TABLE 3.-Occupational wage rates 1 in woolen and worsted cloth mills as percentages of the time rates for men loom fixers,2 by sex and method of wage payment, April 1946

? Does not include jacquard loom fixers.

3 T=time; Inc. = incentive.

1 Straight-time hourly earnings (excluding premium pay for overtime and night work).

Data are shown only for those occupations in which women were employed in a sufficient number of mills to justify comparisons.

5 Includes weavers in mills for which the types of looms operated were not designated.

6 Number of mills too small to justify comparison.

7 The rate for loom fixers was taken as 100 in each mill covered.

Mr. FISHER. Miss Miller, you have certainly presented a very exhaustive study of this entire picture, and I commend you for that. There is a great deal of data and relevant information in your

statement.

Do you agree with the Secretary of Labor that as a general proposition the employer is in a better position to judge the productive capacity of the individual employees, the quality and quantity of the work they produce, than would the Government?

Miss MILLER. No, sir; I would think that that was a more apparent than real conflict, so far as the two points made in section 2 of this bill are concerned. Would you like me to elaborate on that? Mr. FISHER. Well, if you desire, briefly.

Miss MILLER. It is not the practice of industry in setting basic. wage rates to set them for individuals. All of this discussion of job classification has been introduced because it is a practical operating device, increasingly practiced by industry to set up limits of tolerance for the performance of workers on a certain job, giving the minimum for which a worker can be hired and placed in that job, and the range over which his daily and weekly performance is judged and by which he is judged in comparison with others on the job.

It is just as true of a group of men painting the side of a wall as it is if men and women were doing it. There is no difference among these class C welders, men only, as to the basic rate they get. That is all this applies to; whether they are men or whether they are men and

women.

Therefore, that individual performance seems to me a bit beside the point.

Mr. FISHER. Of course, if a bill of this character is voted out by the committee we will be called upon to answer many questions in an attempt to justify it.

Miss MILLER. I understand, sir.

Mr. FISHER. You cite a number of instances of surveys that have been made in industries where it appeared the women were being paid less per hour than men. In those cases what, if any, explanation did the management give for that differential, or were they asked about it? I was wondering what their explanation would be.

Miss MILLER. No; that was not part of these particular studies. Mr. FISHER. I was wondering if they contend there is any difference in the productivity between the two.

Miss MILLER. No, sir.

Mr. FISHER. They do not contend that?

Miss MILLER. No, sir.

Mr. FISHER. Evidently, then, they would be relegated to the position that they could simply hire the women for less than they could men?

Miss MILLER. That is precisely what underlies this proposal.

Mr. FISHER. It is your view that this discrimination is rather general?

Miss MILLER. Yes.

Mr. FISHER. Do you think it is particularly true in factories? Miss MILLER. No. I experienced it first when I took my first job which was that of an assistant, and was called an assistant, which was the first rank in academic progression, in a woman's college. The women's jobs were labeled "Assistant" and the men's jobs were

labeled "Associates" and the differential went right with that, although even then there were job descriptions that were equivalent. Mr. FISHER. No doubt you have given a great amount of your time in the past to a study of these things you have discussed today. Do you feel there has been progress made in reducing the amount of differential, say during the past 25 years?

Miss MILLER. I would say the greatest amount of progress made was that registered by the trade unions during the war when they made a stong effort for the inclusion of equal pay clauses in contracts, because of the influx of women into jobs-like some of those I have quoted-where they had previously not been, in order intelligently, as I see it, to protect the job rate so that when they came back to those jobs they would still be getting at least as much as when they left.

Mr. FISHER. Do you feel, then, that since the war, since those conditions have changed, that the progress to which you refer during wartime has been erased or reduced?

Miss MILLER. No. I do not know of any contract-and this is simply registering the fact of my incomplete knowledge-I do not know of any contract which provided for equal pay which has since withdrawn from that. Indeed, since employment has held up in the remarkable way that it has since the war, I think the competitive factor has been rather quiescent.

This becomes a seriously competitive factor at a time when employment is, or threatens to become recessive and workers become more keenly competitive for the same jobs.

Mr. FISHER. Would you say as a general proposition that progress has been made on a voluntary basis toward the gradual elimination of the discrimination?

Miss MILLER. I would say progress has been made in an area where pressure can be applied, that is, by a trade-union which has an interest in it.

I could not conscientiously report equal progress in areas where workers bargain individually.

Mr. FISHER. When you say "not equal progress," would you say progress to some extent?

Miss MILLER. Yes, I would say areas where there are individual employers and I know such-who have voluntarily adopted equal

pay.

Mr. FISHER. I think that is all.

Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. MacKinnon.

Mr. MACKINNON. It strikes me that your terminology and analysis of this whole problem is couched in the language and terminology applicable to big business. Do you think that is generally the case? Do you appreciate that approach to the problem?

Miss MILLER. I would cite you, sir, the statement of the National Industrial Conference Board, an employers organization, as you know, which says that this basic procedure of analyzing jobs and putting them on an impersonal basis in relation to the rates paid for them, has been developing equally among large, medium-sized, and small industries. I am personally very much impressed with the very skillful management of many small businesses run by people who have direct interest in them.

Mr. MACKINNON. I think the situation was pretty well stated yesterday by the representative of the National Women's Trade Union League, who pointed out the fact that that was more or less. the general approach. It occurred to me from your testimony how nearly your patterns which you speak of fit into big business, but might have some difficulty of application with respect to smaller

businesses.

The next thing you say is that this bill applies to interstate commerce. You do not believe that, do you?

Miss MILLER. Yes, sir.

Mr. MACKINNON. Not exclusively to interstate commerce.

Miss MILLER. I do not think any particular complaint could be considered under the terms of the bill if it were outside of interstate commerce. At least that is my understanding. I am no lawyer.

Mr. MACKINNON. Did you hear the discussion we had with the Secretary of Labor this morning?

Miss MILLER. Yes, I did.

Mr. MACKINNON. We discussed the use of the phrase which gets beyond interstate commerce and goes to those where it "affects interstate commerce." "He more or less admitted that all the service trades and all retail industry in America would be covered by the bill in its present form, even though they are not engaged in interstate commerce. They would be covered into the law by the phrase, "affecting interstate commerce."

Miss MILLER. I would not like to interpret the Secretary's remarks. I am sure he is quite able to do that for himself. I understood he believes the general coverage would be the same, but since the exclusions, specific exclusions in the wage-hour law are not written in as exclusions here, they would be covered.

Mr. MACKINNON. Why, sure, they would.

Miss MILLER. But only insofar as they are interstate commerce. Mr. MACKINNON. Well, not exactly. It is if they affect interstate commerce, because the other language is almost identical. This bill in its present form would cover every retail and service industry in America that could by any stretch of the imagination be said to affect interstate commerce. If you can give me a situation of a service trade of any consequence or a retail establishment of any consequence that does not affect interstate commerce, or that does not engage in some transactions or operations that affect interstate commerce, I would like to know it, because I do not think there are very many. Do you have any in mind?

Miss MILLER. I have no figures that I could possibly give you on that.

Mr. MACKINNON. I am not concerned about figures, I am just concerned about general groups.

Miss MILLER. I don't know any interpretations on that.

Mr. MACKINNON. In connection with these figures you presented, they are all limited to different wages, Was there ever an effort made to study whether or not there was any difference in the productivity? Miss MILLER. The productivity in all these cases was sufficient to meet the requirements for job placement and for continuance.

Mr. MACKINNON. Surely, I know they could do a job, but were the people that were paid one wage doing the same amount or were they producing the same amount of results that the person who got

the higher wage was producing? Was there ever any study made of that?

Miss MILLER. Oh, yes.

Mr. MACKINNON. Is it here?

Miss MILLER. I think you will find that is gone into in detail on pages 17 and 18.1 The first paragraph there of the quotation at the bottom of page 17 compares the average hourly earnings of all the men and women in the occupations. There, of course, you get roughly 50 percent of the men earning more than $1 an hour, and 85 percent of the women earned less. That simply is a generalized statement of what they earned.

Then you go on down to men and women doing similar work, varying numbers with different periods of service, and varying numbers paid by time and piece rates. Those paid by time rates would, of course, not get recognition for differences in productivity within the job tolerance. Those being paid piece rates do.

Mr. MACKINNON. Where is that?

Miss MILLER. That is the second paragraph.

Mr. MACKINNON. But what are the results on the piecework?
Miss MILLER. The third paragraph gives the result:

If on the basis of the same survey we look only at the earnings of men and women classified in the same job, we find that in all but one of the 27 important classifications studied, in which both men and women were employed, men still have higher average straight time hourly earnings, the differentials ranging on a national basis from 4 cents to 26 cents.

That is on hourly earnings.

Mr. MACKINNON. I thought we were getting into piecework.
Miss MILLER. Yes. Then go to the next paragraph:

If we narrow the comparison further and observe four important Class C occupations in which both men and women were employed, and were paid—

Wait just a minute, please. This one reduces it to a time basis. I think we would have to work the material over to get the incentive out. The intent was to make the most simple comparison on straight time, so that increasingly, you see, we remove the other factors.

Mr. MACKINNON. Referring to your statement at the bottom of page 17, you say that in all except one classification men still have higher average straight-time hourly earnings.

Then on page 18 you say, "Incentive earnings account for some of the differences." That indicates that the productivity of the man was greater, doesn't it?

Miss MILLER. No, not necessarily.

Mr. MACKINNON. Why not?

Miss MILLER. Do you remember I told you in another place there are cases when the women were just plain shut out of the benefits of an incentive system?

Mr. MACKINNON. But let's talk about your analysis here. You say "incentive earnings account for some of the differences." That must mean they were producing more work, doesn't it?

Miss MILLER. Yes, and they were paid for that.

Mr. MACKINNON. They were paid at the same rate, but they produced more.

Miss MILLER. Oh, yes, where there are incentives.

1 Page numbers refer to Miss Miller's prepared statement submitted to the committee. 71386-48-11