We ask the committee to eliminate section 7 (b) (3) because it constitutes an unwarranted gap in the protection necessary for fish processing workers and a backdoor method of evasion of the standards which would be established by the modified language contained in section 13 (b) (2) of S. 653. Virtually all fishing is seasonal either in a natural or in a man-made sense. Either the fish do not run for particular natural reasons or, for the purposes of conservation, the.various States or the Federal Government establish periods in which fishing is not allowed. Retention of section 7 (b) (3) will mean continual pressure on the Wage Hour Administrator and drawn out litigation in the courts from the fish packers. Certainly, no industry is more seasonal in nature, than the Alaska salmon industry. The salmon fishing season generally lasts no more than 6 weeks and the average canner puts up approximately 75 percent of his pack within a 10-day period during the season. The supply of local labor is limited and a large proportion of the workers employed in the Alaskan canneries must be transported from and back to the State. Yet for many years our union has had collective bargaining agreements providing an 8-hour day, generally between the hours of 8 a. m. and 5 p. m., with work in excess of 8 hours or outside of a stipulated work day being compensated at the rate of time and one-half. The Alaskan salmon industry has prospered despite these terms which are far in excess of the maximum hours guaranteed by the Fair Labor Standards Act. We have demonstrated that properly limited hours can be applied in the most highly seasonal fishing operations, proving that there is no justification for the seasonal exemption contained for the fishing industry in section 7 (b) (3).

We cannot stress too much the importance of coverage for fish processing workers under the Fair Labor Standards Act as a means of providing more employment opportunities at this time. Coverage is essential to assure that workers in fish processing establishments not covered by adequate collective bargaining agreements or by none at all are not worked long hours because of the absence of the overtime premium while large numbers of other workers in the industry are unemployed.

We urge this subcommittee to adopt our position providing minimum wage and maximum hour coverage without loopholes for fish processing workers, not only because it will benefit the workers directly, not only because they are entitled to equal consideration with other American workers, but because such coverage will be beneficial to the entire fishing industry, will tend to stabilize the industry, and will work to the advantage of the great majority of fish packers.

Fish products are highly intercompetitive. The United States is not a fish eating country. The average housewife will serve fish no more than once a week. If she buys a can of salmon, the likelihood is she will not serve fresh or frozen fish during the week, and vice versa.

Our membership is employed in establishments in which relatively high labor standards prevail. The product produced by our workers and by these plants must compete on the market with fish products produced under substandard wages and under unduly long working weeks in establishments elsewhere in the country. The margins on which fish processors and fish distributors work are fantastically high and constitute nothing more than commercial robbery. The National Fisheries Institute admitted to this committee during earlier hearings on amendment of the Fair Labor Standards Act that fish had risen "to speculatively high prices." Studies made by the Federal Trade Commission show mark-up between the fishermen and the consumer of well over 100 percent. The fishing industry, with its exorbitant mark-ups, can well afford to provide its workers with the minimum standards guaranteed other American workers under the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Senator PEPPER. Thank you, Mr. Levine. I regret that I am going to have to excuse myself for 10 or 15 minutes, because of urgent Senate business.

(Short recess.)

Senator PEPPER. We have next the United Packinghouse Workers, CIO, Mr. Alec Summers.

STATEMENT OF ALEC SUMMERS, DIRECTOR, SUGAR DIVISION, UNITED PACKINGHOUSE WORKERS OF AMERICA, CIO, ACCOMPANIED BY LYLE COOPER, ECONOMIST, UNITED PACKINGHOUSE WORKERS, AND EDWARD A. SUTTON, JR., FIELD REPRESENTATIVE, SUGAR AND ALLIED PRODUCTS, UNITED PACKINGHOUSE WORKERS

Mr. SUMMERS. My name is Alec Summers, and I am director of the sugar division, the United Packinghouse Workers of America, CIO. I have a prepared statement and upon completion of that, I would like to call upon my coworker, a native of Louisiana, who is familiar with the subject, who wants to make a reply to the statement by Mr. Foster.

With the United Packinghouse Workers of America, CIO are affiliated most of the organized sugar refinery workers in the United States. Our membership includes a considerable number of workers in the South.

At a number of the plants where UPWA locals hold bargaining contracts, there is an acute problem arising out of the 14 weeks exemption provision of the Wages and Hours Act as it now exists and operates in respect to mills engaged in manufacturing raw sugar.

However, before dealing with this so-called tolerance weeks problem, we wish to go on record emphatically in favor of increasing the existing indefensibly inadequate minimum wage. The CIO case for modernizing this minimum by increasing it to $1 an hour has been developed in detail. We shall, therefore, not take up time in reworking familiar ground.

Suffice it to say that minimum family needs of sugar workers, whether they are employed inside or outside the refinery, cannot be met on anything less than a wage scale of $1 an hour. This becomes especially evident when one takes into account the chronic condition of irregularity of work due to seasonality and other causes.

It is well known that sugar originating in the United States, whether from sugar beets or sugarcane, is provided special Government aid.

Because of this, in all logic and equity, there is a special obligation on Congress to see to it that the workers who are part and parcel of the industry shall be provided with adequate minimum standards. There is no point in trying to conceal the fact that, to the degree wage and hour standards for these workers are inadequate, there is created an extremely difficult situation for the organized workers. In their efforts to improve the sugar worker's living conditions, admittedly substandard, our local unions are confronted with a form of unfair competition from nonunion plants which constantly threaten to undermine such standards as these locals have been able to win. A practical situation exists which violates Government professions of providing conditions where collective bargaining is allowed to cperate without undue handicaps. Obviously, unionized companies which produce sugar are also handicapped by this form of unfair competition. Turning to the exemption provisions as they are applied under the present law; we have several major objections to these provisions. First, there is serious hardship for those year-round refinery workers

who normally receive overtime when they work in excess of 40 hours a week but who, during the period which begins in October, are transferred to grinding mill operations. Thereafter, for a substantial period they are employed at inhumanly excessive hours but receive no extra compensation per hour. These hours are 12 hours per day, for 7 days a week.

Second, where workers are transferred under the 14-week exemption provision to taking care of bagasse (a byproduct of raw sugar) and receive no overtime compensation until after 56 hours per week, there is also severe hardship, only less than for those employed 84 hours in the grinding mill.

Third, a serious industrial relations problem is constantly generated because of this shifting of workers. A premium is placed on friction and hard feelings between employees and management. Complaints of workers result in a large number of cases being filed with the Wage and Hour Administration. These cases pile up, and the resulting delays cause additional dissatisfaction and friction.

Finally, it is in order to point out that the workers who are temporarily hired during the grinding season are unjustly treated under the existing regulations. We emphasize this in spite of the fact that, because of the temporary nature of their work, they are not members of our local unions.

These workers, as with those transferred from other operations, put in such excessively long hours and weeks that the strain they are subjected to and the frequent harm to their health entitles them, at the very least, to overtime after 8 hours. These workers, like others, have to meet family expenses for the entire 52 weeks of the year. In view of their experiencing much lost time during the remaining 38 weeks, after doing their 14-week stretch in the grinding mill, it is not right that they should have this source of income reduced by the elimination altogether of overtime compensation.

We urge that the principle of the 40-hour week be made uniform and universal. There is no justification for any period of exemption in our industry.

Lest there by any misunderstanding, it must be emphasized here that this organization is not primarily concerned with increasing overtime earnings. We believe in the principle of the 8-hour day. And we are convinced that it is entirely feasible and practicable to introduce three-shift operation during the 14-week period when it is deemed necessary to operate the grinding mill continuously.

If it is contended that there is not enough labor to permit this being done, it is worth recalling that most "labor shortages" are directly due to the lowness of the wage scale. The minimum of a dollar an hour, it is certain, would eliminate any problem of labor scarcity which might otherwise exist. But unless and until this forward-looking and socially beneficial way of dealing with any problem of "labor shortage" that arises from substandard wages is adopted, it is essential that hours after 40 per week should be paid at time and one half rates.

Correctly and realistically regarded, the grinding mill operation and the disposition of bagasse are simply steps in the whole continuous tecnical and economic process of manufacturing sugar. Therefore, artificial definitions and artificial separation should not be resorted to which, in practice, penalize certain groups of workers and make even

more burdensome the hard task of providing minimum essentials for their families.

We trust this committee and, ultimately, Congress will take a broad, humane and, in the final analysis, a realistic view of this interrelated problem of a minimum wage which is much too low and a working week which is much too long. Correction of this problem will mean a long step forward on behalf of these workers in the South and for all the people in our country.

I would like at this time, Mr. Senator, to introduce Mr. Sutton. Mr. SUTTON. Mr. Senator, I might point out that I worked in a sugar refinery for some 18 years. In order to make our position clear as to why we think these exemptions are unfair, it might be wise for me to give you a brief picture of the set-up in the State of Louisiana.

We have the refinery and a grinding mill in conjunction. In this refinery, the employees who work normally through the year are covered by the wage-and-hour law. Come the grinding season about October 15, a number of these employees who normally work throughout the year for this plant are transferred to grinding operations, as they are known in the industry, and then they are subjected to the nonpayment of overtime, and they are worked 12 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Senator PEPPER. In the refinery?

Mr. SUTTON. In the grinding mill. The grinding mill is in conjunction with the refinery.

Senator PEPPER. Owned by the same proprietor?

Mr. SUTTON. Owned by the same proprietor.

These employees who work throughout the year are transferred to these grinding operations because of their skill and ability. They are men who, throughout the year, the other 9 months, the refining period, maintain and install the equipment for the purposes of the grinding operations. Because of their knowledge of this equipment as maintenance men and installation men, it was quite natural that they would be familiar with the operations insofar as being the operators of the equipment.

So these men are transferred to these grinding operations and put on a 12-hour basis, 7 days a week, without payment of overtime. We don't think that is fair to those employees. They are working side by side with their fellow employees in the same plant, except they are on a different operation, and their fellow employees, who are employees of this company, are receiving time and a half after 8 in accordance with our contract, or time and a half after 40 in accordance with the law; whereas, when they are transferred, they don't receive it. Then, in conjunction with the same company I referred to, we also have the servell operations, which is a byproduct of the sugarcane made from the bagasse. That plant operates on an 8-hour basis because under the law these employees will receive time and half if they work over 12 or 56. So the company will attempt to operate this plant on an 8-hour basis.

So those same employees who are working in this plant, or a fraction of these employees, I might say, who normally work throughout the year in maintaining this plant are subjected to the same conditions as some of the employees who are transferred to the grinding operations, bearing in mind that these are employees of the same company throughout the year, just transferring to different operations.

Then, they are put into the category of agricultural employees, as they are termed, and we don't think they are agricultural employees because they are manufacturing a product. So in that instance we don't think these employees should be deprived of the overtime. Neither do we believe that the employees in the manufacturing of sugar or a servell product, which is a byproduct of the sugarcane, should not receive overtime; we think they should.

I might add, going into the next category, we have a grinding mill which produces a raw sugar and stops at that point. These people are totally exempt from the hours provision of the law. They receive the 40-cent minimum wage.

Senator PEPPER. Under what theory are they totally exempt? Mr. SUTTON. On the basis that they are agricultural employees. Senator PEPPER. In the area of production?

Mr. SUTTON. First processing of the sugarcane. That is 7 (c). Senator PEPPER. That 7 (c) is the hours provision, not totally exempt, but from the hours.

Mr. SUTTON. They are totally exempt as to the hours. I may go back to make myself clear. Under the combination refinery and grinding mill in conjunction they are exempt for a period of 14 weeks. The servell plant, which is in conjunction with the refinery and the grinding mill, is exempt for a period of 14 weeks. Now, I am speaking of the strict grinding mill. I am putting it in the terms we use in Louisiana. They are totally exempt for any number of hours per day or per week for any number of weeks in the year.

Those people grind the cane and make a raw sugar and stop at that point, and this raw sugar is then sent to another refinery for final processing. They don't receive time and a half.

Senator PEPPER. Those engaged in the making of the raw sugar? Mr. SUTTON. That is right. Those people work 12 hours a day or better, 7 days a week. Occasionally, as was pointed out this morning, with which I don't agree, pointed out by Mr. Foster, they stopped every Sunday. It is not true in every instance that we stop every Sunday. We may run a 10- or 12-day period, depending on the condition of the plant as to when it needs to be cleaned out.

Then we have the other grinding mills which produce a direct consumption sugar. These grinding mills come under the category and they are exempt completely. However, they produce a white sugar which we say is a direct consumption sugar, and I don't know how that can be disputed because it does go on the consumer's table. It is ground and produced into a raw sugar and made into a factory granulated sugar. It is not run through the same process as the bone char houses or carbon black or vegetable char for the purposes of filtration; however, the sugar does go into the consumer market and the fact that these people produce a direct consumption sugar, we don't see why they should be exempt from any overtime provisions or hours pro

vision.

I might just point out an example. At the plant that I am referring to, the Godchaux sugar plant at Raceland, Fla., we have a 65-cent an hour base rate. The employees in that plant during the course of the summer season receive time and a half after 8 in accordance with our

contract, or after 40. Come the grinding season, the same employees are transferred to the so-called seasonal operations producing sugar, a direct consumption sugar, known as terbanido sugar, and they don't