Prior to the beginning of our campaign before World War II to end job discrimination in our industry, Negroes, Jews, and other national and religious groups were almost completely excluded from the electrical and machine industry which now embraces some 600,000 workers. As a result of our own efforts, the manpower requirements of the war and the work of President Roosevelt's Fair Employment Practices Committee we have been able to achieve some meager successes. COMPANY DISCRIMINATION But we still find that the major companies with which we bargain are guilty of both open and subtle forms of discrimination against minority groups. Few Negroes are employed in our industry. When they are employed they are placed in the lowest labor grades and in the most undesirable, dirty, and hazardous jobs. They are not to be found in the apprentice training systems and it is, therefore, not surprising to find almost no Negroes in the skilled crafts. In salaried, engineering, and supervisory groups, Negroes are almost nonexistent. This discrimination is all the more dangerous when practiced by companies whose spokesmen pretend to be liberal and who employ a token number of Negroes as a cloak to conceal actual discrimination in their plants. GENERAL ELECTRIC CO. Charles E. Wilson, president of the General Electric Co., served as Chairman of the President's Civil Rights Committee which recommended, "the enactment of a Federal fair-employment-practices act prohibiting all forms of discrimination in private employment, based on race, color, creed, or national origin." Mr. Wilson has since received citations and awards for his public statements on civil rights. But Mr. Wilson's employment policies in his General Electric plants is proof of the need for an FEPC law. Mr. Wilson is a symbol of liberalsounding talk which attempts to cover up wholesale discrimination through the disguise of "token" hiring of Negro people. Mr. Wilson's General Electric Co. has consistently fought against any real nodiscrimination clause in GE collective-bargaining contracts. Here is the record: In the 1945 collective-bargaining negotiations, the UE proposed the following clause: "The provisions of this contract shall be applied to all employees without discrimination on account of race, color, creed, or national origin." The General Electric Co. rejected this clause. Again, in April 1946, UE submitted the same proposal to the company at the beginning of negotiations. Mr. Spicer, giving the company views on the various issues, to our union, wrote in part as follows: "The company has taken the position that this matter is covered by law and that a union contract should not of necessity contain items covered by law." In February 1947, the UE again included the same proposal in the demands on the company and for the third straight time the company rejected the proposal. In 1948, following the report of the President's Committee on Civil Rights, with Mr. Wilson of General Electric as chairman, UE again proposed the same clause. Mr. Pfeif in a memorandum to our union, wrote in part as follows: "The company stated its willingness to add a paragraph on the question of discrimination providing this paragraph can be so worded that the company and the union will not be involved in grievances relating to transfers and upgrading." This time the company let the cat out of the bag; they did not want to give the UE a lever to really press for upgrading of minority workers. The refusal of the company to include a no-discrimination clause in the contract reflects the attitude of the company towards minority groups. The UE made a survey of 11 representative General Electric plants covering a total of 61,897 workers.1 Of this total only 22 percent or 1,592 workers were In the company's main plant in Schenectady, home office of the top policyfound to be Negroes. making officers, approximately 300 Negroes are employed out of a total of 28,000 employees. Where the company employed a substantial number of Negroes, as in the Elmira foundry, it was because other workers could not be found to perform the heavy, hot, dirty, and hazardous work involved. Where Negroes were employed by the company, it was the lowest labor grades as laborers, porters, and matrons. work were usually on the least skilled jobs. almost invariably in Those on production 1 Plants surveyed were: Bloomfield, N. J.; Bellevue and Bucyrus, Ohio; Erie, Pa.; Fort Wayne, Inc.; Elmira, N. Y.; Newark, N. J.; Philadelpiha, Pa.; Schenectady and Syracuse, N. Y.; Tiffin, Ohio, and Trenton, N. J. Negroes are almost totally excluded from the skilled crafts, salaried groups, and the sales and supervisory force. We were able to find only two or three Negroes in the entire apprentice training program of the company. The GE Company has made much of their hiring a few Negroes from Howard University as engineers, but this gesture plus all of the public-relations announcements Mr. Wilson makes on discrimination will not hide the basic fact that the GE Company is itself guilty of rank discrimination against Negro workers. WESTINGHOUSE ELECTRIC CORP. The Westinghouse Electric Corp., another of the giants in the electrical manufacturing industry, does not even talk about civil rights and here, too, rank discrimination exists. As in the case of GE, Westinghouse has repeatedly rejected no-discrimination clauses in collective bargaining. A survey of some 12 Westinghouse plants covering a total of 46,250 workers revealed only 2,488 Negroes, or 5 percent of the total employment.2 In the East Pittsburgh home plant of the Westinghouse Corp. there are only 620 Negroes out of a total of 15,500 employees. Negroes in Westinghouse are mainly foundry workers, elevator operators, janitors, truckers, and laborers, with a small group on production work mostly in the lower labor grades. Westinghouse has also attempted to keep Negroes where they are employed on night shift work. Westinghouse practically excludes Negroes from better job categories, such as skilled crafts, white collar, sales and supervisory. We could not locate one single Negro in apprentice training in any Westinghouse plant. Don. G. Mitchell, president of the Sylvania Electric Products, Inc., recently accepted the chairmanship of the Greater New York Committee of the United Negro College Fund's campaign. Mr. Mitchell will undoubtedly get much publicity from his activities in the Negro college fund campaign, but the record of his private business shows that Negroes will have a slim chance of putting their education to work in his plants. We have surveyed six Sylvania plants covering 1,905 workers and could find only seven Negroes and these in the lowest labor grades. In Altoona, there are 600 Negro families in the community but not one Negro is employed in the Sylvania plant despite a turn-over of over 100 percent in employment. FEPC ESSENTIAL Where are the powerful corporations and their lobbies in the hearings on FEPC? Are they afraid that an FEPC law would expose their discriminatory practices and force them to hire minority groups? These corporations spent millions of dollars in newspaper and radio publicity and hired hundreds of lobbyists to influence Congress to maintain Taft-Hartley. The top corporation officers of the country testified. One of their main slogans was Taft-Hartley gives workers the right to work. But not a murmur of support is heard from the NAM or Chamber of Commerce on the fair employment practices bill which would make the right to work a reality for millions of minority groups against whom their member corporations discriminate daily in their hiring practices and in their upgradng and promotion policies. A Federal Fair Employment Practices Act is essential to overcome these hard and fast employer discrimination policies. State FEPC laws while helpful have been too weak to meet the problem of coping with the giant corporations whose plants are located in many States and who wield economic and political power transcending that of the States. Our union has striven to eliminate discrimination in the industry, and has utilized State FEPC committees and community organizations whenever available. Our union has achieved some successes but we need the assistance of a Federal FEPC to tackle the problem effectively. Labor unions down through the years organized many thousands of workers under the most difficult conditions, but workers did not fully enjoy the benefits of collective bargaining until the Wagner Act which guaranteed them the right to organize and which set up an effective Nation-wide apparatus to protect workers in this right. 2 Jersey City, Trenton, Bloomfield, and Newark, N. J. East Pittsburgh, Sunbury, Derry, Sharon, and Lester, Pa.; Bridgeport, Conn.; Mansfield, Ohio; and Fairmont, W. Va. The FEPC bill declares discrimination unlawful, provides for the filing of unfair employment practice charges, and sets up a committee with the authority to investigate these charges and issue orders enforceable in court discontinuing the discriminatory practices, thus paralleling the procedures of the Wagner Act. It should prove to be as effective in discouraging discrimination as was the Wagner Act in encouraging organization. FEPC AND THE NATIONAL WELFARE The whole country was shocked when Senator Lucas, Democratic floor leader and chairman of the Democratic policy committee, revealed on May 24 that President Truman and his congressional leaders had decided to not act on vital civil-rights legislation. President Truman campaigned on this issue. The civil-rights plank was an essential part of the Democratic national program in the 1948 elections. This decision can only be considered a betrayal of solemn promises to make such legislation a first order of business. The Republican Party is tarred with the same brush. It, too, pledged itself to civil-rights legislation. But its leaders refused to kill the filibuster aimed at civil-rights legislation in the Senate. It is becoming quite obvious that Democratic and Republican leaders are yielding to the powerful vested interests on this issue. What are the consequences to the Nation? Millions of American citizens-Negroes, Jews, Catholics, and other minority groups are being denied the rights which are part and parcel of the American tradition of equality for all and which are written into the American Constitution. Millions of Americans in minority groups are denied the right to a job by employers. Employers will use these unemployed as a means of pulling down the living standards of all Americans and as potential strikebreakers. Millions of Americans in minority groups can find only low-paying, dirty, hazardous jobs. They will be used by employers to worsen all wages and working conditions. Millions of Americans will therefore be especially subject to poverty, sickness, and disease. The living standards of all Americans will suffer so long as we perpetuate a system of class B citizenship to divide the Nation. H. R. 4453 will greatly advance the fight against such un-American practices of discrimination. STATEMENT OF J. D. HENDERSON, NATIONAL MANAGING DIRECTOR, AMERICAN AssoCIATION OF SMALL BUSINESS IN OPPOSITION TO H. R. 4453 My name is Joseph D. Henderson. I am national managing director of the American Association of Small Business, with national headquarters at 602 Carondelet Building, New Orleans 12, La. This is an organization composed of firms, partnerships, corporations, professional men and women and individuals doing business in their own or in trade names, which corporations, partnerships, professional men and women and individuals are engaged in small business. Our membership extends from New York to California and from the Great Lakes to the Gulf. A ballot presented to our members reflects a vote of 85 percent against the enactment of fair employment practice acts. That people cannot be legislated into obedience was demonstrated by the failure and final repeal of the eighteenth amendment. We are of the opinion that those fostering fair employment practice acts are a tiny frustrated minority trying to regiment the great majority of business people in our Nation. Our particular attention is centered on question and answer No. 5 in statement prepared by your committee and entitled "Elimination of Discrimination in Employment." Question: "What principal minority groups are protected by the bill?" Answer: "Thirteen million Negroes, 5,000,000 Jews, 20,000,000 Catholics, 3,000,000 American of Mexican and Hispanic origin, 11,00,000 person of foreign birth." No mention is made of Indians, Chinese, Japanese, Episcopalians who call themselves Catholic, Seventh Day Adventists, Mormons, and others. It is supposed that your reference to 20,000,000 Catholics is intended to include the communicants of the Roman Catholic Church. We do not believe that the Roman Catholic Church feels it is being discriminated against, because ever since the days of Lord Baltimore Roman Catholics have lived and worked and enjoyed the freedom of our Nation. The Federal Fair Employment Practice Act provides for the creation of a permanent Commission. It must be admitted that a permanent salaried Commission of seven appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate as provided in section 6 of H. R. 4453 means the establishment of another bureau to be staffed by bureaucrats in numbers depending upon the amount of money Congress appropriates for the purpose of maintaining the Commission, at the expense of the taxpayers. Section 11 and section 14 of H. R. 4453 opens an avenue of fine and imprisonment for those who do not agree with the mandates handed down by the Commission and its representatives. The Commission may also petition Federal courts. This brings to our mind the unpleasant word "injunction." We visualize tying up businesses for days to enable the slow wheels of justice enmeshed in the bogs of bureaucracy to grind out the complaining requirements of some individual who does not really want to work now and in all probability would much prefer to remain forever on the unemployment rolls. The bill which is being considered today proposes to prohibit discrimination in employment because of race, color, religion, or national origin. We find, however, that H. R. 4453, while intended to legislate against prejudices provides for discrimination. It is brought out that evidently those persons who employ 50 or less people cannot discriminate. It may interest the gentlemen of this committee to know that over 98 percent of all of the firms in the United States employ 50 or less people and they are engaged in interstate as well as intrastate commerce. In our opinion if sections 3 and 5 are properly interpreted, H. R. 4453 will affect so few people that it will not, and we believe it cannot, bring about the results desired by those interested in seeing it enacted into law by the Congress. To further substantiate our contention, we present as exhibit A an editorial from the New Orleans States, dated May 16, 1949, which we quote herewith: "FEPC PARADOX "Up in Illinois when the legislature was mulling over a proposed State fairemployment-practices commission a solon proposed amendments which would broaden the bill to include small employers and religious organizations as well as large industrial employers and which would bar workers from quitting jobs because of dislike for fellow workers' race or religion. The amendments were killed by the pro-FEPC forces. If legislating against prejudices is proper in the first place and it isn't-why, paradoxically, discriminate between discriminations?" In summing up, we believe that because the record indicates that less than 7,000 complaints of unfair employment have been recorded since July 1943; that only 4 States have passed such laws; that the United States Constitution forbids discrimination; that there are already 23 laws which forbid discrimination, and that there are only a few employers who cannot be relied upon for voluntary cooperation, it would be well to continue an educational program on the part of those interested in seeing Federal Fair Employment Practice Acts enacted in the same enthusiastic manner in which they are now going about tearing down our substantial government structure which time has so slowly but surely built up. The United States of America has been known as the melting pot of the races throughout the years of our existence. Shall we at this late date enact a law which will make it possible to intimidate, regulate, regiment, and force people to do the things a majority of them want to do in order to live peaceably together and also work together. That we cannot enforce legislation which tends to compel people of different races, complexions, and religions to work together if they do not choose to do so, must be readily admitted. Even the birds of the air, the beasts of the field, the bugs and the worms in the ground choose to associate and work with their own kind. Flowers and all vegetation grow and multiply in profusion when planted separately. Therefore, H. R. 4453 is not a natural law, and, as a representative of the American Association of Small Business, I request your committee not to arrive at a favorable report, because I do not believe the House of Representatives will approve a Federal Fair Employment Practice Act when presented for a vote. INTERNATIONAL LONGSHOREMEN'S AND WAREHOUSEMEN'S UNION, Hon. ADAM C. POWELL, Jr., Committee on Education and Labor, United States House of Representatives, Washington, D. C. DEAR CONGRESSMAN POWELL: On behalf of the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union, CIO, I wish to register our support for your bill, H. R. 4453, establishing a permanent Fair Employment Practices Commission to wipe out job discrimination for workers of all races, religions, and national origin. In our opinion the time is long overdue for the passage of such legislation. Growing unemployment in the maritime industry makes FEPC imperative. If the present session is ended without action on FEPC, an inexcusable betrayal will have been committed. Promises have been made on all sides. They must be redeemed. We urge that your subcommittee of the House Labor Committee approve H. R. 4453 without delay, and push for passage of the legislation in Congress before adjournment. We are enclosing our convention resolution on FEPC, approved overwhelmingly in San Francisco in April of this year. We should like this letter and the resolution made part of the printed record of your subcommittee's current hearings. HARRY BRIDGES, President. RESOLUTION NO. 20, ADOPTED BY EIGHTH BIENNIAL CONVENTION, ILWU, APRIL 4-10, 1949 Whereas the ILWU has played an honorable part in labor struggle against discrimination in employment, and Whereas discrimination is a threat to our American way of life, tending to lower wages by allowing employers to play one minority group off against another, and denying large sections of the population the opportunity of making their normal contribution to society, and Whereas with unemployment and lay-offs mounting, job opportunities for minority groups will become even more limited and racial tension will accordingly increase, and Whereas effective FEPC legislation has proven successful in several States and cities for a number of years: now, therefore, be it Resolved, That this ILWU convention does hereby go on record in support of National and State FEPC legislation, and calls upon President Truman and the Eighty-first Congress for immediate passage of such legislation to end job discrimination on the basis of race, religion, or place of national origin. NATIONAL UNION OF MARINE COOKS AND STEWARDS, Hon. ADAM C. POWELL, Jr., San Francisco 11, Calif., May 25, 1949. Committee on Education and Labor, Washington 25, D. C. DEAR CONGRESSMAN POWELL: The National Union of Marine Cooks and Stewards, CIO, wishes to urge that your subcommittee approve H. R. 4453, your bill to establish a Fair Employment Practices Commission, and push for its passage through Congress without delay. This union has had a long and proud record of fighting discrimination in the hiring of workers. Our members are merchant seamen in the stewards department. They are men and women of diverse national origin, North American, Puerto Rican, Hawaiian, Filipinos, Negroes, Chinese, and Japanese. We have done what we could through our hiring halls to insure equal rights to all jobs for all men, regardless of race, color, or national origin. We permit no discrimination of any kind. But the maritime industry is greater than our union, and practices of job discrimination are widespread. Growing unemployment in the industry poses an even greater threat to workers who are members of national minorities. Only Federal legislation will make it possible to wipe out Jim Crow. |