Mr. BEIRNE. I used two in the case of the telephone industry, two jobs in Baltimore; one was classified as a commercial representative, and the other was called a service representative. The job function is identical except for the fact that the company does not wish to send women out on a telephone job to its subscriber's office or place of business to take care of complaints or to take care of requests for additional service or to make a check or something like that, the part of the job which relates to the representative going to the subscriber's place of business, and that part of it represents less than 10 percent of the total amount of work involved.

Not too long ago they had all men on this job. Today they have more women than men. The rate of pay for the job, which is identical in every respect except in this one thing, of going to the subscriber's place of business, yet the rate of pay for the women is $31 a week less than for the men right on the same job.

Mr. GWINN. Thirty-one dollars a week?

Mr. BEIRNE. Thirty-one dollars a week; that sounds fantastic, but that is true.

Mr. GWINN. What is the wage?

Mr. BEIRNE. Ninety dollars for a man and $59 for women.
Mr. GWINN. Maybe the $90 is too much.

Mr. BEIRNE. I do not even think that needs an answer,

It is speculation on your part.

do you?

Mr. BURKE. Certainly the company is willing to pay it? Mr. BEIRNE. I think when the Bell System pays $90 it is not too much.

Mr. GWINN. There is obviously a difficulty which the customer poses. The fact is that the customer has finally made up his mind that the service rendered by a woman, who may be just as able under the same situation, would mean one thing. The economics of it is another question, is it not?

How would you have the head of the Department of Labor make a decision in that case; namely, where 10 percent of the work was in contacting customers where the customer prefers to do business with a man?

Mr. BEIRNE. I did not say that the customer preferred to do business with man. Just the opposite. The customer does business with the women and the customer is willing to do so and to have her at his place of business. But the company says different, and it is purely an economic matter, we think; the company says that it is a matter of protecting the women, that they do not want to send them into places of business. But we know what the telephone service is now. They indicate that they want to protect her against somebody's office and just figuring out what kind of telephone extension might be utilized or what services wanted. They are willing to do business with women. But there is only that little difference, and it is only that which represents the difference between the two jobs.

Mr. GWINN. How would the Department of Labor, for example, decide what wage these women should receive? You say they are now receiving $59. How are you going to get a comparative standard to go by?

Mr. BEIRNE. I think under the proposed bill that the Secretary of Labor would investigate the matter. Maybe we are wrong.

Maybe the union is wrong. It may be there is something more in this whole thing than we have been able to find out. I have always found it to be a pretty good practice when you find two people who are in disagreement as to what a set of facts are, that it is good to have a third, impartial person come in and take testimony, come in and examine the situation, do a good job of investigation, and that usually they will come up with a determination of what really are the facts, and after such an investigation is completed you have your answer to the question as to whether there is a violation of the equal-pay principle.

Mr. GWINN. Who is going to be this examiner? Who is going to determine this fact?

Mr. BEIRNE. The Secretary of Labor or his agent or agencies.
Mr. GWINN. Would you say that he is an impartial examiner?
Mr. BEIRNE. I have found him to be so.

Mr. GWINN. Do you think a political examiner can be impartial?
Mr. BEIRNE. I think even a Republican can be impartial.

Mr. GWINN. I do not see any difference between a Republican and a Democrat where impartiality is impossible. I should not prefer one against the other, so your example is a bad one there.

Mr. BEIRNE. I am sure that the judges in the various circuit courts, who are both Democrats and Republicans, have respect for our judicial system, and the impartiality of our judges is assumed. I am sure that, if somebody makes a political decision or an expedient decision in passing on facts, someone else can review that decision and, under this bill, as I have read it, there would be fairness to both parties that are concerned.

Mr. GWINN. The difficulty with your illustration is that when judges are elected or appointed, whether they be Democrats or Republicans, they are appointed or elected to administer the science of the law. They are not appointed to fix wages or to determine an economic question that cannot be determined by a man, whether he is a Republican or a Democrat. It seems to me you are getting into the realm of arbitrary decisions by a political personage in a field where he cannot function.

Mr. BEIRNE. I think I remember reading only recently where Senator Donnell, from Missouri, proposed arbitration of disputes in certain utilities. I imagine that when we get down into the question of impartiality and the impossibility of people who might have a political color making impartial decisions on a question involving economics and the relationship of labor and management together, or the question of the proper treatment of men and of women-if that is true, I do not understand why people still talk about arbitration. In the State of New Jersey, for example, with which I am acquainted, under the utilities law, it is the Governor, who happens to be a Republican, who selects the arbitrator.

Mr. GWINN. I think we are getting into a lot of trouble because we are trying to arbitrate matters that cannot be arbitrated. It is the customer who has to pay, who is the final arbiter. His is the final judgment. When we get away from that, we get into a lot of difficulty. That is all, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BURKE. I think, if we consider briefly for a moment the evolution of the method of wage payment in human history, we might arrive at some conclusion. First we had wage payment by fiat.

That is, the employer just said that he would pay so much, and that was that. Then, with the coming of Christianity and the Christian principle of the laborer being worthy of his hire, we had a change. And then we went from there into individual bargaining, and with the coming of large industries we came to collective bargaining as a measure of settling what the wage should be.

Within the structure of collective bargaining, management has developed this scientific system of measuring job content and applying the content of a job in trying to determine what a wage payment should be. But they have always tended to go back to fiat, whenever they could; is not that true?

Mr. BEIRNE. Yes, sir.

Mr. BURKE. This is a good example of it. You cited an example in the hearings before this committee on the minimum-wage law, where they wanted to go back to the old nineties system. That is a rationalization of the economic conditions of the individual employee as part of the job content; and that will not work, will it? Mr. BEIRNE. That is the way I look at it.

Mr. BREHM. Mr. Chairman, I very definitely favor equality of opportunity whether it be in the field of work or education, or voting, or what not.

I also feel that the fly in the ointment regarding this legislation would be the administration. But if we let our hair down, and lay all our cards on the table, do we not find that the greatest advantages to be gained from a law of this kind would be where collective bargaining is used? The union would feel that it had something to back up its claim and could get a better contract. Isn't that the main objective of this proposed bill?

Mr. BEIRNE. There would be that element; yes. I have observed that management will, to a degree at least, be persuaded to do things in a more objective or reasonable way if a policy is declared.

It is true that we can get into arguments about the application of a policy and that is why you have to have investigatory and administrative agencies to take care of those differences.

For the United States to declare-and I think it is long overdue— that there shall be equal pay for equal work, that the sex of the citizen shall not be an economic factor, that would be persuasive in collecting bargaining. It would be persuasive even where there is no collective bargaining or where there are no unions. An employer would be impelled in many cases to try to do the right thing. It would help in that way and it would help in collective bargaining.

Mr. BREHM. That is all.

Mr. WIER. In the field of telephone service, I do not think there is any argument that the woman is more adaptable to this job, because of her greater patience and tolerance. Universally, therefore, the woman has become the telephone operator. And a wage schedule has been adopted for operators.

Let us assume, for a moment, that in Washington, beginning next Monday morning, all female operators would be replaced with men; there would be no more women operators. What would be your basis of a wage schedule for those operators? Would it go up or down?

Mr. BEIRNE. If next Monday morning they replaced the girls with men, if they made the decision to do that, I think the public in

Washington would be hard pressed to get any kind of telephone service, because you would not have many men who would work for the wages which are paid to the girls. So the natural effect of that would be—and it is a very enticing thought-there would be a very interesting discussion take place between the union and the company and it is my view that the company would call the union in and say that it has decided to increase the wage for telephone operators.

Mr. WIER. Do not forget that you have admitted in your testimony that the woman is the better operator.

Mr. BEIRNE. That is right.

Mr. WIER. On what basis are you going to proceed to get the men what we call a man's wage?

Mr. BEIRNE. You would have to go to work on next Monday morning and see the forces that they call labor supply, and what not; that is the men just would not work on those jobs for that kind of money. The telephone companies themselves would recognize first that they were unable to get men and through the process of collective bargaining the wage rates for telephone operators would go up, even though the men would be less efficient than the girls in that job. Mr. WIER. I have had some experience in the telephone business. We have been talking about operators. We have been in the whitecollar field all this time. Let us go over to the business of installations, switchboards. Many women working for the telephone company can do just as good work on the rack as the men, is not that right?

Mr. BEIRNE. That is right. That practice has come into the industry in the last 10 years. Women have been placed in men's jobs; for example, assignment clerks, a job that had been held by men all the time; the ones who make cable lay-outs and show how the service should be installed, and install part of it. Women are doing that job today. But there again you come up against the job content. They are paying women much less than they are paying men.

Mr. WIER. Is there any work on a rack that a woman cannot do, or that they have been unable to do?

Mr. BEIRNE. Not that I know of offhand.

Mr. WIER. There is one more question I want to ask. With reference to the abuses that you run into, and in trying to get equitable arrangements, is the opposition that you meet more positive in a small organization of telephone companies or is the opposition more positive in the larger corporations?

you

Mr. BEIRNE. It would be hard to say which is more positive, the small company or the large company, because they both offer opposition, but in a different way. The big company, with a great number of employees, approaches problems differently than the smaller company. The smaller one you can immediatel v spot, because of its size, and do not get into much difficulty in establishing what are the true facts in a particular situation. When you come to the bigger company, it is possible for them to do so much maneuvering before they finally make a change, that you get lost in the discussion, in the maze of moves which take place. In the smaller companies, the strongest opposition comes with their laying out their books and saying, "We can afford to do nothing better."

Mr. WIER. That is all.

Mr. BAILEY. Mr. Chairman, I take it that the gentleman has read this bill fairly carefully. On page 7, section 6, line 24, it says that the

Secretary is empowered as hereinafter provided, to prevent any person from engaging in any unfair wage practice affecting commerce. Do you understand that this would affect only those engaged in interstate commerce?

Mr. BEIRNE. That is the way I view most Federal legislation.

Mr. BAILEY. It would not affect a telephone operator in a small, rural community, where the calls are all local, do not cross State lines?

Mr. BEIRNE. It is our view that all telephone operators are in interstate commerce. It is impossible to be only in intrastate commerce. For example, you never know when a subscriber wants to make a toll call or a long distance call, which may go across a State line and that girl has to handle it.

Mr. BAILEY. That is covered in the wage and hour bill. There are some telephone companies that do not have any Bell connections. Mr. BEIRNE. Usually they are cooperatives, farmers who have gotten together to get themselves some service.

Mr. WEIR. If they do make a hook-up of that kind, that is interstate commerce and they become party to it.

Mr. BAILEY. That is all, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BURKE. Thank you, Mr. Beirne.

Mr. BEIRNE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BURKE. The next witness is Miss Helen Blanchard, representing the Congress of Industrial Organizations.

STATEMENT OF HELEN BLANCHARD, REPRESENTING THE CONGRESS OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATIONS

Miss BLANCHARD. My name is Helen Blanchard, 1034 Warner Building, Washington, D. C.

Mr. BURKE. You may proceed.

Miss BLANCHARD. Mr. Chairman, I have some testimony here to be presented for the record in behalf of the United Automobile Workers. May I present this to the committee?

Mr. BURKE. Without objection, the testimony Miss Blanchard has referred to in behalf of the United Automobile Workers will be accepted for the record.

(The testimony referred to is as follows:)

STATEMENT BY WOMEN'S BUREAU, FAIR PRACTICES AND ANTIDISCRIMINATION DEPARTMENT, ON BEHALF OF UNITED AUTOMOBILE, AIRCRAFT, AND AGRICULTURAL IMPLEMENT WORKERS OF AMERICA, CIO

Personal injustices suffered by millions of individual women become, in the aggregate, a tremendous public loss. In the area of employment, these injustices done to women merely because they are women represent a serious drain on the productive and purchasing power of our economy. They pit women against men in a competitive struggle that bids down wage rates; they constitute one of the more significant obstacles to a full, wise use of human resources.

By their performance during the past generation, particularly in the course of the two World Wars, women have justified their claim to full citizenship and equal participation in the community's life. Yet the old prejudices and discriminatory practices linger, keeping them from full use of their energies and talents.

American women have slammed the door on the old order that bound them to secondary citizenship. Their efforts to achieve the material basis for lives of dignity and worth have merged with the universal struggle to break the bonds of scarcity and lay the economic groundwork for a society of abundance.