The law is administered by a three-member lay board made up of one representative each from employers, employees, and the public. These members are appointed by the District of Columbia Commissioners for a 3-year period.

According to the law, minimum wage rates are set for occupational groups by wage conference procedure based on the amount of wages needed to maintain decent standards of living. This procedure thus enables the board to revise wage rates in line with the increasing cost of living.

Inadequacies of present coverage

The most glaring inadequacy of the District of Columbia law is the failure to cover male workers. There is ample precedent in State statutes for coverage of male workers. Today 35 States have minimum wage laws and 16 of these apply to both men and women. The FLSA provides coverage at the Federal level for both male and female employees.

The minimum wages as set forth by the minimum wage board in our opinion are quite inadequate in terms of present conditions. The wage rates for women and minors range from 57 cents an hour for service employees to $1.10 an hour for manufacturing and wholesaling employees.

Many employees are covered in the District of Columbia by the FLSA and the present District of Columbia minimum wage law, but there are tens of thousands of employees-most of them men-who have no minimum wage and hours protection. We can see no justification for applying minimum wage and hours protection to one group of workers in private industry in the District of Columbia and at the same time refuse to guarantee minimum wage and hours protection to other groups of employees.

Need for a minimum living standard

The FLSA is supposed to provide a "minimum standard of living necessary for health, efficiency, and general well-being of workers. Even $1.25 is readily acknowledged by virtually all as also insufficient for this purpose, but it is necessary as a step in the right direction. There are two budget studies pertinent to the cost of living for workers in the Washington, D.C., area. Let's take a look at both of these studies.

The Interim City Worker's Family Budget, last published by the Department of Labor in the autumn of 1959, measures the income necessary for a "modest but adequate" standard of living, not a minimum standard. Nevertheless, this study is useful as a general guide. In autumn, 1959, and adjusted to May 1963, $6,147 was needed for a District of Columbia worker's family (wife and two children) to enjoy a "modest but adequate" level of American living. In hourly terms, this is over $3 an hour. If over $3 an hour can provide only such a modest standard of living, it takes little imagination to realize how much of a strain it is for a family to exist on less than $1.25 an hour. For a family of two, the same study would require $3,431 annually or $65.96 weekly (approximately $1.70 an hour).

The District Minimum Wage Board in accordance with the current law has prepared a guide to what constitutes a necessary cost of living for a woman worker in the District of Columbia. This guide is based on the needs of a self-supporting woman between 25 and 35 years of

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age, living in a family group of three, and sharing household costs. As of September 1959, the guide for wage conference groups gave the cost as $45.46 per week. This budget was adjusted to May 1963 by the AFL-CIO research department revealing a present cost of $50.27. (See table submitted for the record.) This study shows that even a single woman, sharing living costs, must earn $1.25 to provide what the budget calls modest but adequate.

No one should have to belabor the point that $1.25 an hour is too little to maintain a decent American standard of living.

Uncovered workers lag behind

There is no question that denial of minimum wage and hours protection has meant that a large proportion of the uncovered workers are paid pitifully low wages and are required to work excessive hours without overtime pay.

Earnings in selected industries in the District of Columbia, summer, 1962, prepared by the Bureau of Labor Statistics gives us some insight into current wages and hours of workers not covered by a minimum wage law. The report covered 87,000 nonsupervisory workers in retail stores, restaurants, real estate operations and in selected service industries such as hotels, building services, laundries, automobile repair and services, motion picture theaters, and hospitals.

As most of you are thoroughly familiar with this report, I will not dwell on these statistics very long. But I do want to point out a few examples of the deplorable situation that exists among those workers not covered by minimum wage law. Examples: 65 percent in motion picture theaters receive straight-time hourly earnings less than $1.25 per hour; 40 percent in hospitals; 42 percent in automobile repair, automobile services, and garages; 57 percent in services to dwellings and other buildings; 58 percent in laundries, etc.; 60 percent in hotels, motels, etc.; 50 percent in real estate; 29 percent in retail trade; and 67 percent in eating and drinking places (more than half of these employees were reported as generally earning tips).

These workers have no bargaining power. They must accept whatever wage is provided to them, no matter how low. Alternate job opportunities at decent wages are usually not known or available to them.

In the absence of a legal minimum requirement, wages for these unprotected workers at the bottom end of the city's wage distribution simply remain stationary or creep up belatedly over the years at only a fraction of the pace of general wage advances.

The widening gap between workers paid substandard wages and workers as a whole is not simply a matter of differences between covered and uncovered industries. Uncovered industries can and have raised wages steadily. But within these industries the lowest wage groups constantly fail to move up at all noticeably.

(The chart referred to is as follows:)

Cost of living budget for a woman worker in the District of Columbia, September 1959, adjusted to May 1963

NOTE. The major commodity and service items have been adjusted by the appropriate indexes of the CPI for Washington, D.C., with the following exceptions:

1. Health: Computed on basis of current GHA dues of $1.15 per month plus assumed proportionste increase in other medical expenses.

2. Transportation: Based on current cost of tokens, D.C. Transit.

3. Insurance: No adjustment made.

4. Emergency fund: Increased by percentage increase in all other commodity and service items in budget. Source: AFL-CIO Research Department.

Cost of $1.25 Minimum

The probable impact on the weekly wage bill that would stem from an increase to $1.25 in earnings based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics study of earnings in selected industries (District of Columbia, 1962) are hereby summarized. The wage bill for eating and drinking places would increase 25 percent; automobile repair, etc., 6 percent; motion picture theaters, 15 percent; hospitals, 4 percent; real estate, 11 percent; hotels, etc., 11 percent; laundries, etc., 6 percent; service to dwellings, etc., 4 percent; smallest increase in retailing, 3 percent. Aside from eating and drinking places, the $1.25 minimum would have a minimal impact. That is to say that virtually all business establishments could well afford to pay a more adequate wage.

The data in this survey were collected in terms of establishmentsthat is, for each separate selling unit. This may not necessarily indicate the true ability to pay on the part of the concern, since profitability for multiple-unit enterprises stems from all of its branches, not only one establishment. Thus, for example, there are any number of eating and drinking chains in this community which can afford to increase their wage levels. As a consequence, the data in the Department of Labor's survey understate the capacity of such "chain" enterprises to pay a higher wage.

Welfare costs and substandard wages

We in the District of Columbia have long been faced with increasing budgets to meet the cost of public welfare. Too many of our citizens do not earn enough to be effective economic citizens; I mean that wages are so low for many thousands that they contribute little

through the tax structure-and even may be receiving assistance from community agencies to help maintain a bare standard of living. According to the annual report of the District of Columbia Department of Public Welfare, fiscal year 1962, 21.4 percent of the paternal factors and 40.8 percent of the maternal factors contributing to dependency, neglect, or delinquency of child at the time of application for child welfare services were directly attributed to low income. How much these budgets could be cut if only the welfare recipients received a decent wage-no one knows. No one escapes the burden of low wages. All of us pay an increasingly heavy burden in welfare costs; in health services to the indigent; in poor housing. As long as the wage earner is exploited by employers unwilling to pay a decent wage, we as taxpayers must in effect subsidize these employers by paying part of the added welfare costs.

Beneficial for community

The bill would extend coverage to approximately 286,000 men, women and minors in the District of Columbia not now covered by the FLSA. The needed humanitarian benefits flowing from the boost in buying power for the most ill paid workers well justifies the minimum wage. But the minimum wage is valuable also for the economic contribution it will make to the health of our entire community's economy.

An increase in wages for the lowest paid workers would contribute substantially to a rising level of consumer purchasing power. For the lowest paid workers, increased earnings are immediately spent for necessities. Thus, the increased spending would have a multiplier effect throughout the area and in all probability would create more employment opportunities in our community.

The new minimum wage would stimulate less efficient industries and employers into a re-examination of their operations. In the absence of wage pressures most of them would ordinarily drift along on an outmoded or unrealistic basis, often satisfied to be subsidized by their employees. It would spur widespread improvements in management methods, products, and the allocation of resources. Many a complacent firm has been jolted into changes which paved the way for a more prosperous and expanded operation.

Employment and inflationary effects

Opponents of minimum wage laws have long argued that it would force price increases, touch off inflationary wage rises in other areas and "price" large groups of low paid workers out of their jobs. The evidence is that there were no adverse employment effects or inflationary trends arising from the increases in the FLSA effective September 3, 1961; we contend that the effects would be the same in the District of Columbia.

In his annual report to Congress on the effect of the 1961 wage hour law, Labor Secretary W. Willard Wirtz reported:

The 1961 increase in the Federal minimum wage brought substantial benefits to low paid workers in many areas of the country and the increases in their incomes and purchasing power had beneficial effects in the communities in which they work. He expressed need for further extending the coverage of FLSA, emphasizing that workers not covered did not benefit, even in an indirect manner, from the increases.

He told Congress that the increases effective September 3, 1961, had no inflationary effect on wage levels generally nor did they have any detrimental effect upon the nationwide level of employment in the industries affected. He pointed out further that employment has in fact risen in those industries brought under the law's coverage since the increase took effect.

The report stressed that the most pronounced change in wage structure occurred in "nonmetropolitan areas of the South." In these areas 44 percent of employees in wholesale trade and 27 percent in manufacturing received wage increases to bring their earnings to $1.15 an hour. Employment in covered industries in these areas-other than retail trade-increased by 235,000 over a 20-month period. Conclusion

A minimum wage of $1.25 is wholly justified immediately. It is evident from studying the two cost-of-living budgets pertinent to the District of Columbia that even $1.25 an hour is not enough to maintain a decent American standard of living, but it is a step in the right direction.

The $1.25 minimum wage can be accomplished without curtailment in employment or earning power. The Greater Washington Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO, would not seek a bill the effect of which would curtail employment. We are always highly conscious of and deeply disturbed about any measure that would adversely affect employment in our community.

If the bill is to serve the fundamental purpose of assuring at least a minimum level of earnings to low-paid workers, its coverage must be extended as broadly as possible. It is clear that uncovered workers' earnings lag behind those of covered workers. Unless the coverage of this bill remains broad, these uncovered workers will be doomed to continue at depressed wage levels and substandard living conditions.

No sound case can be made against minimum wage and hours' protection. It would bring a measure of justice to thousands of workers who have no other recourse. It would stimulate our community's economy without danger of inflation, or a decline in employment.

Mr. Chairman, and members of the Senate District of Columbia Committee, I thank you.

Mr. MULTER. Your full statement will be made a part of the record. Would you have any objection to eliminating the employees of religious, philanthropic and other eleemosynary institutions?

Mr. BOND. We think the community as a whole has to bear the responsibility of all these people and as we assume they are part of our community, so these people would be a part of the people that this bill we hope would support.

Mr. MULTER. You have no objection to the students, the handicapped, and aged being excluded?

Mr. BOND. We wouldn't want any of the communities excluded. We believe this is a general part of the overall working force inasmuch as from time to time they are trying to bring these people to make them members of our community and certainly with the dignity of earning their own support.

Mr. MULTER. Are they presently excluded under the national minimum wage law?