Roth, Edwin M., Cleveland, Ohio, president, APCOA, and an officer and Smith, Dudley, vice president, Association of Sugar Producers of Puerto Steinberg, David J., executive director, Committee for a National Trade Page 836 857 879 827 859 860 880 861 Wurf, Jerry, president, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, AFL-CIO, statement of.. 863 Zacharia, Eli S., Granada Mills, Inc., Caguas, Puerto Rico, letter to 881 TO AMEND THE FAIR LABOR STANDARDS ACT OF 1938 TUESDAY, APRIL 20, 1971 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, OF THE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND LABOR, Washington, D.C. The subcommittee met at 10:20 a.m. pursuant to call in room 2261, Rayburn House Office Building, Representative John H. Dent presiding. Present: Representatives Dent, Hawkins, Biaggi, Mazzoli, Erlenborn, and Landgrebe. Staff members present: Bob Vagley, staff director, and John Miller, minority associate counsel for Labor. Mr. DENT. The meeting of the General Subcommittee on Labor will come to order. Since we have a long list of witnesses and I am expecting other members, we will proceed. The General Subcommittee on Labor will now begin public hearings on H.R. 7130, my bill to increase the minimum wage rate under the Fair Labor Standards Act, to extend its coverage, to establish procedures to relieve domestic industries and workers injured by increased imports from low-wage areas, and for other purposes. Although the hearings are technically held with respect to this bill, we will consider any related legislation referred to the subcommittee or, for that matter, any proposal put before us. It was my original intention to schedule only 2 days of hearings on this legislation. During the last session, the subcommittee conducted hearings on similar proposals over a period of 4 monthsfrom June through September, 1970. The subject matter was thoroughly discussed at that time, and I believe little would be gained by a mere repetition of the testimony taken then. Consequently, only witnesses who sought the opportunity to testify during these hearings were being scheduled to appear on either Tuesday or Thursday of this week. On April 2, I wrote the ranking minority member of the subcommittee Mr. Erlenborn-and invited him to provide me with a listing of witnesses he wished to have called. None has been provided, and I therefore assume that he like me-is willing to have the record reflect only the testimony of those requesting the opportunity to appear. This does not, of course, include the Secretary of Labor, whom I did invite to present his views. I would now like to read, for the rec (1) ord, a second letter I sent to the Secretary last week-on April 16. (The letter referred to follows:) CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, Hon. JAMES D. HODGSON, U.S. Department of Labor, DEAR MR. SECRETARY: On April 5, I invited you to appear before this subcommittee on Tuesday, April 20, to present the Administration's views with respect to H.R. 7130, my bill to amend the Fair Labor Standards Act, or to present any other proposal. Yesterday, a representative of your office called to say you could not appear because of a schedule conflict. I regret it took ten days to determine a scheduling problem, as we looked forward to hearing from you on the 20th and had arranged our hearing schedule accordingly. Although your representative did not-in cancelling your appearance-indicate your anxiety or willingness to testify at a future date, I would like to invite you to appear on Thursday, April 29. It was not my original intent to extend hearings on the legislation beyond April 22, but I believe it is important for the subcommittee to have the benefit of the Administration's views on minimum wage legislation. If it is impossible for you personally to appear on the 29th, we would welcome your representative or any individual authorized to present the Administration's views. The hearings simply cannot be extended beyond April 29. I hope you favor us with an early response to this invitation. I am beginning to be reminded of a similar situation last year when on May 15 to be precise I invited the Secretary of Labor to present views on minimum wage legislation before us at that time. Although our hearings were conducted through June, July, August, and September, we were not even afforded the courtesy of a response to an invitation which had been issued several months previous. I shall look forward to hearing from you. JOHN H. DENT, Chairman. Mr. DENT. The gist of the letter is that we had invited him to appear before this committee last year but we never had a response to our correspondence. We have invited him again but did not restrict him to the hearing dates scheduled thus far because the Secretary, of course, is a very busy man. But we have set aside another date for him on the 29th. To date we have not heard from the Secretary. We recognize the value of having administration representatives and spokesmen come before these committees on important legislation. However, in the final analysis, the full responsibility for legislating, drafting and producing this legislation is with this committee. I am sorry to say that unless the Secretary can appear next week, we hope that we will be able to conclude the hearings on this legislation on the 29th of April so that we can present it to the full committee before the end of the month. I am therefore willing to schedule an additional hearing date April 29-to allow the administration the further opportunity to present testimony; testimony which, in fact, I sincerely believe we ought to have. It is not necessary for Secretary Hodgson to appear personally. Surely, we have all heard administration views presented by Under Secretaries, Assistant Secretaries, Deputy Under Secretaries and Administrators, and so on. We are sophisticated enough to recognize their presentations as being those of the administration, and we accept that in full knowledge of the active schedule responsible administrators have. Hopefully then, someone from the administration will appear on April 29. Because we will go over to that date, we will take some of the pressure off of the schedules of today and Thursday by also having other witnesses appear next week as well. In opening these hearings, I will not take time to advocate the bill before us. The testimony we have, I am sure, will be factual with respect to the legislation. And we can each make our own independent judgments. I will only say I think it is a very moderate proposal. The proposed increase to a minimum wage of $2 per hour would not be come effective until January 1, 1973, for most covered employees. Given an increase in the Consumer Price Index of nearly 23 percent since the Congress last considered an increase in the minimum wage in 1966, and given the fact that a full-time worker earning the minimum wage actually earns about $600 less than the acknowledged poverty level of income, I think a good case can be made for a minimum wage of $2 an hour effective immediately. The extension of minimum wage coverage proposed by the bill affects only public employees. There are many differing estimates with respect to the scope of that additional coverage, but the Department of Labor tells us there are nearly 8 million public employees in the United States of which over 3 million are already covered by the minimum wage provisions. But we will be leaving nearly 12 million employees uncovered by the minimum wage protections. I doubt then, that anyone can seriously charge this bill is radical or irresponsible. That is simply not the case. Before our first witness appears I would like, without objection, to have a copy of H.R. 7130, a copy of the Fair Labor Standards Act as it will be amended by the bill, and a summary of the bill, following my remarks in the record. Without objection, it is so ordered. (The items referred to follow.) |