LABOR IN SHIPYARDS IN THE UNITED STATES

Bitmap '39. Thayer Society Prize Paper,1938-1939. December, 1939.

For a number of years the Thayer School curriculum has included a Seminar course, requiring the preparation and delivery of a paper on a selected subject in Engineering or related fields! According to Dean Frank W. Garran many of these articles have been of high quality, especially the one awarded the annual Thayer Society prize of fifty dollars for the year 1938-39. For the first time the prize winning: paper, "Labor in Shipyards in the United States," by Clement F. Burnap, has been published, and it is expected that this will be the practice in the future.

The author labored for three summers in shipyards and later spent a large amount of time gathering statistics and interviewing not only executives but labor leaders and workmen as well. The result is a paper strikingly broad in its grasp of the technicalities as well as the human relationship aspect of the labor problem. It is developed along clearly defined lines and accompanied by well designed graphs. "The main body of the pamphlet deals with statistics on employment and the history of labor unions, in order to show the difficulties in the way of satisfactory labor relations. The author's completely impartial treatment of these subjects is particularly refreshing.

The conclusion contains an interesting discussion of legislation, both past and pending, and its present and probable future effect on the labor situation. As the paper was brought up to date in December, 1939, the insight thus afforded into labor relations in general, and in shipyards and allied fields in particular, is well worth the time of any harried business man.