Once the 65-cent per hour minimum wage is attained, organized labor cannot call a halt. Organized labor must demand an ever-increasing minimum wage and a reduction in the hours of work as the productivity of labor increases.

Organized labor therefore believes that provision should be made for an annual or biannual review of wages and productivity, and for reduction of hours of work with at least proportional increases in wage rates. The goal of organized labor might well be a maximum of 30 hous of work a week at a minimum of $1 per hour.

Furthermore, organized labor must demand the inclusion of all workers, whether in farms, factories, offices, or stores within the scope of the wage and hour law. There must be no exceptions. Any group that is excepted and which works at lower than minimum wages remains a threat to the wage standards of the factory and office worker and to organized labor. Any group unable to maintain at least a minimum standard of living which is not substandard, is unable to purchase the products of the mines and factories to the fullest of their abilities, and this puts the jobs of the mine, factory, and office worker in jeopardy.

Mr. DANIEL. I should like to comment very briefly on some sections of this brief that we would like to call to your attention. Our industry, the shipbuilding industry, of all the basic heavy industries in this past period, has probably been the highest paid, yet, even so, on the South Atlantic coast and in the Gulf area we had a considerable number of people who were making less than 65 cents an hour, some 15,000 a few months ago on the South Atlantic-Gulf coast, and at the peak, when 225,000 people were employed in the shipbuilding industry in the Gulf, 10 percent, or around 23,000 or 24,000 people, were making 63 cents an hour.

So really it might be questioned why we are particularly concerned about a 65-cent minimum when, outside of those two areas, our minima were far higher.

Mr. WELCH. What kind of work were they performing?

Mr. DANIEL. They were laborers in the shipyards. But the labor standards and the zone standards for the North Atlantic Coast and the Pacific and the Great Lakes were 8012 cents for the same sort of laborer standard of 63 cents in the Gulf and South Atlantic zones.

What we are particularly interested in pointing out, in defense of a higher minimum, is the efficiency and increase in production that higher minima account for. In a conference with Admiral Vickery, of the Martime Commission, the other day, a sort of a bantering conference, he was accusing us of taking advantage of a situation to get higher rates and he did quote figures to show that, despite the high rates or high minima in the shipbuilding industry, the tonnage rates in this war as against the last war was such that we produced at a lower rate per ton. We did a much better job during this period than we did during the last war, and unquestionably the efficiency and incentive were due to the high rates, which played a great part in that production record and which brought the tonnage cost down.

That is one thing. The second thing is this, that we think we owe a responsibility to the hundreds of thousands of people who were brought into the industry due to the emergency and who are now no longer employed or will no longer be employed in the industry.

At the peak, the shipbuilding industry employed 1,300,000 people. By the first of the year, the figure will be someplace between 450,000 and 500,000. There will be progressive cut-backs even after that. We will be extremely fortunate if we come out of it with an industry of 350,000 to 400,000 people.

Mr. WELCH. Will that include the navy yards?

Mr. DANIEL. That will include the navy yards. We feel that our responsibility carries over; that these people did a job. They were brought in. They came in from other areas, particularly in the Delaware River Basin, and they accustoned themselves to a standard of living that their wage rates permitted them to indulge. Now, they have to go back, to what? Nobody knows what they will have to go back to. But we feel we have a responsibility to them. We want at least to have them get a minimum wage that will permit decency and self-respect.

Going back to the first point for just a minute, I would like to call your attention to what happened after the last war when the shipbuilding industry expanded greatly during the war and then disappeared. The yards became vacated. The industry went to pieces. We had no shipbuilding industry in this country for a long time. My individual opinion is that one of the farsighted things that President Roosevelt did was in 1934 when, seeing the necessity, just as a matter of economic health in the country and self-protection, he introduced a measure which permitted paying for 44 hours of work for 40 hours of labor in the navy yards. What it meant was that skilled trades that had dropped away from the industry began to come back to the industry and they formed the nucleus for the largely expanded program when we actually got into the emergency situation. If it had not been for that act of 1934, the country would have been much worse off when it came to this terribly important matter of building ships.

The same thing is going to be true now; with the elimination of Maritime Commission contracts and the elimination of Navy contracts, the emphasis of the industry is going to be on pleasure boats, on small craft of one sort or another, where there is a much higher degree of competition, which will drive wages down and down and down unless there is some kind of a floor put under those wages.

Mr. WELCH. What is the scale paid unskilled laborers in navy yards? Mr. DANIEL. That I do not know. I have not the figures available. Mr. RAMSPECK. Have you anything further, Mr. Daniel?

Mr. DANIEL. I think that is all. The brief covers all of the economic factors.

Mr. RAMSPECK. Thank you very much.

The committee will take a recess until 10: 30 tomorrow morning. (Whereupon the committee recessed to meet on Thursday, November 8, 1945, at 10:30 a. m.

PROPOSED AMENDMENTS TO THE FAIR LABOR

STANDARDS ACT

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 1945

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

COMMITTEE ON LABOR,
Washington, D. C.

The committee met at 10:30 a. m., Hon. Robert Ramspect presiding. Mr. RAMSPECK. The committee will be in order. The first witness is Mrs. Gertrude F. Zimand, general secretary, National Child Labor Committee, New York City.

STATEMENT OF MRS. GERTRUDE F. ZIMAND, GENERAL SECRETARY, NATIONAL CHILD LABOR COMMITTEE

Mr. RAMSPECK. You may proceed, Mrs. Zimand.

Mrs. ZIMAND. I want to speak briefly on two points. On the first point I do not have a prepared statement; on the second I do.

The first point is the suggestion that was made before this committee that, if the proposed increase in wages were made, it did not apply to messenger boys under 18 years. The National Child Labor Committee opposes this as it has opposed similar suggestions from Western Union in the past.

There are only two factors that can justify paying lower wage rates to younger workers than to adults, and neither of these exists in this case. One is, if the younger workers are less efficient workers than older workers. But Mr. Giddings testified for Western Union before this committee:

Regardless of the minimum wage, the best messengers from the point of view of service to the public are young ones.

And in 1938, when Western Union also requested lower wage rates, at a hearing before Mr. William W. Leiserson, testimony was given to the effect that messenger boys, after 3 days of employment, were as efficient as messenger boys who had been in the service for 3 weeks or 3 months or longer periods.

Mr. RAMSPECK. Did Western Union ask for an exemption from the wage provision or from the child-labor provision?

Mrs. ZIMAND. At that hearing in 1938 it was an exemption not only for children but for all those engaged in messenger work; not an exemption, but permission to employ them at a lower rate.

Mr. RAMSPECK. In other words, it was not a question of the wage, it was a question of being able to employ them?

Mrs. ZIMAND. No. At that time it was a question of wages for all messengers regardless of their age.

There has been no plea made here at this hearing, or at that hearing, that messenger boys should be paid less because they were not efficient. The second consideration that might justify lower wage rates for younger workers is where the work is educational, somewhat in the nature of an apprenticeship, where the boy secures experience and skills that might lead to promotion. But that this is not the case is indicated by the tremendously abnormal labor turn-over among messenger boys. The telegraph companies in 1938 testified that they employed annually about three times their normal labor force. At that time Mr. Leiserson remarked that such a high rate of labor turnover is usually a symptom of some underlying maladjustment, and the Western Union stated: "We consider a large turn-over a healthy condition for this reason. Messenger work is such that it certainly is not desirable as a profession."

In other words, it is not a stepping stone to better employment, but is a job that a child takes for a few months. Since neither of these justifications for lower wages exists, we would be inclined to believe that if the recommendation of Western Union were granted and they were given permission to employ boys under 18 years at lower rates than adults, gradually the 62 percent of the messenger boys who are now over 18 years would be thrown out of employment and an increasingly greater percentage of boys under 18 years would be taken on as messenger boys at the lower rate. It goes without saying that during this period, when we all fear unemployment, we are not trying to increase the employment of boys under 18 at the expense of adults.

The other point on which I wish to speak, and on which I have a prepared statement, is section 6 of H. R. 4222, which amends section 12 of the Fair Labor Standards Act, relating to child labor, and I understand that there is an identical provision in H. R. 3914 and H. R. 3928.

We strongly support this section which adds a new subdivision to the child-labor regulations of the act, directly prohibiting an employer "engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce" from employing oppressive child labor "in or about or in connection with any enterprise in which he is so engaged."

Under the present act only those employers are covered by the childlabor provisions who actually "ship" goods produced in an establishment in which oppressive child labor has been employed within 30 days prior to the removal of such goods. This phraseology is the basis on which the United States Supreme Court held, in a 5-to-4 decision on January 8, 1945, that Western Union telegraph messengers were not covered by the child-labor provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act. The Court held that, although telegraph messages are "goods." Western Union does not "produce" or "ship" the messages.

The minimum wage and hour provisions of the act have always had the broader coverage implied in a direct prohibition. I believe I can speak with authority, as representative of the National Child Labor Committee, which was probably more active than any other organization in working for the child-labor provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act, in saying that it was never the intent to make the coverage of the child-labor provisions of the act narrower than that of the wage and hour provisions. Certainly there should be no

hesitancy in correcting this inadvertent omission and extending the child-labor provisions to include all industries covered by the wage and hour provisions.

The largest number of children who would be affected by the proposed amendment would be telegraph messenger boys., Western Union. probably employs more children under 16 years than any other single employer. According to the statement of Mr. T. B. Giddings, as-sistant vice president of Western Union, before this committee recently, Western Union employs 1,268 messengers under 16. It is. interesting to contrast this figure (1,268) with the fact (reported by Miss Lenroot, Chief of the Federal Children's Bureau, at the Senate hearing on S. 1349) that in 1943 nearly 6,000 children of 14 and 15 years of age received employment certificates for work as telegraph messengers. This is a partial figure because some States do not require employment certificates for work as a messenger boy. In some States messenger boys are not under the child-labor law. So. roughly, as a guess, if there were 6,000 certificates, there would be 6,500 messenger boys under 14 and 15, or about five times the number now employed.

The only explanation for the fact that telegraph messengers under 16 years actually number about 1,300, althought 6,000 children of 14 and 15 years are certificated for such work in a year, is a tremendous. labor turnover among messenger boys. This in itself is a strong indication that messenger work is not a desirable employment for children and that the boys themselves recognize this and refuse to stay in such employment for any considerable length of time.

Although it is one of the most undesirable forms of employment for children under 16 years, telegraph messenger work is most inadequately regulated under State laws. Only 8 States now have a 16-year age minimum for messenger work; 2 States have a 15-year minimum; 27 States have a 14-year minimum, and 11 States have no minimum age. For work during school hours, the age runs somewhat higher, but the great majority of messenger boys under 16 years, 89 percent, work outside of school hours-18 States have a 16-year minimum forsuch employment; 4 a 15-year minimum ; 22 a 14-year minimum; and 4 no age minimum.

I am submitting a chart listing the age regulations in the 48 States both for work during school hours and outside of school hours. (The chart referred to is as follows:)

MINIMUM AGE for TelegraPH MESSENGERS IN STATE LAWS

Below is listed the basic minimum age for telegraph messengers established through State child-labor laws. This does not include special provisions barring night messenger work, nor the minimum age for girls.