and unorganized labor. It has been possible under planttraining programs for an employer, with a strike on his hands because of a demand for higher wages, to open up his plant in another locality by transporting a small number of workers skilled in his processes, and having these workers certified as teachers in the new locale and workers recruited and installed as student employees without wages.

This whole question of migrating and decentralizing industries and the social implications inherent therein has apparently never been explored by the educational authorities. They have been satisfied to set up their training programs on the mere request of the industry. They have sometimes cooperated with the campaign of the local agencies to induce industries to move in or to expand by opening up an additional plant in their locality. They have failed to see the educational anomaly of classifying as vocational training a mere process of acquiring speed on a routine performance in the factory, in which proficiency can be attained in a few weeks. They have been willing to relieve industry of the necessity for bargaining with their employees in one community by supplying them with a fresh source of labor in a new community. Under these plant-training schemes foremen become teachers overnight.

The vocational education divisions of State departments of education have issued statements such as the following:

The purpose of this program is to give organized training and instruction to the employed worker so that he may become a proficient producer in the shortest time possible. To do this efficiently, it is usually necessary that this training be given on the job under actual working conditions.

The State Department . . . will assist in the organization of plant training classes for employed workers when requested to do so by industry through local school authorities.

...

These classes are organized for those who have entered the industry or those who are about to be employed and can profit by the training. . . .

The length of course will depend entirely on the time required to learn the job. This may vary from a few weeks to several years.

The superintendent of schools consults with the industry regarding the selection of supervisors and instructors who, as masters of the trade, will command the respect of the men in the industry.

[Instructors' certificates are] issued by the State Superintendent of Public Instruction at the request of the local superintendent.

[Such certificates] may be renewed upon the request of the local district or county superintendent of schools.15

One State, Ohio, has a plant-training program all its own. It has received very little publicity and appears to be operated on a secretive and let-us-alone basis. No migrating or expanding industries are involved in this State program, but the representatives of the State Department of Vocational Education have gone out into very small communities, oneindustry towns of one to three thousand population, and put in so-called plant-training programs. These programs are for the most part nothing but intensification of speed-up, efficiency, and incentive methods. Following the planttraining ritual, the foreman is designated as an instructor. Smith-Hughes money is used on the usual contribution basis.

The employers are delighted with the plan and are quoted as saying that they would never have thought of it themselves if it had not been suggested by the representative of the State department of vocational education.

There is no employee representation of any kind on planttraining advisory committees in this State, if such advisory committees exist. Organized labor seems to know little or nothing about this program in specific detail. The reports indicate that the communities in which these programs are going on are similarly in the dark as to what it is all about and probably even the workers in the plant are not aware that any social complications are involved in the training programs. The position of the vocational education authorities appears to be that since industry is satisfied no one else need be concerned.

The Office of Education made a study of the program in Ohio and gave it a complete bill of health. It conforms to the requirements of the Smith-Hughes law, according to its report, and the State was to be congratulated upon its success.1

16

15 Pennsylvania. Department of Public Instruction. Plant Training Classes for Employed Workers (Harrisburg: mimeographed), pp. 1-3.

16 Memorandum on file in office of the Advisory Committee on Education,

The Ohio State Supervisor of Trades and Industries, in November 1934, wrote:

Employee and apprentice vocational training programs in our smaller centers are conducted directly in the industrial plants for those in actual employment . . . the industry, cooperating with the public school system, provides the use of the plant equipment, furnishes space for the related-subject classrooms and supplies the light, heat and materials . . . skilled workmen within the plant organization are trained to be instructors, employed by the local board of education, properly certificated by the State . . . .

Scores of industries in scores of the smaller communities . . . have unqualifiedly endorsed the plan.17

Labor Representation on Advisory

Boards of Vocational Educational Institutions

The simple justice and, in fact, the expediency of affording organized labor proper representation on vocational school advisory boards does not often seem to recommend itself to those in charge of vocational education. Most of the evils complained of under the system might be readily corrected or might never have occurred if labor's knowledge of the industrial scene and its common sense approach to these questions had been utilized in the development of vocational education. The healthy skepticism of the secretary of one Building Trades Council might, to everyone's advantage, be set off against the optimism of the secretary of the Chamber of Commerce. If the plant manager of the rolling mill regards anything less than 200 men at the gate in response to an ad for one tinsmith as a labor shortage, why not offset this with the dull but relevant report of the secretary of the Sheet Metal Workers Union that 20 percent of the membership cannot find employment.

Checks and balances might work in vocational education as well as in our political system. This is to put the claim of labor for representation on no higher a plane than that of caution and usefulness. The genuine concern of organized labor for educational extension warrants the fullest utilization of its facilities by any educational system, particularly the vocational. Yet vocational educators in many com

17 E. L. Heusch, "Vocational Education in Trades and Industries in the Small Industrial Communities," American Vocational Association News Bulletin, IX (1934), pp. 10, 12.

munities are narrow-minded foes of the organization of labor. "The company union approves," says one State director of vocational education, when questioned as to labor attitude in connection with one of his plant-training programs, "why consult the Federation of Labor."

Labor, itself, is not blameless in the matter, for it has tended to isolate itself from vocational education efforts because of the system's anti-labor practices. But the appointment of one labor member, selected by educational authorities themselves, on an advisory committee which never meets, is not organized labor's idea of participation. The attitude of vocational education authorities, ranging from toleration of labor organizations to outright subservience to the domination of employers, must be changed.

When organized labor advocates labor representation on advisory boards, it means advisory boards which really advise and labor representatives who really represent. When they say adequate labor representation, they mean equal representation, man for man, with other and divergent interests. They mean representation from the local communities right up to the top of the system. They mean representatives who are selected by organized labor and who have a mandated responsibility to represent labor and to account for their stewardship.

RECOMMENDATIONS

To bring the system of vocational education more nearly into conformity with good employment practice, the following recommendations are made:

1. That all high school time be devoted to general and academic subjects and that strictly vocational training be given after the boy or girl has entered industry, and that this training be closely allied to the vocational needs of that industry.

2. That all pre-employment training for a specific trade be gradually eliminated.

3. That students receive an adequate instruction in industrial organization, collective bargaining, and standards as to wages, hours, and labor conditions affecting their industry, as well as general social and economic problems as part of their trade training.

4. That no contracting of work, outside employment, or production work within the school be engaged in by any trade school students.

5. That sufficient funds for providing the related school training of apprentices employed in industry under apprentice agreements be provided and that such funds be earmarked for the related schooling of apprentices.

6. That jobs requiring only a few weeks training shall not be considered as subject to vocational training.

7. That the system designated as plant training be modified in every State to conform strictly to the standards set up for such training by what is known as the Advisory Committee of Nine.1

1 "Vocational Training in Industrial Plants." Joint Statement by Secretary of Labor, Frances Perkins, and Commissioner of Education, J. W. Studebaker (1936 mimeographed).