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sponsible quarter in the American economy. Yet, the bill has not been passed.

I sincerely hope that this is the final appearance of a CWA representative before a congressional committee for the purpose of asking once again, on behalf of organized workers represented by CWA, that the equal pay bill be passed.

Even if the members of this committee are not tired of hearing the same favorable comments in support of this bill, I frankly am weary of repeating them.

CWA MEMBERSHIP SUPPORTS EQUAL PAY BILL

CWA membership strongly supports the equal pay bill. At each of our annual conventions some resolution is passed supporting the concept. For your information I would like to read to you the resolution adopted at the 1948 CWA annual convention. A similar resolution was also adopted in 1949 and in all probability one will be adopted in 1950.

Whereas a survey of the collective bargaining contracts in the communications industry reveals that the contracts of several of the divisions of Communications Workers contain separate lists for male and female job classifications and rates of pay pertaining thereto; and

Whereas there exists in some companies in the communications industry a practice of hiring women to work for less pay than the established rate heretofore paid men on the same job; and

Whereas a sound and equitable wage policy demands that rates of pay be based on job content without regard to the sex of the workers: Now, therefore, be it Resolved, That the Communications Workers of America and the divisions thereof do hereby commit themselves to the preservation of this principle of equal pay for equal work and to the establishment of this principle in practice throughout the entire communications industry.

It may be of interest to you to know that the equal pay problem has received some attention from every CWA annual convention and from almost every convention of its predecessor organization, the National Federation of Telephone Workers. This concern, with the problem of equal pay for equal work, stems directly from the fact that abuses. of the equal pay principle exist in the telephone industry and result in thousands of dollars lower pay for women workers who perform the same or substantially the same work as their higher paid men coworkers.

The committee should understand that it is very difficult to appraise at any specific time the precise extent of violations of the equal pay philosophy in the telephone industry. We must always speculate to a certain degree because it is not always possible to obtain from the mammoth Bell System the information necessary to make judgments based on complete knowledge of facts. Telephone companies resist providing the union with detail job descriptions. Moreover, even detailed job descriptions do not necessarily reveal whether or not two jobs are substantially the same. That is why the investigatory powers given by H. R. 1584 to the Secretary of Labor are so important. On-the-job observations and testimony by workers themselves are frequently the kind of evidence needed to determine identity of job functions. Under such circumstances we feel we can prove that the telephone industry is violating the equal pay principle at various locations.

The following quotation, we think, characterizes the attitude of telephone management as an employer of women. While the specific quotation was made by a spokesman from the independent, that is the non-Bell, branch of the industry and refers to telephone operators in small towns, similar statements have been made from time to time by Bell System spokesmen and by other independent telephone industry representatives with respect to all women workers in the industry. The following quotation is contained in the independent telephone industry's brief in support of the exemption of certain telephone operators from the Federal minimum wage law:

The girls who work as switchboard operators in the small towns and rural areas where independent companies operate are frequently, though of course not always, young girls just out of local school. They are glad to have access to clean, agreeable employment where the duties are not too arduous. They ordinarily have no dependents. They live at home with their parents. They are not the breadwinners of families. They are interested in providing themselves with some pin and dress money while waiting for husbands with whom they will set up their homes.1

This attitude, reminiscent of the gay nineties rather than the current twentieth century, is still the prevailing attitude of a substantial portion of telephone industry management. It is difficult to believe, in the face of such thoughts, that telephone companies are not violating, wherever possible, the equal pay philosophy.

Let me emphasize that the union considers itself only partially responsible for the job of militantly fighting for acceptance by managements of equal pay practices. We think that all workers, organized or unorganized, are entitled to the protection of a Federal statute declaring it to be the law of the land that wages be based on job content rather than sex. Moreover, the presence of an equal pay bill will strengthen the bargaining position of all unions with respect to this problem and will assist them in policing the contracts which already contain equal pay clauses.

TELEPHONE MANAGEMENTS VIOLATE EQUAL PAY PRINCIPLES

Generally speaking, CWA has succeeded in eliminating all malefemale designations from its contracts. While most CWA contracts do not contain a specific equal pay clause, telephone companies claim in bargaining that they believe in the equal pay philosphy and are not in violation of it. They very significantly, however, are not too eager to reduce to writing this position and like the National Association of Manufacturers, which in 1948 testified before a congressional committee on the equal pay bill, contend that there really is no problem and that there is no point in cluttering up the picture with unnecessary verbiage.

It may be helpful to this committee to have before it specific examples of what CWA considers violations of the equal pay for equal work principle in the telephone industry.

Example I: In the Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Co. of Baltimore, there exists two jobs; one is called service representative and the other is called commercial representative. Women are employed by the telephone company in the service representative job and men are employed in the commercial representative job. Both men and

1 Hearings before a subcommittee of the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, U. S. Senate, 80th Cong., 1st sess., pt. 2, p. 827, April and May 1948.

women, despite the difference in their job titles, do substantially the same kind of work. They are the people who answer your call when you telephone the company to complain about some service or to discuss questions relating to your bills, or to ask for some additional kind of telephone service. One group of these men and women are assigned to what the company calls the Government and special account desk. These workers handle the problems of Government and other large subscribers such as the local gas and electric utility companies. There is only one small difference in the work of the men and women on the so-called Government desk. If a customer prefers to talk to a company representative at the customer's own place of business, the company sends a man rather than a woman out to handle the contact. Because of this difference in function, the company pays the men $31 a week more than the women. The company will not send women out to the subscriber's place of business even though the subscriber may be willing to let a woman handle his problem and even though the women are willing to do that kind of work. Incidentally, this additional function by the men consumes a relatively small portion of their worktime, yet the company pays them $90 a week as a maximum wage rate and the women, a maximum of $59 a week.

Example II: A second type of violation exists in the accounting department of the Illinois Bell Telephone Co. That company has an $80 maximum wage rate for men in the job of PBX order treatment clerks and a $61 a week maximum for women PBX order treatment clerks. These clerks take care of billing large telephone subscribers. CWA local representatives contend that the men and women do substantially the same kind of work. The company argues that the men take care of the large subscribers in the Chicago area whereas the women take care of the subscribers in areas in Illinois outside of Chicago. This, the company argues, justifies the $19 a week differential. For the committee's study, we are attaching copies of descriptions of both jobs. These job descriptions, incidentally, were unilaterally written by the company and are the kind they insist on-vague, general and no real use in conclusive determinations of job equality or inequality.

We think that the two examples we have described would be clearcut violations of H. R. 1584. We do not think the jobs involved are actually different and we think we could prove this to any agency enforcing an equal-pay law. Moreover, we contend that the presence of an equal-pay bill would influence telephone companies to assume a more reasonable bargaining position on this controversial question since the union could resort to legal action as a final step if it were convinced that the company's contention that the jobs are different. was not actually so. We feel very strongly that the presence of a Federal law establishing equal pay for equal work would tend to minimize the situations we have described.

BLS EARNINGS DATA POINTS UP WAGE DISCRIMINATION BASED ON SEX

We don't think we have to go into great detail in establishing the fact that discriminatory practices with respect to women workers exist in many industries and many locations in the United States. Managements indicate this to us every year during bargaining. Whenever Bell System management bargains with CWA it arbi

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trarily insists that the wage rates of telephone operators and related clerical workers be compared with the wage rates of female workers in other industries. Table I attached to my statement clearly demonstrates the reason for this. This table shows the rates of pay for some selected clerical occupations surveyed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics during 1950 in various cities in the United States. The wage rates are shown separately for men and women workers doing the same kind of clerical work. We know they are doing the same kind of clerical work because the Bureau of Labor Statistics used identical job descriptions for both men and women. Yet, we can see from the attached table that men clerical workers in five cities are paid average wage rates of as much as 25 cents an hour higher than women workers doing the same kind of work. This table also demonstrates that women workers are hired at lower minimum wage rates than are men workers and none can hope to progress to maximum wage rates as high as those enjoyed by men workers. Let us take one example from Washington, D. C. BLS found that male general clerks in Washington enjoy average straight hourly rates of $1.37 an hour compared with the female average of $1.22 an hour. When surveying the salary ranges of the middle 50 percent of the workers investigated, BLS fourd that the male general clerks' salaries ranged from a low of $46 a week to a high of $60.50 a week. The corresponding range for women general clerks was a low of $40.50 and a high of $55 a week; that is, a differential of approximately $5 a week in favor of the men workers.

While it is true that a mere examination of the summary data will not disclose whether any given employer is paying less to women workers doing the same work as men in that same company, there is every reason to believe that the over-all differences in male-female wage rates for the same jobs are due, in part, to just such practices. If one company employs all women in a given job and pays them less than does his competitor who employs all men, H. R. 1584 does not, of course, correct that situation. But it does affect, we think, the kinds of wage discriminations we have described as existing in the telephone industry.

These differences in wage rates based on sex rather than job content is an economic evil which has no foundation in any set of logical circumstances other than a historical bad habit to which employers want to cling because it represents to them a real saving in the cost of production and a means of achieving higher profits.

We know that an equal-pay bill will not completely solve the problem of discriminatory wage practices based on sex. It can only serve as one of many forces to help in the elimination of this problem. Let me describe a situation with which we may still be confronted, even after the passage of H. R. 1584. The Wisconsin Telephone Co. used to employ a male reproduction machine operator to operate a blueprint reproducing machine. They paid him a maximum wage rate of $70 a week. After he retired, the company trained two women to alternate on his job. They changed the job title from "Reproduction Machine Operator" to "Machine Operator-Clerical" and reduced the maximum wage rate from $70 to $48.50 a week.

The union contended, and still contends, that the job now filled by women is actually the same job formerly held by a man. The company argues that it has broken down the job and actually created

two entire new jobs and that the problem of equal pay for equal work is not involved. In the same breath, the company contradicts itself by saying that the job was never worth $70, anyway, that the male reproduction machine operator was a former plant man whom the company was doing a favor by paying $70 a week.

Moreover, the company states that it replaced its old blueprint reproducing machine with a newer model when it put women into the job. This new machine, claims the company, has made the job less difficult. We have to admit that the union lost the argument in the case we are describing, but only because of the insufficiency of the contract between the parties. The collective-bargaining agreement between CWA and the Wisconsin Telephone Co. provides that if the company introduces a new job title, it can do so only with the union's agreement as to the job title and the corresponding rate of However, the company cleverly did not introduce a new job title in this case, but gave the two women a job title which already existed in the company. Since the company involved had long refused to agree on controlling job descriptions, the company was at liberty to give any job title a wide variety of functions. In addition, the contract is silent on the question of equal pay for equal work. In view of these circumstances, the union felt it had little or no ground on which to pursue the argument. Now, why do we say that this kind of problem may persist even after passage of an equal-pay bill? The above-described example includes a typical company maneuver to circumvent the equal-pay principle. Management takes a job formerly staffed by men and breaks it up into component parts. The end result may be three different kinds of jobs where there was formerly one set of jobs. It must be kept in mind that the same total job is accomplished but each part is done by a different worker rather than the complete job by a single worker. The range of skills performed are the same, before and after the division of labor. This must be so since the total job continues to be accomplished. But the new jobs. are filled by women and the wage rates fixed at 50 percent of what the men were paid.

The company will usually arrange to have some additional changes take place coinciding with the breakdown of the job functions. For example, in the above-described situation they bought a new blueprint reproducing machine. With a little rearranging or an increase or decrease in workload which tends to obscure the basis issue, the company will substitute women for men workers and reduce the wage rate. Before long the women are doing almost exactly what the men did in their former jobs at about half the rate of pay.

Another technical way of evading the equal-pay principle is to actually eliminate from the male job a function which normally consumed about 10 percent of his worktime. The 10 percent diluted job is staffed by women whose wage rates are diluted 50 percent.

UNIONS WILL HAVE TO POLICE EQUAL-PAY LAW

We recognize that it will be very difficult for a Government agency to prove in such cases that the equal-pay law has been violated. We state emphatically that it is obvious that the spirit of the law has been violated, but we appreciate that it will be difficult to prove that the letter of the law has been violated.

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