Word: opm
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Before the Senate's clamor had died down, OPM announced a 600,000,000-lb. ( 75% ) expansion, with Government financing. Last month it "recommended" five companies to operate the plants. But this week officials of at least one company still knew nothing about the program except what they had read in newspapers, still had seen no contract. Not one piece of equipment for the new plants had been ordered, not one commitment for electricity had been made...
...recommended" company was Olin Corp., which long has badgered OPM for approval of its plans to make aluminum by a new process using alunite instead of bauxite (TIME, June 16). The Bureau of Mines has approved the alunite process; so has OPM's staff of technical experts. But OPM's light-metal bigwigs, without having committed themselves either way, frown on alunite, want Olin Corp. to use bauxite instead...
...OPACS' answers to these wails have been either "make formal application to OPM's priorities division" (which virtually means "no") or, especially where aluminum is the vital necessity, a bleak "we cannot undertake to assist you." Sometimes complainers are referred to their local Defense Contract Service organization. Rarely has this resulted in the most logical remedy: subcontracting of defense orders...
Last week the American Business Congress, sounding board for small manufacturers, met in Manhattan and sent off a blast to OPM insisting that they be allowed to participate in the defense effort, thus escape "wholesale extinction." They called for mandatory subcontracting, pools of small plants for defense production, coordinated allocation of civilian supplies, control of "unwarranted accumulation of 'priority' materials." While the Business Congress named no names, this might have been directed at automakers, who have had little trouble getting enough supplies for full production up to now. President Roosevelt himself (in a letter to Michigan...
...William S. Knudsen (General Motors), $372,366. (Mr. Knudsen's next full-year pay, from OPM, will...