to help out at home but enables them to apply book learning. In this connection, the National Child Labor Committee, a private organization, composed of educators, union officials, business men, and others interested in social welfare, conducted a study of part-time schoolwork programs in secondary schools where students were released from school part-time to participate in paid employment under a program developed and supervised by the school. Mr. Harold J. Dillon, who was in charge of this study, in his report published in 1946, stated that students listed advantages of school-work experience as learning good work habits and the importance of responsibility; gaining a sense of security and independence; making good contacts with people; giving more reality to school. Mr. Dillon also reported that many school principals believed that work experience was desirable because they had found that it provided a valuable resource for student adjustment; encouraged many to remain in school; made possible a combination of experi ence that could not be developed by the school alone; and resulted in general improvement of student morale. Mr. Dillon said that nearly three-fourths, or 304, parents queried by questionnaire stated that it was a satisfactory school arrangement. Nearly one-fourth considered it the best kind of arrangement. Less than 3 percent considered it unsatisfactory. The point I wish to emphasize is that the student, the parent, and the school principal feel that work experience for youths is desirable. Western Union has many letters from former messengers, parents, educators, and men in business and professional life emphasizing their conviction that work experience for youth is desirable. There is no essential difference in telegraph-delivery work and the kind of work boys perform for the local store, or on magazine and newspaper routes. for local errand service companies and many similar and well-recog nized youth occupations. No good reason occurs to us to prohibit employment in a desirable class of work such as telegraph-messenger service. If the committee should decide to broaden the application of the child-labor provisions of the act we urge that youths not be denied employment as telegraph messengers and suggest the following exemption be included in section 13 (c) after the word "agriculture" or to messengers employed by a telegraph company. Senator BALL. Have you any indication that the Secretary of Labor would not authorize regulation or order permitting the employment of youths 14 to 16 as messengers during periods which would not interfere with their schooling? Under the bill, have you any indication that you would be unable to get such an order? Mr. HEBERTON. We have no indication on that, I am sure. Senator BALL. You are not inclined to rely on that and hope that you would? Mr. HEBERTON. No, sir, Senator, because in the case of the messengers 16 to 18 there has been an indication that they would classify our work as hazardous, and there is a possibility that the boys in that category would also be denied employment. Senator BALL. Thank you very much. (Mr. Heberton submitted the following brief :) THE WESTERN UNION TELEGRAPH Co., STATEMENT OF K. W. HEBERTON, ASSISTANT VICE PRESIDENT, BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE SENATE COMMITTEE ON LABOR AND PUBLIC WELFARE CONCERNING REVISIONS OF THE FAIR LABOR STANDARDS ACT OF APRIL 30, 1948 My name is K. W. Heberton. I am assistant vice president, Western Union Telegraph Co. and have been in the employ of that company for 18 years. It is understood that the purpose of these hearings is to consider desirable changes in the Fair Labor Standards Act. With that objective in mind and because of a grave situation confronting the telegraph industry, we urge for your consideration an amendment which would exclude telegraph agencies from the possible application of sections 6 and 7 of the act. Western Union has served the Nation since 1851 and it is our function to furnish telegraph service wherever it is needed in the United States. Of course this does not mean that we must operate an office in every little hamlet, but within the limitations of our means we believe it is our responsibility to see that telegraph service can in some way reach as many points as possible. It was in pursuance of this policy that thousands of telegraph agencies were established. We believe this to be in the public interest. Telegraph service through agencies is as old as the telegraph industry itself. Western Union has a total of 11,476 agencies in local stores and service establishments, including 5,723 communities usually having populations of 5,000 or less which depend solely on this type of representation for direct telegraph service. The remaining agencies perform a supplementary function in support of other established forms of telegraph representation, affording a more convenient telegraph service to the public. It is only through agency coverage that the company is able to provide telegraph representation in many small towns. Thus without agency arrangements many places would be denied direct service and many other places would be denied the convenience and extended hours of service available through agencies which supplement the telegraph company's own offices. Agency arrangements are generally made with retail and service establishments.' Telegrams at these agencies are handled by telephone, teleprinter, or messenger between the agent and the telegraph company. In effect, the telegraph agency is comparable to other agency arrangements, such as, fourth-class post offices, ticket agencies, and collection agencies for gas and electric companies. An example of an agency which makes it possible to bring direct telegraph service to a small community is the Dickie's Drug Store at Blairsville, Pa., a community of 5,000, or about 1,400 families. Mr. W. N. Dickie has been the Western Union agent at Blairsville for the past 5 years. This agency handles 18 sent and received messages a day. Messages for the community are trnasmitted to and from the agent by teleprinter through the Western Union message center at Pittsburgh, Pa., 35 miles distant. The functions involved in handling telegrams at such agencies are but a relatively small part of the agent's local activity, and seldom, if ever, require the assignment of additional work time. For example, at the Dickie Pharmacy, the 18 messages, scattered throughout the day, are handled by Mr. Dickie or any one of his three employees over a spread of 12%1⁄2 hours daily. It is these incidental telegraph transactions which, according to the Wage and Hour Administrator, would automatically make the agent and workers in his local establishment employees of the telegraph company subject to the requirements of the FLSA. Continuance of these agencies and the service they provide is in serious jeopardy as a result of action brought by the Administrator of the FLSA in July 1945 against Western Union in the United States District Court for the Eastern Dis 1 A recent sampling showed the following types of business acting as telegraph agents: Percentage of total telegraph agencies Drug stores. 33 Other local stores (general merchandise, radio shops, electrical supplies, auto accessories) 20 Real estate and insurance offices. 9 trict of Kentucky at Lexington. This action charged that such agents (like W. N. Dickie of Dickie's Drug Store) and their employees who handle telegrams are subject to the provisions of the FLSA despite the fact that they are primarily engaged in local selling and servicing in the retail business of the agent. The District Court and the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Sixth District decided in favor of the FLSA Administrator. The Supreme Court has denied our petitions for writ of certiorari and rehearing. Our petition to the Supreme Court for writ of certiorari was predicated in part upon a decision in a similar action in which the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, ruled that persons acting as telegraph agents were not employees of the telegraph company. This ruling said in part : "Yet, when the complaint and the contract here are read together, a number of determinative factors appear. No single factor, of course, is controlling. But the over-all picture, the totality lined by these factors in their entirety, amply justify the decision of the district court that (plaintiffs) Blankenship and Patrick were independent contractors rather than employees (of Western Union), thus were quite beyond the purview of the act. We now set out some of these factors wih brief comment. "The primary and, of course, most important business of the plaintiff's was the operation of the Guyandotte Hotel, for which the partnership was formed. The telegraph agency was merely one out of a number of incidents of the hotel business." The court also said: "The telegraph agency was operated on premises absolutely controlled by the plaintiff. These premises were far removed from the defendant, and the office, to which plaintiffs reported and from which they received instructions, was not in Mullens but in Beckley, another town. The daily number of hours worked by the plaintiffs and many details of their work could not be within the firsthand knowledge of Western Union " The court went on to say: "It is clear that the plaintiffs were not required to devote their full and exclusive time to the telegraph agency. Obviously, a great advantage to the plaintiffs was that they could give to the telegraph agency odds and ends of their time, on which the hotel clearly had first call.” The telegraph company now has before it two conflicting court decisions. It is in the public interest that the industry be relieved of the liability placed on it by the decision of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. If that decision were made applicable to all agency operations throughout the country substantial administrative difficulties, apart from the burden of cost, would be involved in meeting the terms of the decision. Many local retail and service establishments would be unwilling to keep records and be subject to inspection and possible liability for a function which is merely incidental to his principal business and would accordingly refuse to act as the agent of the telegraph company. The company obviously could not undertake to provide telegraph service to the 5,723 small communities now served by agencies, by the establishment of conpany-operated offices. The cost of operation in relation to income would make continuance of the service to these agency points totally uneconomical. To illustrate, the estimated monthly revenue for the 5,723 small communities averages $100 a month and the minimum cost for a company-operated office is approximately three times that revenue. The telegraph company, therefore recognizing its responsibility to the public, and wishing to insure continuance of this essential public service, urges that the exemptions in section 13 (a) of the act be amended to include the following: “Any person, or any employee of a person, not otherwise covered by this act, handling telegraphic messages for the public under an agency or contract arrangement with a telegraph company where the telegraph message revenue of the agency does not exceed $750 monthly." Our proposal of a $750 revenue limitation gives consideration to the fact that nearly all of our existing agencies fall within that amount. We use a revenne basis, because it is the only statistical measure available. The proposed tele-. graph agency exemption represents a revenue total considerably less than that involved in the already existing telephone station exemption. We arrive at this conclusion by applying an estimated local telephone rental of $3 per station per month representing a total revenue exemption of at least $1,500 for the 500 telephone station maximum provided for in section 13 (a) of the act. Under the proposed exemption, Western Union is not seeking exclusion from the act of its employees at company-operated offices. We are limiting our appeal strictly to contract agents and their employees. The other subject I should like to discuss involves the question of whether youths shall be prohibited from carrying telegraph messages. Senate bill S. 2386 and other bills now before the Eightieth Congress include the words "in commerce" or "engaged in commerce" which would broaden the application of the child-labor provisions of section 12 (a) of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Such a revision would prohibit Western Union from employing messengers under 16 years of age and even those under 18 if the Chief of the Children's Bureau should decide to classify messenger work as hazardous. Western Union has a continuing program of accident prevention. These efforts embrace all the well-known safety activities such as contests, meetings, movies, posters, active participation in safety groups, and training programs for employees and supervisors. There are no data comparable to messenger accident frequency for similar segments of other industrial groups. However, information provided by the National Safety Council showed that students 15 to 18 years of age, while on school property and under school supervision had 13 lost-time accidents per million hours. Our ratio of 16 accidents per million hours in telegraph-messenger work compares favorably with school youths notwithstanding the relative protection they have while on school property. At the time of the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act the question of adopting an all-inclusive child-labor prohibition had careful consideration in Congress. In its opinion in the recent case of Western Union Telegraph Company v. Lenroot, upholding the telegraph company's contention that the sending of telegrams is not the shipment of goods, hence not prohibited because child labor is employed, the Supreme Court observed that: "It is conceded that the act does not directly prohibit the employment of these messengers, because it contains no prohibition against employment of child labor in conducting interstate commerce. It is conceded, too, that language appropriate directly to forbid this employment was proposed to Congress and twice rejected." The effect of prohibiting child labor in commerce would be to prevent boys under 16 and possibly those under 18 from securing employment as telegraph messengers. It would leave them free to work in stores as errand boys, and in all kinds of local trade and service establishments. Boys under the age of 18 years have been employed as telegraph-company messengers for many, many years. Perhaps no other type of work is more universally recognized as being boys' work than this. The work is simple and is not physically exacting. In substantial part it is performed out of doors, under healthful conditions. It has none of the characteristics of factory labor which have been the basis for child-labor legislation. Western Union believes that messenger work constitutes good training for boys and permits them to acquire both experience and earnings which they need and which should not be denied them. Such work tends to keep youthful minds healthfully occupied and forms a substantial barrier to the temptation inherent in idleness. The opportunity for developing initiative and resourcefulness, and the opportunities for advancement are excellent. In less than a year the average messenger has advanced to a better job either in or out of Western Union. While there have been many complaints of the abuses of child labor in factories and workshops, we do not believe that it has ever been seriously urged that there is anything oppressive about employment as a telegraph messenger. The term "oppressive child labor" is used in the act arbitrarily to cover all employment of boys under 16, but as applied to telegraph messengers the term does not reflect any actual evil or abuse, or the conclusion of any committee of Congress which has ever conducted an investigation of the subject. Western Union employs 1,022 youths 15 to 16 years of age; 841, or 82 percent, work only after school hours. None of these messengers work after 7 p. m. The average hours worked for these after-school youths are 19.8 hours a week, including Saturday and Sunday hours. They receive a minimum wage of 65 cents an hour Some work experience is good for youth. Evidence that this is so is found in the fact that many schools have adopted school work programs which allow youths 75017-48-pt. 2- -22 to attend school part time and gain work experience part time. We know from our daily contacts with parents that they feel it is desirable for their boys to work. From talks with such well-known persons as Father Flannagan of Boys Town, Mr. David C. Bayless, executive director, Boys Sponsors, Inc., Denver, Colo.; Judge J. B. Holman, juvenile court judge, Anniston, Ala., and Mr. James McCoy, general secretary, Big Brother Movement, Inc., New York, we have found that they too feel that work experience is valuable to youths. Western Union has always cooperated and worked closely with school authorities. We encourage youths to continue their studies and give them assignments that will not conflict with their school attendance or studies. We conduct our own continuation school in New York under the supervision and direction of the board of education. At the present time 384 messengers under 18 are attending the school which has been in operation for 27 years.2 Western Union has many letters from former messengers, parents, educators, and men in business and professional life emphasizing their conviction that work experience for youth is desirable. There is no essential difference in telegraph delivery work and the kind of work boys perform for the local store, on magazine and newspaper routes, for local errand service companies, and many similar and well-recognized youth occupations. No good reason occurs to us to prohibit employment in a desirable class of work such as telegraph messenger service. If the committee should decide to broaden the application of the child-labor provisions of the act, we urge that youths not be denied employment as telegraph messenger and suggest the following exemption be included in section 13 (c) after the word "agriculture": "or to messengers employed by a telegraph company." Senator BALL. Mr. Frank Bloom, general counsel to the Commer cial Telegraphers' Union. STATEMENT OF FRANK BLOOM, GENERAL COUNSEL TO THE COM MERCIAL TELEGRAPHERS' UNION (A. F. OF L.) Mr. BLOOM. Mr. Chairman, we have filed a very short statement. I would be very happy to read it. There are several points that I might add as I go along, particularly with reference to some of the statements Mr. Heberton just made that you might care to have our views on. The Commercial Telegraphers' Union is pleased to have an oppor tunity to comment upon certain of the bills pending before the Senate to amend the FLSA. By reason of the brief time available, our comments will be limited to two of the bills submitted, S. 2386, by Senator Ball, and S. 2062, by Senator Thomas of Utah, for himself and Senators Pepper, Chavez, Green, Magnuson, McGrath, Murray, Myers. Taylor, and Wagner, and since our comments are, in the main, critical of S. 2386, which we believe should not be enacted, we shall discuss that proposal at considerably greater length than S. 2062, with which we are in substantial agreement, with the exception that we are of the 2 Many schools have adopted school-work programs. Such cooperative education not only accommodates youths who find it necessary to help out at home but enables them to apply book learning. In this connection, the National Child Labor Committee, a private organization, composed of educators, union officials, businessmen, and others interested in social welfare, conducted a study of part-time school work programs in secondary schools where students were released from school part time to participate in paid employment under a program developed and supervised by the school. Mr. Harold J. Dillon, who was in charge of this study, in his report published in 1946 stated that students listed advantages of school-work experience as: "learning good work habits and the importance of responsibility; gaining a sense of security and independence; making good contacts with people; giving more reality to school. Mr. Dillon also reported that "many school principals believed that work experience was desirable because they had found that it provided a valuable resource for student adjustment; encouraged many to remain in school; made possible a combination of experience that could not be developed by the school alone and resulted in general improvement of student morale." Mr. Dillon said that "nearly three-fourths or 304 parents queried by questionnaire stated that it was a satisfactory school arrangemeṛt. Nearly one-fourth considered it the best kind of arrangement. Less than 3 percent considered it unsatisfactory." The point I wish to emphasize is that the student, the parent, and the school principal feel that work experience for youths is desirable. |