Commissioners' proposal Comparison of S. 860 (Morse bill) to amend the District of Columbia minimum wage law with the District Commissioners' proposal-Continued S. 860 XI. Penalty for willful violation: Fine of not more than $10,000, or imprisonment for not more than 6 months, or both. XII. Employee remedies: 1. Employee could collect up to double the amount of back wages illegally withheld, plus attorney's fees and court costs. 2. Board could take assignment of claim and institute proceedings. XIII. Exemptions: 10(a). From minimum wage and overtime provisions1. Executive, administrative, and professional employees. 2. Individuals who gratuitously render services to educational, charitable, religious, or nonprofit organizations. 3. Newsboys who deliver to homes. From overtime provisions 1. Seamen. 2. Railroad employees. 7. Board by regulation could lower minimum wages for 1. Individuals whose earning capacity is impaired by age or physical or mental defici ency or injury. 2. For learners and apprentices. Senator MORSE. Mr. Commissioner, I want to say, in the opinion of the chairman, you have made a very strong prima facie case in support of the recommendations set forth in your testimony. I have no questions at this time. Does anyone in your group wish to make any statements? Mr. TOBRINER. Mr. Brewer has a statement, Mr. Chairman. Mr. BREWER. I am Mr. Donald Brewer, Acting Director of Public Welfare, and I have a very brief statement. Senator MORSE. I will be delighted to hear it. Mr. BREWER. We are, of course, concerned in this matter from many aspects. From the standpoint of public welfare, the employment opportunities and the basic wage scale of the community have a direct effect upon the rate of dependency and other welfare problems. The effect is felt in different ways. For the male head of the household, earnings sufficient not only to provide the basic necessities of food, clothing, and shelter for his family, but also to permit him to provide for the health and education of his family are essential. As cost-of-living items rise, if wages, particularly in the low-income groups, do not keep pace, the stress on family life becomes greater. Family breakdown is one of the major reasons for social ills. In our aid to dependent children cases on public assistance, it is estimated that 27 percent of the families are in need because of desertion of the breadwinner. Insufficient earnings and inability to provide for the families are unquestionably contributing factors. This is why we are particularly anxious to see that the proposed bill covers men. There are more and more women entering the labor market as heads of households and to supplement income, but here again, the wage level has its effect. If the wages are not sufficient to pay for adequate day care for the children, there is a real danger that children will go unsupervised and unprotected. We are making an effort to provide training for our mothers on ADC so that some of them can be selfsufficient. While on assistance, the family receives a grant which is based on minimum needs. As soon as the mother enters the employment market, the family expenses increase for such items as clothing, transportation, and payment for day care. Unless she can be placed after training where wages will meet these additional essentials, there is no motivation for self-sufficiency. Likewise, if Public Welfare were to supplement the earnings, this would mitigate against total selfsufficiency. In the long run, it does not help to strengthen the citizen potentials or the economy of the country. In the District of Columbia our figures show that we do supplement low income in many ways. Free school lunches are being provided in the elementary schools alone to 7,371 children. As of July of this year we found that 3,943 low-income families were eligible for surplus food, in addition to those on public assistance. Cost of living in the District is high. The last figures indicate that, in the last 6 years, the overall cost of price index has increased by 9 percent. Rentals are high, and many of the employment opportunities are in suburban areas where cost of transportation becomes a real factor. Dependency in any form is degenerative. Self-sufficiency is basic. Until the gap between cost of living and basic earnings is closed, the community will pay in one form or another through direct public support. Thank you for this opportunity, Mr. Chairman. Senator MORSE. Thank you very much, Mr. Brewer. I think your observations are unanswerable as to the cost relationship between income and the matter of the welfare problems in the District of Columbia. Mr. Putnam? Mr. PUTNAM. I have a brief statement from our experience with minimum wage for women. Congress, as we see it, has already adopted the principle of a minimum wage for men. First, by enacting a minimum wage law for women in the District of Columbia. Second, by enacting the wage and hours law for interstate workers. Our experience with the wage payment statute indicates that many men as well as women receive very low wages in the District of Columbia. It seems clear that the arguments which proved that interstate workers should receive a minimum wage apply with equal force to wages in the District. With respect to the amount of a minimum wage, my Board has compiled an itemized draft weekly budget for a woman without dependents, using official sources and estimates by impartial and experienced persons. The amount of money needed to buy the necessary goods and services, for the subsistence of one person, has increased steadily and now approaches $50 per week. A permanent minimum wage of less than this would be too low to achieve the purpose of the act. It is commonly known that the cost of living in the city of Washington, D.C., is one of the highest in the Nation. The Board is unanimous in supporting the broad coverage of the bill and the overtime provisions. The majority support the graduated rates of $1.15 as a first step with $1.25 as the second step to become effective in 1965 and the provision to require overtime compensation after 42 hours per week when the law becomes effective and overtime after 40 hours after September 1965. The overtime provision seems to be a very important thing. It would discourage long hours of work by requiring the payment of time and one-half after 40 hours of work per week, after September 1962. It is recognized that long workweeks do not help the health and efficiency of a worker. It is desirable to increase efficiency by reducing the long workweek. In some instances, this provision may result in creating additional jobs for which the employer would pay straighttime rates. It makes no sense to have one man half kill himself by long hours of work while others can get no work at all. Senator MORSE. Mr. Putnam, I want to thank you very much. There is one problem raised by your statement that I will comment on very, very quickly. I think all American employers and the public generally will have to face up to the problem of the shorter workweek. This is certainly true in connection with the minimum wage and hours problem. We get the workweek down to the standard 40 hours per week. The reason I make that comment is that I don't think most people are fully appreciative of a very dramatic change that is going on before our very eyes but we don't see it yet, for we are in the midst of the new era of automation. I have been taking, as some of you may know, testimony for many weeks as chairman of the Subcommittee on Education of the Senate Labor and Public Welfare Committee where we are coming to grips with this problem of the school dropout, which is a problem not of the unemployed but of the unemployable. One of the great problems facing this country is the increasing number of unemployables; unemployables because they aren't trained to be employed. If I could perform a miracle here tonight by pressing some magical button and stopping all automation as it now is, so that there would be no more automation for many years to come, it still is true that the automation process has reached such a point that for many years to come we would have to supply 35,000 new jobs per week to take up the loss of jobs that our present state of automation is going to cause for years to come. You and I know we are not going to turn back the direction of technology. There isn't going to be any standstillism in the field of automation. It is going to go ahead at a rapid pace, and unless we do something about it we are going to have increasing millions that can't be employed because they won't be trained for employment. I think one of the strongest arguments for a minimum wage here or anywhere else where it is nonexistent is that it is necessary from the standpoint of fulfilling a social responsibility we have in connection with shortening the week so that we can spread the work, and you can't shorten the week unless there can be at least some minimum guarantee of income that can maintain an individual and his family in health and decency. I just happen to think that this has become a social responsibility of society as a whole, and those that seek the benefits of that society through the operation of business have to assume that it carries with it obligations. No one asks them to go into business, but if they go into business it is only fair to say you have to assume the social and moral obligations consonant with taking the advantages of our economic system. If there were no other arguments for a minimum wage, that would be enough. Now, that leaves open many questions as to what form it should take and what the rules should be, the question that the Commissioner raises whether it isn't fair to adopt the escalator approach to it, whether this can be a reasonably quick adjustment to it, and on those matters I think there is plenty of room for negotiation, so to speak. But I wouldn't want anyone connected with this hearing to ignore the point that I have made in regard to what we have got to do. We have got to spread the work around. The comments that you made, Mr. Putnam, brought forth this little speech. I am not one who thinks 44 hours a week or 48 hours a week is, after all, any great hardship, that in fact it does injury to the human organism. I think from the standpoint of social policy it couldn't be justified before the era of automation, but since the era of automation it just can't be justified on economic grounds from the standpoint of the economic welfare of society as a whole. Many people aren't ready yet to accept this policy because the idea is very difficult for many people to adapt themselves to, but it is only a matter of time before we are going to go below the 40-hour week out of just pain necessity. We're going to get below the 40-hour week or we are going to have increasing millions of unemployed, and increasing millions unemployed, of course, threaten the whole economic system. I have heard it said many times, "You give me a society of full employment and I will give you a society about whose freedom you don't have to worry, but you give me a society where there is any substantial amount of unemployment, watch out, for I will give you a society then in constant turmoil, and turmoil doesn't lead to stability-political, economic, or social." I think we have almost passed the time where there can be much controversy over the philosophical principle that Government has a clear duty to see to it that workers receive minimum protection in regard to such matters as wages and conditions of employment. That doesn't mean that you don't stand for protection of employers, too, but their protection involves a good many other benefits that you owe them. But I know of no principle that would justify saying that employers are entitled to operate in a free economy and pay wages of their own choosing. For, operating in that free economy they are the beneficiaries of the economic system that, after all, the Government maintains for them in which they can operate. For if the Government stepped out, what kind of an economy would you have? You would have a chaotic one. So you have to have the Government acting as the stabilizer in order to maintain a system of equitable balance between and among employers and labor on the one hand, and the public interest on the other. I think it is very well that you point out in these comments of yours this matter of the relationship to the workweek, to the availability-the length of the workweek-to the availability of jobs. Our next witness will be Miss Carrie L. Allgood, Executive Secretary, Minimum Wage and Industrial Safety Board. Miss ALLGOOD. I appreciate this opportunity to testify in support of S. 860, incorporating the proposed amendment of the Commissioners of the District of Columbia. I appear on behalf of the Minimum Wage and Industrial Safety Board with which agency I have served as Director of Minimum Wage since 1946. The District of Columbia minimum wage law, which affords protection to women and minors only, was passed in 1918, within 6 years after the first minimum wage law was enacted in the United States. Looking toward providing maximum protection to women and minors, its purpose is to "protect the women and minors of the District from conditions detrimental to their health and morals, resulting from wages which are inadequate to maintain decent standards of living; and the act in each of its provisions and in its entirety shall be interpreted to effectuate these purposes." |