TABLE IV.—Results of inspection under the Fair Labor Standards and/or Public Contracts Acts, by region and State, fiscal year 1944 Total establishments in violation Establishments in violation of minimum- Establishments agreeing or ordered wage and/or overtime provisions to pay restitution Total number of Region and State establish Number of inspected Total covered ments Percent of In violation of minimum-wage provisions inspected establishments 1 Number inspected covered Percent of establish inspected Percent of Number Amount of restitution ments Number covered Number total in 1 Does not include establishments which were out of business or had no employees covered by the minimum wage or overtime provisions. 707 514 1, 412 994 1, 379 302 110 302 665 69 26 222 133, 332 3, 496 141 31 410 616, 357 15, 661 TABLE IV.—Results of inspection under the Fair Labor Standards and/or Public Contracts Acts, by region and State, fiscal year 1944—Continued Establishments in violation of minimum- Establishments agreeing or ordered wage and/or overtime provisions Total In violation of minimum-wage provisions Percent inspected Number establish- Number to pay restitution Number of establish Amount of restitution Percent of ments ments inspected TABLE V.-Results of inspection under Fair Labor Standards and/or Public Contracts Acts, by industry group, fiscal year 1944 1 Does not include establishments which were out of business or had no employees covered by the minimum wage or overtime provisions. Does not include 207 establishments inspected for compliance with child-labor provisions only. Mr. NELSON. I believe that there should be a very definite uniformity of term in which claims can be filed. Mr. SPRINGER. That, it should be uniform throughout the entire country? Mr. NELSON. It should not be retroactive in its application to the point of destroying presently accumulated claims. I should like to point out why this is of particular interest to foremen. A previous witness here this afternoon described in some degree the position that foremen find themselves in under the present interpretations of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Up to a comparatively recent time, foremen have not been organized. They have been in the position of individuals dealing with the employer as such. I can state very authoritatively that the average foreman did not know and had no conception of his rights or the possibilities of his position under the Fair Labor Standards Act, and only since he has become organized in small degree has he been able to define his own position in that regard. The matter of the tendency of the individual employee not to file a claim until after he has severed his employment with the company is one that I have very definite information on. Within the past 30 days I had the question brought to me by a group of foremen who suspected that they had a claim under the Wage and Hour Act, and I was asked to determine whether or not they did. This claim had been filed, or the complaint had been filed, with the Wage and Hour Division 8 months ago, and it had not been brought to the point where the investigator could even give a hint as to whether or not the department considers these men as having a claim. The explanation given to me by the investigator for the department was that the company had failed to give, and in some instances deterred the investigator in getting, information. As soon as I contacted him, he asked me to help in uncovering the information needed to establish whether or not there had been a violation of the law. I immediately pointed out to the foremen that they had to furnish all of the information, because the company was refusing to reveal anything. In line with that, we gathered together approximately 50 questionnaires from approximately 350 foremen, which showed that 80 percent of the foremen in that employer's group performs manual labor similar to that of the workers under their supervision more than 20 percent of the time, which alone would have qualified them for the benefits of the act. However, the company had sent to each foreman in November 1942 a letter purporting to establish their exemption from the benefits of the act. This letter stated that they were guaranteed a minimum of $30 per week salary, while in actual fact all of the conditions of compensation-vacation, docking, and other penalties of the company, along with normal employee-employer relationships— were the same for foreman as applied to the rank-and-file workers. In the letter the final paragraph stated that the guaranty applied for that time in which the employee consumed 14 days of sick leave in any one year. Now, under a rule of that company, any employee absenting himself more than 3 days was automatically considered a quit. As a consequence, only sickness could make it possible for a man to remain an employee and be away from his work more than 3 days at a time. So the way the guaranty worked out, for 3 weeks in the year and not to exceed the possibility of 4, the men were |