ITALIAN LABOUR BUREAUX

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 112, 17 November 1928, Page 20

ITALIAN LABOUR BUREAUX

"ONLY FASCISTS NEED APPLY" Captains of industry who have their works in Turin and its vicinity are grumbling at a, recent Government order which compols them to apply to tho Fascist Labour Bureau for hands (says a cable, message to the New York "World" from' Turin, Italy). From those ou the bureau's books "members of the Fascist party and Fascist unions are to have preference," said the order. One ofthe'gTeat objections large employers had against Socialist influence in factories under Democratic regimes was a very similar order, issued not by Governments, but by Socialist labour chiefs. They are no better off now in this respect. They may bo compelled to take an inferior man because he is a Fascist, refusing a job to a good workman who has not joined the party or its. unions. Also, it keeps wages from dropping. This is a standing bone of contention between the Fascist union leaders, who rofuse to reduce wages, already lower than anywhere else in-Europe, and the employers,' who,;'ai'guc that they cannot, compete with'their neighbour, France, which has a low rate of exchange and is seizing markets formerly dominated

by the Italians. Another result of the new rule will be to rope in those, men who have so far stood aloof from Fas-cist-unions. : During the first three months of this year only 25 per cent. of the Turin labouring masses had joined the Fascist unions. Now they are obliged to do so or remain unemployed indefinitely.