to $55.  [43•1  In 1965, the average weekly unemployment insurance benefits received by unemployed persons amounted to 35 per cent of their normal wages, whereas in the 1930s this figure stood at 50 per cent.  [43•2  It is noteworthy that the states with the lowest wage levels had the lowest benefit rates.

p In May 1965, Congress considered a bill revising the unemployment insurance system and, in particular, re- establishing the benefit rate of 50 per cent of the workers’ wages that had existed in 1935.  [43•3  Although the government felt that the measures proposed would "have a stronger stabilising effect on the economy during downturns,"  [43•4  the bill failed to pass. In mid-1970, when the unemployment rate took a sharp upward turn, Congress, after a lengthy debate, approved the Employment Security Act Amendments which extended unemployment insurance coverage to an additional 4.7 million workers not previously covered. The new law also provided for an additional 13 weeks of benefit payments (but not to exceed 39 weeks) if over a period of three months the unemployment rate remained above 4.5 per cent. Interestingly, it was stipulated that this provision (to prolong the duration of benefit payments) was not to come into force immediately, that is, when the unemployment rate topped 4.5 per cent, but only a year and a half later—on January 1, 1972.  [43•5 

p Propaganda put out by the US monopolies tries to instill the idea that unemployment insurance benefits are already too large, that they should be trimmed in order to create a greater incentive to find work. The monopolies’ mouthpiece, the Wall Street Journal, declared cynically in October 1964 that the society should not pay the jobless "for doing nothing 44 at all" and that unemployment benefits are nothing other than "compassion paying for idleness".  [44•1  In reply to statements of this kind, the UE News, the newspaper of the progressive United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers Onion, wrote: "Nobody expects to get rich on unemployment compensation and it is no substitute for a job at a living wage. But certainly it is not too much to expect that the most productive workers in the world, laid off in the richest country in the world, should get enough to keep them and their families going until the owners of industry permit them to return to work.”  [44•2 

p Despair and anxiety strike every American worker who finds himself unemployed, and the opportunity to receive compensation or any other kind of assistance cannot allay these feelings. When in 1965 the US Government announced that it intended to shut down the naval shipyard in Brooklyn the industrial accident rate doubled. Shortly after the Hudson Motor Car Company closed its plant, 15 of its former workers committed suicide and the families of over 300 broke up.  [44•3 

p This dread of unemployment stems from the fact that, having lost their jobs and then their right to any further benefits, workers are deprived of any means of livelihood and find themselves in a hopeless situation.

p One unemployed worker from Detroit gave the following description of himself in a letter to The Worker: "I cannot identify myself because I no longer have identity. I used to carry ^many labels: ‘worker’, ‘man’, ‘husband’, ‘father’, ‘friend’, ‘provider’, ‘neighbour’, ’member of the community’, to mention only a few. But I no longer hold claim to any of these.

p “. . . Now at 50, with a wife and three children to support, the youngest only eight years old, I am expected to fold my hands, go out to pasture. I am healthy and vigorous, my body aches to do an honest day’s work, but I find nothing but occasional odd jobs.

p “I think I speak for most of my fellow unemployed 45 workers when I say we do not want welfare and once a year handouts. We want jobs.”  [45•1 

p Characteristic of the capitalist mode of production is that the unemployment of one part of the labour force is accompanied by the intensified exploitation of the other. Automation and other technological innovations introduced into production have resulted in marked labour intensification, and work rates have been accelerated to inhuman proportions. The “dehumanisation” of working conditions in the USA reached an unprecedented scope in the 1960s.

p At a UAW Convention held in March 1964, many delegates told of unbearable working conditions in production. They reported, for example, that hundreds of people suffer from nervous disorders at the Ford plant because they cannot keep up with the furious speed of the conveyor. A resolution adopted at the convention, protesting against the existing speedup system and the employers’ attempts to squeeze out high profits at the expense of workers’ health and energy, said, in part: "Workers do not give up the right to dignity and self-respect when they punch the time clock, nor do they become the property of the corporations during their working hours. They remain human beings entitled to human treatment.”  [45•2 

p In the summer of 1967, The Wall Street Journal, which certainly cannot be suspected of being sympathetic towards the working class, described the difficult working conditions at one of the country’s newest automobile plants. After working for one week on the plant’s assembly line, a reporter for that newspaper wrote about its breakneck speed, about the physical and mental pressure that the workers are under, about the frequent violation of industrial safety regulations, etc. "Working on the line is grueling and frustrating,” he wrote, "and while it may be repetitive, it’s not simple. I learned at first-hand why 250,000 auto workers are unhappy about working conditions. . .. I’m in fairly good physical 46 shape, hut I ached all over after each day’s work on the line. . . . Nobody seemed to take any particular pride in his work. .. .”  [46•1 

p As they speeded up the work process, employers have in recent years also increased their surveillance over the workers, bugging their factories with all kinds of listening, viewing and other control devices. At Ford’s large River Rouge plant in Dearborn, for example, various kinds of controllers are used, including former FBI agents, to spy on production and worker output with the help of apparatus (dubbed the "Gestapo Agent" by workers) set up in a special room.  [46•2  Elsewhere, concealed television cameras are widely used. Every time the management feels that some worker is working too slowly, a red light flashes at his place of work.  [46•3  Difficult working conditions, violations of labour safety regulations in industry and agriculture and widespread use of overtime work all result in accelerated wear and tear on the worker’s organism, a dangerous increase in industrial accidents and greater incidence of occupational diseases. In 1961, 1,933,000 workers were injured in on-the-job accidents; in 1964, the number grew to 2,050,000 and to 2,200,000 in 1967. The number of fatal industrial accidents is also growing: 13,500 in 1961, 13,700 in 1962, 14,200 in 1963 and again in 1964, and 14,500 each year between 1967 and 1969.  [46•4 

p The incidence of occupational injuries assumed such catastrophic proportions that the US Department of Labour had to be called on to undertake steps to put an end to the mass murder being committed in industry. According to official figures made public by President Johnson in his State of the Union Message to Congress of January 23, 1968, criminal negligence on the part of employers with respect to worker safety results in an annual $1,500 million loss in wages by workers, 250 million man-days lost and a $5,000 million loss to the country’s entire economy.

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p Industrial accidents not only undermine the workers’ health, but also seriously damage their financial position, since many workers receive no compensation if they are disabled. A survey conducted in 1970 by Michigan University showed that disability compensation laws do not apply to almost 40 per cent of the country’s industrial workers.  [47•1  In cases where the worker does have the right to claim disability compensation, the payments, as a rule, amount to only one half of his wages.

p Filing for disability compensation is often a complicated and drawn out affair because of the many legal restrictions. In some states, as brought out at the UAW’s 19th Constitutional Convention, it frequently takes two to three years before a final decision is reached to pay a worker compensation for disability incurred on the job. In the meantime, the worker and his family remain without any means of subsistence.

p Still another form of capitalist exploitation employed by the US monopolies is wide use of overtime work.

p Years ago, after a long and stubborn struggle, the American working class won a substantially shorter workweek. However, this did not curb the desire of employers to lengthen the workday beyond the standards established by law. Although there are always several million fully or partially unemployed in the United States, many workers are required to work overtime. Financial insecurity and uncertainty about tomorrow always prompt them to agree to overtime work or to take side jobs in order somehow to make ends meet.

p Although the 40-hour workweek is established by law, about 15.7 million workers worked 41 or more hours a week in 1965.  [47•2  In February 1966, nearly one-third of the country’s wage earners worked over 41 hours a week; of these, over 20 per cent worked 48 hours a week and more. According to figures presented in Congress, 62,500,000 overtime hours were worked in just one week of March 1964.  [47•3  Hence, because of the widespread use of overtime, the workweek for many workers is actually considerably longer than 40 hours.

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p The capitalists find that paying for overtime work is profitable. Secretary of Labour Willard Wirtz once noted that "employers schedule overtime. . . not for emergencies but for day-to-day operations, primarily because it is cheaper than hiring additional workers".  [48•1  In many cases, employers fail to pay their workers for overtime work at the time and a half rate provided for in the Fair Labour Standards Act, but at the normal hourly rate. The Department of Labour’s initial study, conducted in 1963, showed that of the 15,200,000 Americans working over 40 hours a week, less than one-third received a higher rate of pay for overtime; this applied to about 67 per cent of the construction workers, 60 per cent of the transportation workers and 92 per cent of the employees in the service field. A similar situation existed in 1965, when of the 15,700,000 people working overtime, only one-third got overtime pay.  [48•2 

p Thus, this contradictory combination of “overemployment” (that is, overtime and supplementary work done on a mass scale) and permanent unemployment for a large part of the US working force, once again confirms Marx’s statement that "the condemnation of one part of the working class to enforced idleness by the over-work of the other part, and the converse, becomes a means of enriching the individual capitalists and accelerates at the same time the production of the industrial reserve army on a scale corresponding with the advance of social accumulation.”  [48•3 

p One of the important factors that determine the standard of living of the working class is real wages. In recent years, workers in many industries have won increases in their nominal wage rates; this applies chiefly to the most strongly organised segments of the American working class—- steelworkers, auto workers, coal miners, construction workers, communications workers, transportation workers, etc. At the same time, however, inflation and the rising cost of living, which were aggravated by continual expansion of the Vietnam war, made real wages fall and the working man’s situation deteriorate.

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p The cost of living has been rising steadily over recent years—by 2.8 per cent in 1967, 4.2 per cent in 1968, 5.4 per cent in 1969 and by 6 per cent in 1970.  [49•1  Prices have gone up sharply on food and other consumer goods, costs for medical services and education have increased, prices on houses bought on time have jumped, as well as the cost of other goods and services. In late 1968, ’The Wall Street Journal reported that in a matter of ten years, for example, the cost of a hospital bed went up 101 per cent, doctors’ fees—38 per cent, the price of motion picture theatre tickets—50 per cent, radio and television sets—23 per cent, postal service—42 per cent.  [49•2  Between 1964 and 1970, prices of all the items that go into the cost-of-living index, including food, clothing and shelter, went up 21 per cent.  [49•3  In October 1969, even President Nixon had to admit that for many Americans inflation had reached a point where ”. . . the ever rising cost of food and clothing and rent robs them of their savings, cheats them of the vacations and those necessary extras that they thought they had been working for.”  [49•4  In his State of the Union Message of January 22, 1970, Nixon noted that in the decade between 1960 and 1970, price increases raised the cost of living for the average American family of four by $200 a month.  [49•5 

p In an attempt to curb inflation, the Johnson Administration succeeded in having legislation adopted by Congress in June 1968 providing for a 10 per cent increase in the federal income tax and trimming federal budget expenditures by $6,000 million. These measures struck a double blow to the vital interests of the American working people. A higher income tax rate (primarily to pay for the war in Vietnam), meant an additional withdrawal of $15,300 million from the pockets of Americans and consequently an equal reduction in the population’s buying power.  [49•6  The $6,000 million 50 economy in budget expenditures, in the meantime, cut into the already meagre funds for alleviating the situation of the poor segments of the population.

In August 1968, US News & World Report lamented: "This country is undergoing a tax-increase binge the likes of which have never been seen before.”  [50•1  American economists estimated in early 1969 that taxes were eating up one-third of the working man’s wages.

Tax Growth in the USA from 1939 to 1969  [50•2  1939 1949 1959 1969 Federal taxes, thousand million dollars 6 37 87 195 As a percentage of national income . . 9 17 22 25 State-local taxes, thousand million dollars ......... 8 15 33 84 As a percentage of national income . . 10 7 8 11

p Discrimination in employment and wages is practised against non-whites as well as against women in the USA. Wages for these categories of working people are 35 to 50 per cent lower than the average wages of white male workers.  [50•3  A special study made in early 1967 by Professor Taylor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology showed that skilled black workers in Chicago received an average of $55.50 per week, while white workers doing the same kind of work got S65.20.  [50•4 

p Typically, black workers at many plants are kept on jobs in which they can never even come near getting the kind of wages received by white workers or the engineering and technical personnel, no matter how much experience, skill or knowledge they have or how hard they try. Some 51 companies keep separate job promotion lists for blacks and whites, and limits to wage increments are established (for example, at the big Monsanto Chemical plant in Arkansas), according to which the highest paid black workers receive less than the lowest paid white workers.

p Working women find themselves in a similar humiliatingly unequal position. As a rule, their wages are lower than men’s wages. The women’s labour force is concentrated essentially in industries where wages are traditionally low. For the overwhelming majority of women who do not have a sufficient education, unskilled labour is the only means by which they can earn a living. But even in cases where women do exactly the same work as men, they get less for it than the men. Assistant Secretary of Labour Esther Peterson admitted instances where women doing exactly the same work as men were paid between $8 and $20 a week difference and that even college graduates were paid less for performing the same work.  [51•1 

p After 18 years of procrastination, the US Congress finally, in June 1963, passed a bill on women’s pay. The new law, which went into effect on June 11, 1964, provided for equal pay for equal work, but it applied to only 7.4 million of the women (out of 25 million) working in 1964 in factories, offices, stores, in domestic service and in agriculture. At the same time, it left many loopholes for employers who might want to ignore the law. Women in all sectors of the economy still get from 2/3 to 1/2 of what men get for performing the same work.

A substantial and continuous rise in the cost of living, further increases in labour productivity and intensivity, and limits put on increases in wages, all brought about a sharp increase in the degree to which labour power was exploited in the 1960s. Figures on real wages per unit of production in the manufacturing industry, compiled by progressive American economist Victor Perlo, show that the rate of labour exploitation during the period reviewed showed a marked upward tendency.  [51•2  Between 1947 and 1958, the share of
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52 The Pay Gap (1967)  [52•1  Men’s annual pay Women’s annual pay Women’s pay as a percentage of men’s in dollars All jobs 7,298 7,484 6,757 9,523 7,744 5,439 9,817 4,273 4,284 4,537 6,307 3,283 3,071 5,341 58 0 57.2 67.1 66.2 42.4 56.5 54.4 Craftsmen and foremen . . Clerical workers Professional and technical workers . . . Salesmen ....... Service workers (excluding houseworkers) .... Owners and managers of businesses .....
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labour index remained almost unchanged (not counting annual fluctuations connected primarily with cyclical development). After 1958, however, it declined steadily and rapidly, regardless of the trends in production development, dropping 11 per cent between 1959 and the end of 1964. This means a sharp rise in the rate of exploitation, or the rate of surplus value. Taking the rate of surplus value in 1958 as 100 per cent, by 1964, according to Perlo’s calculations, it had reached 125 per cent.