The data for the Washington metropolitan area include wage distributions for six individual occupations each in hotels and restaurants and average straight-time hourly wages for specified occupations in each industry including those for which wage distributions are available. The distributions for individual occupations are presented in tables 1 and 2. All are classified as nontipped occupations. Most are also low-wage occupations. However, a comparison of average hourly wages in various occupations in these industries indicates that employees in tipped occupations are paid even less (tables 3 and 4).

In hotels and motels, the tipped occupations-bellmen, waiters, and waitresses were the only occupations with average wages of less than $1 an hour (table 3). These occupations accounted for approximately one-fourth of all nonsupervisory employees.

In eating and drinking places, employees in tipped occupations-waiters and waitresses- —were again found to receive average straight-time rates considerably lower than employees in other occupations (table 4). These tipped workers made up about one-third of the total number of workers.

The general disparity in straight-time hourly rates between tipped and nontipped occupations is further illustrated by wage distributions for the United States and the South (table 5). For example, in the South 98 percent of the tipped employees in hotels and motels were paid less than $1 an hour, while 48 percent of the nontipped employees were so paid. Such differences exist also in eating and drinking places.

TABLE 1.-Hotels and motels: Proportion of employees in selected occupations paid less than the specified hourly rates, Washington standard metropolitan statistical area, June 1961

TABLE 2.-Eating and drinking places: Proportion of employees in selected occupations paid less than the specified hourly rates, Washington standard metropolitan statistical area, June 1961

TABLE 3.-Hotels and motels: Number and average straight-time hourly wages of employees in selected occupations, Washington standard metropolitan statistical area, June 1961

TABLE 4.-Eating and drinking places: Number and straight-time hourly wages of employees in selected occupations, Washington standard metropolitan statistical area, June 1961

TABLE 5.—Hotels and motels and eating and drinking places: Percent of tipped· and nontipped employees paid less than the specified rates, United States and South, June 1961

Senator MORSE. I didn't know that they were down below 75 cents an hour.

Mr. STERNBERG. This study, "BLS Industrial Wage Survey, June 1961," showed that 6 percent were less than 75 cents an hour, and 19 percent less than $1 an hour.

I believe I can better identify that study should it become necessary.

When the subject of S. 860 was previously discussed in the community, the Hotel and Restaurant Association, the Board of Trade, and my counterpart in the Republican Party within the District went to great pains

Senator MORSE. Now that you mention that I want to say that in my capacity as chairman of this committee, I am strictly nonpartisan. I don't know who has a better claim to that anyway. I want to say to this staff that I want to be sure that equal time is offered the Republicans to give testimony before this committee, and I want you to see to it that the chairman of the Republican State Central Committee for the District of Columbia has an opportunity to testify before this committee at his pleasure before we close the hearings.

I am only half facetious.

Mr. STERNBERG. Since you are only half facetious, Senator, I trust you won't object to a highly partisan statement at this point.

They had previously pointed out that an increase in the District minimum wage laws, both as to amounts and coverage, would so adversely affect local businesses that they would be forced to close up shop or move out of town with the resulting loss in job opportunities in the District.

Now this threat, as you well know, has been raised over and over again with respect to amendments of a similar sort-that is, in amounts and coverage, for the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act, the Federal wage hour law-ever since it was first enacted in 1938.

The fact is in the reports of the congressional hearings with respect to amendments of the Fair Labor Standards Act, they are of the conclusion that businesses are not forced to close out or move as a result of increases in minimum wage or overtime standards.

Specifically, I am aware of studies which the Department of Labor has done following each of the succession of amendments in the Fair Labor Standards Act in certain industries and in certain communities which point that out.

I am not here able to identify those studies for you. I will be happy to submit them for the record or perhaps your staff, I am sure, has knowledge of those studies, and perhaps the titles of them could be inserted at this point in the record.

Senator MORSE. I will be very glad to have them submitted for the record.

(The material referred to follows:)

1950: Results of the minimum wage increase of 1950 (economic effects in selected low-wage industries and establishments).

1957: Studies of the economic effects of the $1 minimum wage.

1958: Report submitted to the Congress in accordance with requirements of section 4(d) of the Fair Labor Standards Act.

1959: Studies of the economic effects of the $1 minimum wage (effects in selected low-wage industries and localities).

January 1963: Report submitted to the Congress in accordance with requirements of section 4(d) of the Fair Labor Standards Act (effects of minimum wage rates established under the Fair Labor Standards Act in retail trade in the United States and Puerto Rico).

November 1963: A study of changes in wage structure of a matched sample of retail establishments, 1961-62.

Senate Report 145, 87th Congress, 1st session, entitled "Fair Labor Standards Amendments of 1961," pages 16 through 22.

Mr. STERNBERG. In this connection, the District's industries and its businesses are no more nor less competitive than their counterparts elsewhere in the country.

The industrial wage surveys to which I have previously referred indicate that the counterparts to the District's businessmen elsewhere in the country are well able to pay wages which result in a higher average hourly earning than is the case here.

We submit that they are no less businessmen of knowledge and acumen than their counterparts elsewhere who have been able to absorb just such increases as are proposed in S. 860.

There is one further argument which I think I should like to meet at this point.

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Washington Board of Trade, its executive director, Colonel Press, at one point in commenting last May on S. 860, made a number of statements which I believe require some corrections.

He said at that time that only 15. States have minimum wage standards applicable to both men and women.

I think probably the correct figure is 16.

He said also that most of these minimums are well below that proposed by the District. One State has $1.25 minimum and one State a higher one, and I am quoting Colonel Press on this subject.

To set the record straight, I would simply like to point out that there are six States which now have $1.25 an hour minimum wage applicable to both men and women, or who will be going to the $1.25

minimum either later this year in 1963 or in 1964. Those six are Alaska, Washington, Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New York, and Rhode Island.

Colonel Press at the same time also said:

Per capita and per family income in the District exceeds that of most communities.

This he cited as an argument in support of the thesis he held out that there is no "underlying need for the proposed across-the-board minimum in the District of Columbia."

I submit, Senator, that Colonel Press is guilty of a serious oversight. He looked at the curve and gave us averages, but failed to look at the lower end of the curve. He failed to look at precisely what the Labor Department's study in 1962 showed: those people whose income is far lower. He chose the averages rather than the census figures which indicate the true picture as to the number of families and individuals in the District of Columbia with incomes less than $3,000 and less than $2,500 per year. Colonel Press at that time also said that:

District of Columbia Minimum Wage Board orders set reasonably sound minimums in the several classifications which have been established with some recognition of conditions actual to each of the groups.

I submit in the light of the industrial wage survey studies that I submitted earlier here, that that statement is patent nonsense.

Lastly, Senator, let me say that the Democratic Central Committee arrived at its conclusion to support this legislation because we believe that it was high time that the city instead of simply treating the symptoms of the society in which we live here in the District, the economic society in which we live, those symptoms manifesting themselves in dependency, burgeoning welfare rolls, juvenile delinquency, that rather than treat symptoms, we should now get down to treating the root causes, and one of the root causes which unfortunately give rise to these symptoms are the low wages which are paid here in the city.

For that reason alone we should and would support S. 860.

There is, however, one qualification to our support. There appears in the bill, I believe, an exemption from the minimum wage provisions proposed, an exemption for employees of the District of Columbia, of the city itself.

It has been brought to our attention that there are city employees earning less than $1 an hour. At least this was the situation last May when we made our survey.

Senator MORSE. What do they do?

Mr. STERNBERG. These employees are wage board employees in food service capacity working in one of two places, either in the cafeterias of the District of Columbia public schools, or in other food services such as I believe the cafeterias at Junior Village and elsewhere in the city.

It may be that this has been corrected since that was brought to our attention.

If it has not been, why it certainly should be.

If it has been, I am delighted to know that it has been. However, the question whether the city should not abide by a stand