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two-thirds of the equivalent scale rates for occupations with the same job content. According to the General Electric Job Evaluation Manual at the Erie works, "The value per point for day work performance is to be set to establish average day rates with a maximum permissible day rate of 5 percent above, while value per point for incentive performance is to be 15 percent higher than for day work. For female operators, the value shall be two-thirds of the value for adult male workers."

Companies have claimed that women's jobs are lighter than men's, or that additional male help had to be hired to do the heavy work for women, or that additional supervision was required, or that women merely operated machines and did none of adjusting of the machines. However, the job evaluation system provides for any lesser requirements that may be made of women. If a woman's job requires less heavy work, then she gets fewer points for "physical effort," or if her job requires more supervision or less machine adjusting then she receives fewer points for "skill." However, although the companies take these lesser job requirements into account when they evaluate women's jobs, they then go ahead and pay lower rates on the grounds that these women's jobs are "worth less."

At the Fairmont, W. Va., plant of the Westinghouse Co., where men and women produce electric fluorescent lamps and tubes, all women's jobs are paid less than the lowest men's jobs despite the fact that the Westinghouse Co. assigns a greater content to many of these women's jobs. The job "janitor" is assigned only 39 job evaluation points by the company and is paid at the rate of 75 cents an hour; the women's job "inspection, bead and seal-A," which requires fine inspection work under a microscope, receives 68 job evaluation points but is only paid 66 cents an hour. If this job were paid the equivalent male rate, it would receive 811⁄2 cents an hour.

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At the General Electric Fort Wayne plant, in Indiana, the same situation is true. There is no women's job which receives as much as the lowest man's job. The "sweeper" is paid 80 cents an hour whereas the woman's job, "wind rotor,' which requires a substantial degree of skill and experience, is paid only 75 cents an hour.

SUBSTANDARD HOURLY RATES

This discrimination is prevalent throughout the entire wage structure of the companies. These two companies, the most technologically advanced in an industry which is itself a product of the science and research of the twentieth century, pay women rates below what is necessary for a decent standard of living. For instance, in General Electric's home plant, the Schenectady works, so-called women's jobs start at 551⁄2 cents an hour, 16 cents less than the lowest hiring-in rate paid for men's jobs. At the company's River, West Lynn, Pittsfield, Fort Wayne, and Erie branches, starting rates for women's jobs are 562 cents an hour, while at the Glass Bucyrus plant they are only 50 cents. In these plants men are hired in at 71 cents an hour.

In Westinghouse, women are likewise receiving rates of pay substantially below those given to men and below what is needed for a fair standard of living. In Westinghouse's home plant of East Pittsburgh, so-called women's jobs begin at 651⁄2 cents an hour, 16 cents less than that assigned to common male laborers. At the company's Lima works, starting rates for women's jobs are 521⁄2 cents an hour; at the Newark meter unit, they are 571⁄2 cents; at the Sharon plant they are 561⁄2 cents; and at the Fairmont plant they are 54 cents. The common labor rate for men at most of these plants is 78 cents an hour.

SUBSTANDARD SALARIES RATES

Like female production workers, salaried women employees in the electrical machinery industry receive substandard rates of pay as defined in the proposed Pepper bill. For example, in General Electric and Westinghouse, leaders in the field, women receive rates of below that assigned the lowest man's job-even below that of janitor. In both of these top-notch, superprofitable corporations, salaried women workers are given a starting rate of only 50 cents an hour and less. In the case of General Electric, salaried women employees are not advanced to 62% cents an hour until 6 months later.

UNITED ELECTRICIANS FIGHT DISCRIMINATION

On September 18 and 19, 1945, the United Electricians appeared before the National War Labor Board to argue against the basically unfair practice of General Electrical nd Westinghouse to pay women on a separate and depressed

wage scale and less than wages paid to men for substantially the same kind of work. On the basis of the facts presented by us, the industry member of the board, Fred Clymer, declared that he had no doubt that there was discrimination against women in General Electric and Westinghouse as well as throughout the industry. At the hearings both companies spoke of a so-called "social wage" which Lloyd K. Garrison, the board's vice-chairman, attacked as no more than economic discrimination against women.

WOMEN NEED TO WORK

This idea of a social wage is used by those who advance the argument that women take jobs, not because they need them, but because they want to earn some extra pin money. Recent studies have conclusively demonstrated the fallacy of this argument. A survey recently made by the division of industrial relations of the New York State Department of Labor, in cooperation with the United Electricians, shows that 82 percent of the women working in New York State this year hoped to continue on their jobs, and that almost all needed to in order to earn their own living and provide financial support to their families. Other surveys, made by the Women's Bureau of the United States Department of Labor in Erie County, N. Y., and in the Dayton-Springfield area of Ohio, disclose the same pressing reason for most women wanting to continue on their jobs.

Today women have a greater need to work than ever before. In prewar years the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics found that 25 percent of the working women of the country were the chief wage earners of their families. World War II has robbed many American households of their male providers. War casualties will result in a great increase in the number of women who must support them selves and their children unaided. Moreover, the sharp cut in take-home wages will force more and more women to continue working.

LIVING COSTS UP

The inadequacy of the electrical industry's rates with respect to what it is pleased to call women's jobs has been temporarily hidden by the fact that during the war increases in take-home pay resulted from overtime and night work. With the end of the war in Europe and the Far East these props to income have disappeared. The elimination of overtime and night work has already resulted in a 26 percent pay cut for General Electric and Westinghouse workers. Accord ingly, women find themselves increasingly hard-pressed to feed, clothe, and house themselves and their dependents.

Revealing in this connection are estimates made by responsible public and private research agencies concerning the income level required for a minimum standard of living. Last September, the division of women, child labor, and minimum wages of the New York State Department of Labor found that an unmarried woman working in the State, living in a furnished room and eating her meals in restaurants, required $1,807 annually to support herself adequately. The same study showed that the average working woman living as a member of a family needed $1,643 a year to maintain herself decently. The annual cost of the WPA maintenance-level budget, at 1943 price levels, was $1,673. Today it would be nearer to $1,730.

These studies, together with others, make it obvious that even a 65-cent-anhour minimum wage rate will be insufficient to give electrical workers a standard of living which can be considered decent and healthy. Recently, the United States Department of Labor recommended a minimum hourly rate of 60 to 80 cents as necessary to provide a subsistence standard of living and added that soon that might not be enough because of the likelihood of a rise in the cost of living.

HEALTH OF WORKERS AFFECTED

Substandard wage rates adversely affect the health of workers. They bring with them malnutrition, sickness, and loss in job time. Today we know that s diet, in addition to satisfying hunger, must provide a sufficiency of specifie nutrients required for health. Essential to good health are the so-called protective foods, such as milk, fruits, eggs, vegetables, and dairy products. These foods are relatively expensive. The poorer the family, the less protective foods they buy and the more cheap energy-yielding foods. Those in sedantary occupations require about 2,500 calories a day; those doing factory work around 4,000. It would be a good investment for American industry to improve the health of its workers. The elimination of substandard wages for women in the electrical machinery industry would constitute a tremendous step forward in the attainment of this desirable objective.

SUBSTANDARDS DEPRESS WAGES

Substandard rates in a plant, industry or area tend to reduce wage scales everywhere. We in the United Electricians know this to be a fact. Experience has taught us that substandard rates depress wages within a plant. For example, in General Electric's Pittsfield and Erie branches, women's jobs are now being called simple light repetitive jobs, and men's jobs are being called heavy, complicated jobs. The purpose of this change in names is to conceal the discriminatory nature of its rate structure, for the so-called simple job requires as much skill as the so-called heavy jobs. The company has stated that it does not care who works on these erstwhile women's jobs. Apparently it expects that a man will be paid the same substandard job rates of 59 cents hereafter that women were paid formerly. Westinghouse pursues a similar policy. By introducing jobs which it classifies as women's jobs, it lays the basis for lowering wages within its plants.

SUBSTANDARD RATES THREATEN SECURITY OF VETERANS

The rate structure in the electrical machinery industry, based as it is on substandard wages paid to women and sex wage differentials, represents a real threat to the 200,000 returning United Electrical servicemen. There veterans will find many of the jobs they come back to reclassified as women's jobs at lower rates of pay. To a considerable number of our veterans, then, a return to civilian live will be accompanied by a lower standard of living for their families, since their earnings will be less than were their family allotments during service in the armed forces.

SUBSTANDARD RATES DEPRESS INDUSTRY RATES

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Substandard rates can also depress wage scales in an area and industry. General Electric and Westinghouse have already made plans and in some cases have actually begun to move departments and workers from high-wage to lowwage areas. During the past year, General Electric has leased a plant at Scranton, Pa., has purchased the Ken-Rad Tube & Lamp Co., with plants in Indiana and Kentucky, and has brought land at Albion, Mich., and Waterford, N. Y. About 4 months ago, General Electric was moving refrigeration from Schenectady, N. Y., to Erie, Pa., at a lower wage schedule. The establishment of a national minimum rate of 65 cents an hour, by limiting the depressed wages that could be paid in any area, would contribute much to stop the movement of plants from high-rate to low-rate regions.

INCREASE PURCHASING POWER BY ELIMINATING SUBSTANDARDS

Depressed substandard wages are to the disadvantage of American industry in general and of the electrical machinery industry in particular. They militate against the sale of electrical equipment by drastically reducing mass purchasing power. It is certain that men and women who are living on substandard or inadequate wages will not be in the market for costly refrigerators or washing machines. A study made some time ago by the Bureau of Labor Statistics points out the retarding effect that low wages have upon the market. It showed that in 1935-36 only 15 out of 100 families having incomes of less than $1,500 reported ownership of electrical refrigerators, whereas 54 out of 100 families in the next higher income bracket and 80 out of 100 families earning over $3,000 owned electrical refrigerators. The same relationship held here for other electrical appliances.

INDUSTRY'S ABILITY TO PAY

The electrical machinery industry is sufficiently prosperous to absorb the cost involved in the removal of substandard wages paid to women. In 1944 the industry as a whole showed a 434 percent increase in profits over prewar 1936-39 levels. Surely, it can afford the cost involved in bringing hourly rates up to 65 cents. A. F. Hinrichs, Acting Commissioner of Labor Statistics, recently estimated that the increase would come to only 2 percent. What is a 2 percent-increase to companies like General Electric and Westinghouse who have always been profitable organizations, and whose profits were enhanced during the war years?

In 1944 General Electric reported profits before taxes of $219,000,000, almost four times larger than in the peacetime year 1939. Net profits after taxes amounted to $62,000,000 in 1944, as compared with $41,000,000 in 1939. Like General Electric, Westinghouse has profited greatly during the war. Its profits before taxes increased from $17,000,000 in 1939 to $111,000,000 in 1944. Net profits after taxes came to $33,000,000 in 1944, $6,000,000 higher than that made in the boom year 1929.

Moreover, General Electric and Westinghouse expect to continue their proftable operations after the war. Both A. W. Robertson, chairman of the board of directors of Westinghouse, and Charles Wilson, president of General Electric, expect their companies to continue to operate at high levels of production. Certainly at the present time both companies, and the industry as a whol can take the step toward eliminating substandard wages at a comparatively small part of the reconversion costs.

WOMEN EXPLOITED

The prevalence of wage differentials based on sex which result in substandard rates paid to women produces superprofits for the electrical industry. Their contribution can be seen if we turn to the electric lamps division of the electrical machinery industry where the greatest portion of women are to be found. It is no accident that precisely in this division the value added by manufacture per worker is the highest. The 1939 census figures, the latest ones available in this connection, show that 77.3 percent of all those employed in the manufacture of electric lamps are women and that the value added by manufacture per worker is as high as $5,259. Contrast this with the value added by manufacture per worker in the field of generating, distribution, and industrial apparatus where women comprise only 18.6 percent of the total labor force. Here the value added by manufacture per worker is only $3,784.

As a result of this exploitation of women, General Electric's net profits on incandescent lamps for the period 1935-39 were estimated at from 65 to 88 percent of total costs and from 33 to 47 percent of the net worth of the company's lamp producing investment.

When a company breaks down women's jobs, it registers a twofold gain in costs. In the first place, it saves not only through a greater division of labor, but also through more automaticity of operations. Secondly, it saves by paying depressed wage rates on women's jobs. Thus, even if the company were to give women the same rate of pay as men-which, by the way, the company's own job evaluation system indicates it should-it would still profit greatly through increased efficiency.

INCREASED PRODUCTIVITY

Moreover, these companies have increased their productivity during the war. The War Production Board recently estimated a 25-percent man-hour increase in productivity during the war. Its estimate included such products as generators, turbines, and the like, which will continue to be manufactured in the postwar period.

A handbook on wage incentive plans published by the Management Consultant Division of the War Production Board showed what happened to productivity in specific instances when wage incentive plans were introduced in 1944. In a plant producing electronic tubes, there was a 65-percent increase in productivity: in production of electric connectors, a 55-percent increase; a 54-percent increase for photographic equipment; a 41-percent increase for power transmission machinery; and a 35-percent increase for radio equipment.

How these increases in productivity affect an individual company can be seen in the case of the General Electric Co. This company, which had no reconversion problem for a large part of its products, was paying 40 cents as a wage salary cost per dollar sales in the prewar years 1936–39; in 1944 its wage salary costs per dollar stood at a low figure of 32 cents.

Further estimates of productivity are given in the first progress report of reconversion in 42 selected industries issued by the War Production Board on August 25, 1945. Companies making equipment such as refrigerators, vacuum clearners and the like expect to increase their base period production by 187 percent in June 1946 and their employment by only 133 percent. This reflects a net gain in productivity of 41 percent. Of course such increases in productivity are accompanied by great savings in labor costs.

ELIMINATE SUBSTANDARD WAGE RATES

Today, the electrical machinery industry, like so many others, is faced by the very big question of an expanding market. The present time is particularly favorable for electrical companies to help their workers keep at least a minimum of purchasing power. Current profits are such as to absorb easily the costs involved in establishing a minimum rate of 65 cents an hour.

If all electrical companies were ordered to do this, none could claim a competitive advantage. Sound competition is not grounded on lower and lower

wages. Business firms ought to compete on the basis of which one is most efficient not on the basis of which one can sweat its labor the most.

For the electrical machinery industry the elimination of substandard wages means even more than protecting the living conditions, health and prosperity of our country. It involves a matter of paying women what they are worth according to the value of their work as measured by the industry's own job evaluation systems. The removal of substandards would represent a real step forward in doing away with economic discrimination against women.

That is why the 700,000 workers whom the United Electric represents urge the immediate passage of the Pepper substandard wage bill.

EXHIBIT 84

BRIEF

Filed by National Fisheries Institute, Inc., suite 206, 1835 K Street NW., Washington 6, D. C.; NAtional 2216.

Before: Education and Labor Committee of the Senate.

Referred to: Subcommittee of Senator Pepper, chairman; Senators Tunnell, Thomas, Aiken, and La Follette.

Subject: Amendments to the Fair Labor Standards Act, S. 1349 and S. 1282.

The National Fisheries Institute, Inc., is a nonprofit corporation with its principal office in Washington, D. C. It has among its membership all the employer groups engaged in the producing, processing, distributing, and canning of fishery products in the United States and its territories. The institute is rather new, having only been permanently organized in April 1945. Promoting the welfare of the commercial fisheries of the United States, its territories, and possessions is its chief purpose.

The above-mentioned amendments of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 vitally affect each segment of the fishing industry, and in particular the employer groups. These groups, as a matter of course, include most of the vested interests of the entire industry.

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WHAT THE AMENDMENTS DO

Both amendments with respect to the fisheries contain this provision:

6. Section 13 of the act shall be amended to read as follows:

"SEC. 13 (a). The provisions of sections 6 and 7 shall not apply with respect or (4) any employee employed in the catching, taking, harvesting, cultivating, or farming of any kind of fish, shellfish, crustacea, sponges, seaweeds, or other aquatic forms of animal and vegetable life, including the going to and returning from work."

The following has been left out of the original provision: "and including employment in the loading, unloading, or packing of such products for shipment or in propagating, processing, marketing, freezing, canning, curing, storing, or distributing the above products or byproducts thereof."

It thus is apparent that the sponsor of these amendments intends that the exemption under the act should apply only to "offshore" fishermen. In round numbers, it is estimated by the Fish and Wildlife Service of the Department of the Interior that 90,000 shore workers are engaged in our commercial fisheries; this compared with 110,000 fishermen engaged in the "offshore" operations. The industry, therefore, as a whole can be said to be fairly well divided between "onshore" and "offshore" operations.

HISTORY OF THE EXEMPTION UNDER THE ACT FOR THE FISHERIES

No case is perfect without its history. To throw light on the matters now under consideration by your committee, we shall not delve into the extensive hearings held before the Senate and House before the Fair Labor Standards Act was passed by these two bodies, but we shall point out certain parts of the debate which appear in the Congressional Record. Here we get the last concrete evidence which Congress in its wisdom saw fit to act upon before finally passing the

act.

In May 1938 when the House was considering amendments on the floor to S. 2475 (Fair Labor Standards Act), there were three or four proposed amendments under the "exemption" clause which pertained to the fisheries. The one which finally passed and later was adopted by the Senate is as follows:

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