I stand here a fugitive from an open shop where the hours have been unduly long, the working conditions unduly wearisome and the practice of a captive audience unduly abused – the United States Senate. If our exclusive club were to be unionized, I am not certain which craft would have jurisdiction – perhaps we would belong to the USTTA – the United Stemwinders and Tub Thumpers of America. Our trade has many skills: If a Senator, while in the Capitol, talks to other senators, that is a great debate; if he talks to other citizens, that is a congressional investigation; and if he talks to himself all night, that is a filibuster.
But whatever we have learned about the art of talkmanship, we should have learned that we cannot talk ourselves either into or out of serious economic problems. There has been too much talk in recent months about how healthy our economy is – too much talk, and not enough action to correct the sore spots which still hamper our progress. Neither undue pessimism nor undue optimism will meet the grocery bills of the unemployed workers.
Here in New England, the cool optimism engendered by upturns in May and June melted away in the heat of July. Unemployment continues to be heavy in Lawrence, Lowell, Fall River, New Bedford, North Adams, Milford, Southbridge, and Webster. Unemployment is also cause for concern in Boston, Brockton, Springfield, Holyoke, and right here in Worcester.
During the past year, more than 167,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost in New England, 80,000 of these in Massachusetts alone. To those who still entertain the myth that these losses are mostly textiles and other non-durable goods, I would point out that the heaviest loss was suffered in New England’s hard goods industries, where employment declined in June for the 12th consecutive month. We are not only losing the services of those who make our fine woolen and cotton goods, our apparel, shoes and similar products. We have also suffered a tremendous loss in employment opportunities for those working in the machinery, shipbuilding and construction industries. The decline in employment here in Massachusetts – in such industries as textiles, communication equipment, transportation equipment, machinery and fabricated materials – has in one year taken away more than 1 in every 10 manufacturing jobs. And those of you remaining on the job know that the average work-week has been cut to less than 40 hours, and as a result take-home pay has been cut too.
What we need to correct this trend is neither glowing words nor despair but action. This includes action by labor organizations, such as the unique and statesmanlike loan of $250,000 by the United Hatters to the Kartiganer Corporation to enable that manufacturer to maintain his factories in West Upton and Milford. This includes action by employers, industrial development organizations, and state and local governments.
What we also need – despite traditional New England arguments to the contrary – is action by the Federal Government: action which will give New England its fair share of federal programs now aiding other regions at our expense; action which will prevent other regions from using methods of unfair competition to lure New England industry; and action which will permit New England to utilize more fully its human, material and natural resources.
Particularly important is action by the Federal Government in the fields of labor and social legislation. Unless collective bargaining can make greater progress in the South and other unorganized areas through amendments to the Taft-Hartley law; unless substandard wage competition can be eliminated by strengthening our labor standards legislation; and unless steps are taken to provide employment opportunities and to restore the purchasing power of our unemployed workers – New England will year after year be confronted with the same difficult economic problems. Unfortunately, the single biggest obstacle to adequate federal action – not speeches, not studies, but action – is the negative and vacuous labor program of the Federal Government today.
Let us look for a moment at what the Federal Government has done or failed to do about the problems of labor relations, the problems of labor standards, and the problems of unemployment.
I. The Administration and Labor Relations.
After a full year of vacillation and contradiction and inaction, the Senate began to consider amendments to the Taft-Hartley Act. The administration bill before us recognized some of the law’s minor defects. These only served to camouflage those recommendations which would harm sound industrial relations. One amendment would encourage the states to meet “emergencies” by adopting compulsory arbitration for all types of industry, denying rights guaranteed by federal law and enacting other anti-labor laws as an inducement to migrant industry. This was in contrast to the bill introduced by Senator Douglas and me to eliminate the so-called “states rights” provision of Taft-Hartley. Another amendment encouraged patently unfair abuses of the “captive audience” technique.
Fortunately, these amendments, and an even more violently anti-labor states rights amendment introduced by Senator Goldwater, were recommitted by the Senate. But instead we see action by the NLRB accomplishing what Congress could not. One Albert C. Beeson, whose conflicting statements, prejudgment of the issues and misrepresentations before our Labor Committee caused all Democratic members to oppose his nomination, joined the Board. A series of NLRB decisions has given a much wider latitude to employers refusing to bargain and coercing employees under the guise of so-called “free speech.”
Within the past month the NLRB announced new jurisdictional rules to overturn the refusal of Congress to grant wider power to the states. In those states where labor organization is most difficult, the protection of Federal rights will no longer be given to those workers employed by industries falling below a certain dollar maximum; most radio television, public utilities and transit companies; and restaurants and retail stores – regardless of the fact that the courts and past Boards have found such employers are in interstate commerce and under the constitutional jurisdiction of the Federal Government. I for one resent this legislation by administrative fiat overturning the decision of the Congress.
II. The Federal Government
Still further encouragement was given to runaway shops by the refusal to increase the minimum wage, thus permitting areas of substandard wages to undercut the wage levels of workers in Massachusetts and elsewhere. As author of the bill to raise the minimum wage from 75 ¢ to at least $1.00 an hour, I was severely disappointed when the President repeated all of the old fears of unemployment, price increases, and discriminations against small business which have been repeated by the opponents of minimum wage legislation – and disproved by experience – ever since the enactment of the first minimum wage law.
Similarly, the Walsh-Henley Public Contracts Act has become an idle and useless instrument. The Fulbright Amendment has hamstrung with legal actions the effective enforcement of minimum wages on federal contracts in textile and other fields. The Department of Labor is apparently unwilling to go ahead with its statutory responsibility to carry out the law, regardless of such handicaps.
Finally, effective labor standards have been nearly strangled by parsimony. Last year, the Department of Labor’s budget, already the smallest in government, was cut 14%, more than seven times as much as the cut in the Post Office Department, the Justice Department and Agriculture. The Wage and Hour Division was cut 27% below its 1952 appropriation, thus making it possible to inspect only 1 out of 22 establishments covered by the law. Field offices in 8 regions in the South were abolished entirely. The chances of your own employer being checked are, for example, only 1 out of 10 in textiles and 1 out of 20 in construction. In low-wage Puerto Rico, a review of wage levels is possible only once in 7 years for each industry! This year theses cuts were even more severe. It would be more honest to repeal our minimum wage laws rather than emasculate them by amendment, inaction and miserly appropriations.
III. The Federal Government and Unemployment
Last fall a great deal of publicity was given to the new Defense Manpower Policy No. 4, the program for channeling defense contracts to labor surplus areas. But the new policy knocked out the one helpful feature of the former program, bid-matching, and has been a colossal flop. New England is getting fewer defense contracts than ever before, and practically no contracts in labor surplus areas as a result of this supposed preference. The needs of the Quincy and Boston Naval Shipyards have been ignored. The new tax amortization program for labor surplus areas has proven to be another example of many worlds with practically no results.
Finally, Congress has gone in the opposite direction by passing a bill to undermine the entire financial structure of our unemployment compensation system. When I offered an amendment to set minimum standards for the amount and duration of unemployment compensation benefits – exactly the same standards that President Eisenhower had recommended to the states as necessary to give the unemployed workers a decent standard of living – it was voted down. When I offered the administration’s own amendment to prevent states from using surplus federal unemployment tax funds for administrative luxuries when there were needed elsewhere for benefit payments – it too was voted down. The problems of the unemployed simply were unrecognized.
IV. A Program for Federal Action
This is the unhappy record of the past two years – the record which affects the job of every worker in Massachusetts, which threatens the amount of his pay and the existence of his plant. But this is the past – and it is now even more important that we unite all parties to improve this record in the future.
I have indicated many times in the past the notion which the Federal Government must undertake in order to alleviate these problems. Permit me to re-emphasize 8 of those points:
1. First, the Taft-Hartley Law must be amended so that its unfair and inequitable provisions will no longer retard labor’s attempts to organize in the South and other hostile areas. We must reverse the trend toward giving anti-labor State Legislatures power to override those rights of collective bargaining which the Wagner Act firmly established.
2. Second, the national minimum wage must be increased from its present inadequate and unrealistic level of 75 ¢ an hour to meet rises in the cost of living, worker productivity, average wages and per capita income. Current economic uncertainty, far from justifying a delay in taking this step, requires a more solid floor beneath purchasing power.
3. Third, the Walsh-Healey Act must be strengthened by revision of the Fulbright Amendment and other provisions, and the enforcement appropriations for the Department of Labor must be increased.
4. Fourth, our unemployment compensation program must be revitalized, with nationwide standards permitting every worker to receive more adequate benefits, and for a more adequate period before his benefit rights are exhausted. Inadequate unemployment benefits mean inadequate purchasing power in our communities hard hit by unemployment.
5. Fifth, the Defense Manpower Policy Program for channeling defense contracts into labor surplus areas must be made into a reality, providing employment opportunities for thousands of workers whose skills and productivity will otherwise be wasted and dispersed.
6. Sixth, tax loopholes which permit the use of federally tax-exempt municipal bonds to build tax-free factories as an inducement to migrant industry must be closed. This most obvious of all unfair methods of competition is harmful to the workers and community abandoned by the runaway plant, and to the community in which that plant is relocated.
7. Seventh, the transportation problems of New England must be promptly investigated and corrected. Pointing to recent decisions discriminating against New England truckers, ports and railroads, I have introduced a resolution on behalf of all 12 New England Senators calling for such a Senate investigation.
8. Eighth, the high power costs of New England must be reduced, through more effective development of our natural resources and through the utilization of atomic energy. My amendment requiring that the Atomic Energy Commission take into consideration in its approval of atomic power projects the high cost of power in the areas which would benefit most from its power projects, along with other amendments adopted by the Senate, will, I am hopeful, hasten the day when New England can enjoy the cheap power which now aids the Tennessee Valley and other areas.
There, my friends, is a program for action: action to meet the economic problems that confront us, action to secure a better life for every worker and his family. I know the members of this organization will join with me in seeking such action, to do more for Massachusetts, to build a better state and nation, and to enable ourselves and our children to look forward to the future with confidence and hope.
