GENERAL CONFERENCE OF SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTISTS, Hon. MARY T. NORTON, House of Representatives, Washington D. C. MADAM CHAIRMAN: Attached you will find a statement in behalf of the General Conference of Seventh-Day Adventists on pending minimum wage legislation. This statement is submitted in compliance with arrangements made through your committee clerk when we were advised that the committee schedule would not permit the appearance of additional witnesses. We shall appreciate it very much if these views can be incorporated in your committee hearings. Sincerely yours, W. H. BRANSON, Vice President, General Conference of Seventy-Day Adventists. STATEMENT OF WILLIAM H. BRANSON, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE GENERAL CONFERENCE OF SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTISTS ON THE EFFECT OF PROPOSED MINIMUM WAGE LEGISLATION ON MISSIONARY INSTITUTIONS OF RELIGIOUS BODIES From earliest times unselfish sacrificing groups of men and women have placed the spiritual welfare of their fellow men above their own financial well-being, and out of this service have come our great missionary movements. We are confident that Congress has no desire to in any way thwart the missionary practices of the religious bodies of this country and for that reason we present this statement outlining the possible effects of pending legislation on mission institutions and missionary training schools. In the beginning, permit me to make it very clear that our denomination is entirely in sympathy with every legitimate effort to better the conditions of laboring men and women. We believe in reasonable hours of work, healthful surroundings, time for recreational and cultural pursuits, wages commensurate with services rendered, etc. We do not appear here to oppose the bills which are before you, but to request that in the event they are considered favorably, certain modifications be included in order to safeguard the work and interests of not only our church and institutions, but with that of other similar organizations. In that connection it might be well to stress that our institutions are conducted on a missionary basis, and those individuals connected with them likewise carry on their activities with a missionary spirit rather than on a solely remunerative basis. As the result of following scriptural examples in this respect we are able to offer standard educational courses at rates lower than those of many other institutions, and in addition we are able, through our self-help programs, to provide part-time employment whereby our students may earn part of their tuition. Ninety percent of the students in our institutions earn a part of their tuition, and about 50 percent earn at least half of their expenses. You may wonder how the provisions of the bills you are now considering could affect the work of a religious body. Our church organization, besides its regular evangelical activities, carries on a very large institutional program. Seventh-day Adventists have, for instance 1. Their own system of education, and conduct church schools from the elementary course through the college level, and also operate a medical college and theological seminary. 2. We operate publishing houses solely for the production of denominational literature. 3. We operate medical institutions such as sanitariums, hospitals, and dispensaries for the care of the sick, and for the training of medical missionary nurses. Connected with some of these medical institutions are health food factories. All of these nonprofit sharing enterprises are carried on with the idea of fostering the growth of our denominational work and are financed and controlled by the church. There has been established a scale of wages which applies to all workers, regardless of the particular branch of church work in which they are employed, and since these are church missionary projects, those employed in them come under the denominational wage scale. Schools In addition to the literary courses given, every secondary boarding school and college founde dby Seventy-Day Adventists in the past 50 years offers training and experience in one or more lines of manual labor and industrial arts. Manual training, industrial work and those things which tend to develop the recognition of the dignity of labor on the part of the youth are a very vital and integral part of our Seventh-Day Adventist educational plain and policy. All of our educational literature published since the very beginning of this denomination is saturated with this principle. We believe such training has a definite social significance; that it makes for peace in the social order. Though a man may reach a managerial position, if he has once worked with his hands, he is not likely to consider the laborer as his inferior. The one who gains experience in any kind of handicraft knows that the skillful artisan must recognize the connection between cause and effect and must reason accurately. Such training tends to keep men from following mere speculative theory. Further, the employer or foreman who has worked as a journeyman is in a position to judge what is fair remuneration for work done. This is in harmony with the best American traditions for in early American history we find that the three R's were taught in schools, while trades, manual labor, and the household arts were taught by parents in the home and shop and on the farm. American education today is endeavoring to restore this practical side of education through vocational training in high schools. Educators today in general recognize that education and life are too far apart. In our Seventh-Day Adventist system of education it is our attempt to keep them tied closely together. We believe in the principle that was enunciated by William Penn, that "in any educational system worth-while, the intellectual, the spiritual, and the industrial are inextricably mixed." Because of that belief, our institutions are usually established in rural environments, most of them on good-sized farms where at least sufficient food can be produced to supply the needs of the members of the institution. We have also established, in connection with these institutions, for the purpose of education and training, departments of agriculture, printing, woodworking, broom making, and in some instances, mechanics, auto mechanics, and chenille work. In these various industries connected with our educational institutions, through the work privileges provided, it becomes possible for a large number of youth, who otherwise would not be able to finance a college education, to earn a portion or all of their school expenses. About 50 percent of our students earn at least half of their school expenses in this way, while some 90 percent earn at least a portion. The wages paid to teachers and to all the leaders in these institutions are strictly on a church missionary basis. As already stated, the denomination wage scale applies to all its workers, whether evangelical or institutional, and this scale is applied in principle to its work throughout the world. Thus the maximum wage in 1945 for senior college presidents is fixed at $50 per week, while for junior college presidents the scale ranges from $36.50 to $47.50 per week, and academy principals from $36.50 to $45. Teachers in the respective institutions receive a few dollars less. While some of the industries in connection with our colleges have grown to be quite large and do a considerable business, yet all of these institutions are eleemosynary, nonprofit organizations and are subsidized by charity through various churches and conferences. Any profits that may accrue in any of these industries go to the general upbuilding of the institutions of the church and not to any individual, nor even to the industry itself. The industries are organized for the one purpose of training the students in labor, maintaining an atmosphere of work for everybody about the institution, and providing opportunities for the students to earn a portion of their own way through school on a basis of self help. Inasmuch as these students work only a few hours each day, and also because the majority of the time we are using immature and untrained help, and since the student worker will be engaged in that type of labor only for the period necessary for the course of study being pursued, you can see our problem, if we were compelled by law to pay the same wages that regular commercial industrial firms are able to pay for regular workers. Since the student workers must integrate their manual labor with their classroom work, many of them are able to put in only from 1 to 5 hours per day, and therefore could not be classed as regular laborers in the industry. There is also, of course, a very rapid turn-over of student labor, and this together with the broken time that students are able to work, the fact that unskilled labor reduces the production of the machines, the spoiling of materials, and the damage done to the machines by those who are not well acquainted with their operation, all contribute to the high cost of production of the finished article. This results in a lack of efficiency in these industries that would not appear in a regular commercial factory. The charges made to our students for their education, board, and room are lower than those of other institutions of equal size and equipment. Most of the graduates of our schools go into our own denominational work and become ministers, doctors, teachers, or workers in our various institutions. Aside from the institutions operated in the United States, we have a large number of similar institutions throughout the world, all of which operate on the same principle as those in the United States. It is necessary, therefore, that those connected with these various organizations throughout the world shall have received the kind of training that involves manual work in order that they may be able to foster this same type of work as they go out to other lands as missionaries. We operate 9 colleges and 67 secondary schools in the United States, with 5,500 college students and 9,548 secondary students, in addition to about 21,000 children in our elementary schools. As mentioned already, all of these schools are subsidized, and they are consumers of much of their own products. From these facts I believe it will be clear to you that if the provisions of these labor bills which are now before you should be applied to our denominational industrial program, it would make it impossible for us to continue to carry on this branch of our work. It would also completely upset our entire denominational wage scale unless we were to be faced with the enigma of having students in our colleges earn more in our industrial departments than is paid to academy principals and college presidents in charge of the student work. Publishing houses Our publishing houses produce only denominational literature. All of these institutions are segments of the denominational organization. They operate as subsidiaries either of our general conference or of the respective union conference organizations. Their boards are amendable to the general policies of the denomination, and there is complete interlocking of interests and controlling policies with those of the church. Take, for instance, our Review & Herald Publishing Association, located in Takoma Park, D. C. Its general manager and chief editors are members of our general conference committee, and several members of our general conference committee are members of the publishing house board. The editors of these institutions are appointed by joint action of the general conference committee and the instituțional managers. The institution's relationships to the world field of Adventist endeavor are regulated and controlled by general conference policies. None of the operating surpluses of these publishing houses accrue to the profit of any individual, but are used solely for the upkeep of the plant and for the general support of the denominational missionary work. All their interests are devoted to the denominational program and no commercial printing or publishing of any nature is done in these plants. They are manned by church members who are willing to do their missionary work in this production of our religious literature. The printing offices in our schools are manned by student-workmen and carry on certain types of job printing in order to give work privileges to worthy poor young people who are not planning primarily to make printing their life work. The management of these publishing houses is also all paid on the basis of our denominational wage scale. For illustration, the wage scale for general managers of our principal publishing houses ranges from $41.25 to $50 per week. Other administrators in the institutions naturally receive a little less than this. If, as provided in the bills before Congress, it would become necessary for these institutions to pay time and a half for overtime, this feature would completely distort and confuse our denominational wage schedule as it would be entirely out of harmony with its missionary character and would prove to be a very serious problem for our church. Under the present law, due to the particular provisions regarding overtime, many journeymen at the Review & Herald Publishing Association are now receiving remuneration exceeding that of the managers and other executive officers of the institution. For the limited period of the war emergency this was not so serious, but it is self-evident that it could not justly or wisely be allowed to continue indefinitely. To make an adjustment in the managerial and professional workers' salaries commensurate with what the journeymen would receive under the new proposal would, in turn, throw these organizations far out of line with other denominational interests and would jeopardize the entire financial structure of the church. To raise all denominational wage rates to harmonize with the proposed law would destroy the missionary and sacrificial basis upon which our denominational leaders and workers throughout the world are at the present time serving, and would greatly restrict the church in its service to the world. Medical institutions The same principles apply to our medical institutions, health food factories, etc. If the provisions of these bills should be applied to the various food industries connected with our medical institutions, the result would be that a number of those who would be engaged in manual work in these institutions would actually be drawing a higher take-home wage each week than would the managers of such institutions. These medical institutions are conducting training courses for nurses and are preparing missionary workers for our work throughout the world field. Just as is the case in all our other institutions mentioned before, their entire staffs, including the doctors, directors of schools of nursing, supervisors, etc., are working on a missionary wage. The employees in all these organizations are members of our own faith and are happy and entirely satisfied with the remuneration they have been receiving for their work. Emoluments To all regular, full-time employees of our institutions, we give certain emoluments above and beyond their regular salaries as follows: (a) A rent subsidy to married couples of from $14 to $25 per month. (b) Special discounts at our institutional cafeterias to all employees for food. (c) An annual 2-week holiday on regular salary. (d) A plan of financial assistance in sickness which provides for from 50 to 75 percent of the medical and hospital bills incurred during an illness of the employee, or of his immediate family, and in case of death in the family, usually 50 percent or more of the funeral expenses is cared for by the employing organization. (e) A sustentation plan which provides a monthly income of from $20 to $93.50 to superannuated or disabled workers or their wives or minor children, according to the number of years of service, and all without any deduction from the workers' pay. In view of all the foregoing facts, we earnestly request your committee to write into these bills, should they be reported upon favorably, such provisions as would exempt our church-affiliated institutions, so that undue hardship would not be brought upon them in the conduct of their religious work throughout this country. PROPOSED AMENDMENTS TO THE FAIR LABOR STANDARDS ACT WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 1945 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, The committee met at 10:30 a. m., Hon. Augustine B. Kelley presiding. Mr. KELLEY. The committee will be in order. Our first witness is Mr. A. E. Lyon. STATEMENT OF A. E. LYON, EXECUTIVE SECRETARY, RAILWAY LABOR EXECUTIVES ASSOCIATION; WASHINGTON, D. C. Mr. LYON. My name is A. E. Lyon. My address is 10 Independence Avenue SW., Washington, D. C. I am executive secretary of the Railway Labor Executives' Association and I appear in behalf of that association. Our association is composed of the chief executive officers of 19 national and international railroad labor organizations, as follows: Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen Order of Railway Conductors of America American Train Dispatchers Association International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Iron Ship Builders and Helpers of America International Brotherhood of Blacksmiths, Drop Forgers and Helpers International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Brotherhood of Railway Carmen of America International Brotherhood of Firemen and Oilers Brotherhood of Railway and Steamship Clerks, Freight Handlers, Express and Station Employees Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen of America National Organization Masters, Mates and Pilots of America National Marine Engineers' Beneficial Association International Longshoremen's Association Hotel and Restaurant Workers International Alliance These labor organizations represent about 1,250,000 railway workers in the United States, or more than 80 percent of the total of such employees in our country. I understand that an officer of the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees, which is one of the organizations affiliated with our association, is scheduled to appear before your committee immediately |