LABOUR DAY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25015, 8 September 1942, Page 3

LABOUR DAY

AMERICAN OBSERVANCE WORKERS REMAIN AT TASKS (Rec. 11.30 p.m.) NEW YORK. Sept. 6. American labour is celebrating Labour Day by remaining on the job and keeping the machinery of war production humming. Spokesmen have emphasised labour's determination to win the war to preserve its freedom. The president of the American Federation of Labour, Mr William Green, issued a Labour Day statement declaring that, in addition to President Roosevelt's four freedoms, labour would insist on a fifth guarantee being included in the post-war peace termsfreedom of the workers in every land to join free democratic trade unions of their own choice. "This is labour's peace plank," Mr Green added, " and no force on earth can prevent us from making it a reality." The president of the Congress of Industrial Organisations, Mr Philip Murray, in a statement, said: " Labour to-day is in a position of world importance greater than ever before in history. We call this labour's war because the great basic issue is the right of the common people everywhere to enjoy the liberty of democracy and the opportunity to work out the destiny of free men and women." The Secretary for the Navy, Colonel Knox, and the Under-secretary for War Mr R P. Patterson, issued a joint statement as follows:—" In no other country has labour enjoyed so full an opportunity to win the battle of production voluntarily and without coercion." Messages from a dozen namesake cities in the United States to the enslaved cities in Europe will be broadcast on short-wave to-morrow bearing greetings from free American labour. These will include Athens (Pennslyvania) Amsterdam (New York), Warsaw (North Carolina), and Oslo (Minnesota). Moscow (Vermont) will also send encouragement to the Russian capital, while Berlin (Pennsylvania; will assure factory workers in Berlin (Germany) "that we are not warring with Germans. We are at war with your insane leaders, who force coal miners and machinists to work at the point of the Gestapo gun."