Early organizing of what has become an ever-more proletarian ‘profession.’

‘Laboratory Technicians Organize!’ by A.J. Krell from Health. Vol. 1 No. 3. July, 1934.

THE social and technical importance of laboratory work is obvious. Modern medicine, public health technique and production control in industry are dependent upon the precise methods of the laboratory. Compare this powerful position in a society dependent for its proper function upon the laboratory worker with his pay-check–when he has one.

In modern industrial administration, the expert figures the laboratory as part of the factory unit, and quite properly so. Government public health laboratories moving in a direction of large scale serum production, and mass diagnostic tests are organized in a factory plant manner. Unit methods of organization of large scale enterprises has in some measure taught laboratory workers that they are workers too. The chemists, bacteriologists and laboratory technicians are discarding the idea that they should accept cruel exploitation because they love their work. They cannot starve more gracefully because they have a degree. They have learned to be suspicious of the advice to take another course, and still another course.

The student emerging from school after years of academic discipline (many times with years of post-graduate study to his credit) finds–? If he knows someone he will be given the privilege of doing volunteer work–that is work without pay. Under the guise of furnishing him with professional experience he is exploited.

Do not think the beginner is the only one that suffers from this system. The mature and experienced technician without work over a long period of time, is compelled to accept in many cases a “volunteer position.” Prospective employers (if there are any left) may not wish to employ him if he has not been working regularly.

It is strange to find this archaic guild apprentice system in the peak of industrialization and tightly drawn economic lines. But the “Volunteer” has none of the benefits of the old guilds and all the evils of his Times. The Guild, briefly was a kind of protective organization where the border line of mutual economic interest of Master and Apprentice were merged and defended. The “Volunteer” technician has only to ask money for his work to find where his interest lies. In this oppressive system the “Volunteer” technician may continue for years. He may be given a pittance. If he asks for more money or an initial payment on what he hesitates to call a salary, he’s told in haughty tones that he has the privilege of working even though it may be for nothing–or next to nothing. To many workers hard work in a laboratory even under these conditions is preferable to tramping the hot dusty pavement outside–there is no alternative.

The “Volunteer” worker in the laboratory has become an economic “Frankenstein.” What was accepted hitherto as a life-line, now becomes a mill-stone around the collective necks of all laboratory workers. Does he get a paying position after he acquires experience? You can safely take Booky’s odds he won’t. How can they with plenty of students willing to do the work for nothing, and “to give their all,” as one laboratory director heroically said (salary $3500 a year). The large army of free labor is used against the paid worker. His pay is cut, his standard of living is forced downward. He pays for all economy programs.

This is merely a small part of the whole problem. Economy programs in public health and preventive medicine drastically effect the well being of all workers. These economy programs were announced only after the most optimistic ballyhoo concerning “The good health of the population despite the depression.” Laboratory workers, physicians, dentists and nurses must disavow their traditional professional snobbery wherever it still hinders them from gaining the goal of economic stability and the proper utilization of their services in the fullest social sense. The New York State Department of Health ironically says, (on diagnostic slips to physicians) that the health of a community is economic and each community can determine its own death rate.

The technician’s answer to these problems is first organizational solidarity in its own ranks and the crystalization of their relationship to the working class. To this end the Federation of Architects, Engineers, Chemists and Technicians and the Association of Laboratory Technicians held a mass meeting April 27th, 1934.

The formation of the Joint Committee of Laboratory Technicians with representatives of both organizations and cooperating hospitals and laboratories was the result of this meeting. The meeting unanimously approved of the following resolutions, submitted to the public officials concerned:

1. Abolition of the Volunteer system in all hospitals and laboratories and the establishment of minimum wage schedules ranging from $25 per week for beginners to $50 per week for Director Technicians.

2. Non-competitive positions to be classed in Civil Service classification and examinations be held immediately.

3. Increased appropriations for public health budgets.

4. Establishment of the six-hour-day and the five day week.

5. Increased appropriations by Federal, State and Municipal Governments of the Technically trained.

6. Endorsement of the workers unemployment and social Insurance Act HR 7598.

June 15th, 1934 the Joint Committee of Laboratory Technicians called another mass meeting. Economic Federation of Dentists and the League for Unity in the Medical profession sent speakers and endorsed the resolutions. The position of the students was stressed. It was agreed that laboratory workers must continue to organize, laboratory by laboratory in one solid front to gain economic security and the proper social utilization of their services.

Health was the precursor to Health and Hygiene and the creation of Dr. Paul Luttinger. Only three issues were published before Health and Hygiene was published monthly under the direction of the Communist Party USA’s ‘Daily Worker Medical Advisory Board Panel’ in New York City between 1934 and 1939. An invaluable resource for those interested in the history history of medicine, occupational health and safety, advertising, socialized health, etc.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/health-luttinger/v1n3-jul-1934-Health-NYAM-enh.pdf