In the same message, the President said, and this is illustrated by a chart: In the Post Office Department despite an 11 percent rise in the volume of mail in the 4 fiscal years, 1954 through 1957, the average employment will have increased only a little more than 3 percent. Thus we have an admitted increase in productivity of something just under 8 percent in the 4 fiscal years to which the President referred. But that is only a part of the story. The simple truth is that there has been a steady increase in production ever since the start of World War II and even before that. These figures may startle you, but the efficiency of post office clerks has increased by 43.6 percent from 1947 to 1957, and this, too, is illustrated by the next chart. In 1947 the postal service handled 37,427,706,000 pieces with 190,800 clerks, an average of 196,050 units per man-year. In 1957 the postal service is handling an estimated 58,024 million pieces, with 205,964 clerks, an average of 281,719 units per man-year and, according to the Postmaster General, for the fiscal year 1958, the Post Office Department expects to handle 60 billion pieces of mail with 207,583 clerks for an average of 287,414 units per man-year. Now, we submit that any honest attempt to relate such improvement in productivity to postal wages must result in greatly increasing current wages. A 43.6 percent increase in productivity from 1945 to 1957, and a projected further increase of 2.9 percent for fiscal 1958, must be reflected in a like increase in buying power to conform to the President's own formula. As President Eisenhower has so well said: Such increases are beneficial, for they provide wage earners with greater purchasing power. Surely, neither the members of this subcommittee nor the Members of the Congress, nor the President, nor any member of the President's Cabinet will argue that the salary of postal employees should be treated differently from that of employees of private industry. Surely it is just as necessary and desirable to increase postal purchasing power as it is to increase the purchasing power of other employees because, to again use the President's words, "Such increases are beneficial." Mr. Chairman, that today's postal wages are inadequate is further illustrated by the difficulty currently experienced in recruiting capable postal personnel. In regional letter No. 57-11, dated February 18, 1957, which, incidentally, was addressed to, "Postmasters, first- and second-class post offices," Mr. James P. Googe, the regional director for the second United States civil service region, made the following significant admission, and I quote: Postmasters frequently report increasing difficulty in securing enough eligibles to fill substitute clerk and substitute city carrier vacancies. In some areas high wage scales and fringe benefits offered by private industry make it almost impossible to fill positions in the local post office. Now, Mr. Chairman, that is not true only of New York City. I have a clipping that came from the Peoria, Ill., Journal Star, issue of April 17, 1957. It just came to my notice. It illustrates that Mr. J. A. Conner, the director for the seventh civil service region has approximately the same problem and with the permission of the Chair, while it is not a part of my statement I would like to have that added to the record. Senator NEUBERGER. Without objection, it will be included in the record. (The document referred to is as follows:) POST OFFICE MUST RECRUIT YOUTH: CONNOR Postmasters must take the initiative in solving the manpower shortage that cripples post offices in many areas, a civil-service official said here today. J. A. Connor, Chicago, director of the seventh civil service region, here for the annual convention of the Illinois branch of the National League of Postmasters, termed the shortage acute in localities where the postal service must compete with industry in hiring men and women. "The postmasters must do a better job of selling the youth of their communities on the advantages of employment in the postal service," Connor said. He emphasized also the postmaster's role in conducting training programs for both old and new employees. "Automation is having a very marked impact on our industry and will require the retraining of many employees. We also must think more and more in terms of drawing on our older age groups for employees, using them on a part-time basis if necessary," Connor said. He indicated that the postal service would have to follow industry's growing practice of "training down" its older employees, refitting the older workers for jobs that make fewer demands on their physical powers. "That way it is possible to utilize employees a whole lot longer before they are retired," Connor said. Mr. HALLBECK. In St. Louis, Mo., Postmaster Dickman, last March, sent a circular letter to every postal patron in an effort to secure applications for clerk-carrier examinations. They were so desperate for applicants that people unable to appear in person were asked to telephone or send a postcard for particulars. In Wichita, Kans., the home State of the ranking minority member, Postmaster Fitzwilliam, in September of last year, found it necessary to request the assistance of employees in securing applicants for an examination, stating in a circular letter: We need help-help in recruiting individuals who would make excellent employees in our office, individuals you would like to work with, and who would make our service their career. Postmaster Fitzwilliam asked employees to give the name and address of "all individuals you think would be interested" so that he could "sell" the postal service to such people. At another time, the assistant postmaster, Mr. Max McReynolds, told the Wichita-Beacon that: The shortage of clerks and carriers in the Wichita Post Office is growing more acute *** In the last 3 or 4 months the post office has been unable to obtain enough personnel to fill vacancies. In Brooklyn, 12,000 people accepted applicants for an examination but only 4,300 appeared for the test and less than a thousand received passing marks. In New York City, for the first time in history, the United States Civil Service Commission opened continuous filing for clerk-carrier positions in the post office. In Dayton, Ohio, Postmaster Guy H. Mundhenk said: The possibility of mail delays faces the Dayton area if the post office cannot attract more permanent employees in the immediate future. Postal officers "believe that the high prevailing wage rate in the Dayton labor market" is the greatest deterrent to getting permanent postal workers. In Dallas, Tex., Postmaster William B. Hudson said that the turnover rate is now 20 percent among postal workers and that the "tight labor market and lack of interest in making the postal service a career" were harmful factors. He stated: We can't be selective or choosy in getting workers-manpower demands call for us to grab what we can. In Houston, Postmaster Granville Elder, a career employee, in a letter addressed to all employees said: For some time our registers have been depleted and, like industry, we are experiencing recruitment difficulties due to unprecedented highs in business and employment. These are only a few examples of the difficulties now being experienced by the Post Office Department, due largely to grossly inadequate substandard salaries. Figures from a survey I made earlier this year point to some very interesting conclusions. Taking the country as a whole, from an average of 383 people, who accept applications, 84 or 21.4 percent actually pass examinations and only 38 or 10 percent accept employment and remain in the service for as much as 1 year. It seems fairly obvious to me that something is wrong when only 1 out of 10 people will accept a position with the Federal Government after they are persuaded to make application for such positions. When the percentage of acceptances is that small, it is reasonable to suppose that many of those who accept are certainly not the best qualified. Frankly, I am not at all surprised that there is difficulty recruiting ablebodied people at $1.82 per hour when such people can secure anywhere from 20 to 45 cents per hour more in private industry, without prior skill or training. and The kind of vigorous young people who might make the postal service a career are the people who are raising families and who are compelled to think in terms of food, clothing, and shelter today, rather than an alleged security during good tenure or other benefits after their children are raised and married. These people accept the kind of a job that pays the most money now, when they need it, and they find those jobs in private rather than public employment. Few postal people today would even consider recommending a postal career to their children, or to others of their family and friends. The reason for this condition is very simply the fact that positions in private industry that require comparable skill, training, and intelligence pay a whole lot more money. That the Nation's skilled and capable post office employees will not stand and beg for what they have the power to earn is, I think, being demonstrated day after day by the number of employees that are leaving the service for greener pastures; they will simply abandon the postal service, as they are now doing in ever-increasing numbers, for greener pastures. This mass exodus of trained employees from the postal service is the most destructive force at work in the postal service today. We cannot force attention to this critical problem with a threatened "curtailment of service" as the Postmaster General did recently but it must be understood that the present totally inadequate pay in the postal service threatens a continuing deterioration in service as grave as any the Nation has ever faced. We cannot move mail without means and we need skilled men to move mail. We cannot get to the point where we hire the lame, the halt, and the blind, and expect to do an efficient job and I submit that hiring that type of people is not real economy even if you can get them to work for less money. As I have already said, President Eisenhower in his budget message to the 85th Congress laid down productivity as a condition for salary increases. He also recognized a further ground for such increases in that same message, and that was the correction of what he referred to as "obvious injustices." The meager salary increases granted to postal employees in comparison with the increases granted to employees of private industry since the start of World War II is, to my mind, such an "obvious injustice." With wages in private industry advancing anywhere from 135 to 368 percent, no one can say that postal employees have been justly treated when their wages have advanced only 103 percent in the same period of time. With the current dollar worth only 50 cents, postal people are firmly tied to their 1939 standards, with no hope of betterment. No one can deny that postal wages have lagged far behind the parade ever since the start of World War II. How far they lag behind becomes apparent whenever a detailed study of wages is conducted. Such studies have quite recently been made by the so-called Cordiner Committee, headed by Mr. Ralph Cordiner, president of General Electric, and by the Citizens Advisory Council to the Senate Committee on Post Office and Civil Service. It is significant, I think, that the administration, for whom the study was made, very carefully concealed the Cordiner report from public view until a few days ago. I understand that the committee made a very thorough investigation of wage rates in private industry, as well as other governmental bodies, and, as a result, recommended an immediate increase of some 15 percent in certain Federal salary schedules. The Committee termed Federal salaries "second rate," which comes as no surprise to those of us who have bothered to read the reports of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The Citizens Advisory Council, in its report, stated that improvements in postal service are dependent upon "wages adjusted on the basis of merit and economic conditions." Other groups, including congressional committees, have made similar findings and the rather conservative U. S. News & World Report has, within the past 8 months, published 2 tables which effectively demonstrate (1) how badly postal and Federal employees have fared in terms of "real wages," and (2) the industries in which a wage of $5,500 per year is common. I am attaching reprints of these tables to this statement. Periodical publishing_-. (The matter referred to is as follows:) TABLE I.-Where pay averages more than $5,000 a year-In 36 American industries the average worker now is paid at a rate of more than $5,000 a year Tire and tube manufacturing- 5, 367 Electric-welding-equipment manufacturing 5, 351 Newspaper publishing 5, 319 Malt-liquor brewing- 5, 314 Computing-machine manufacturing_ 5, 253 Copper mining_-_ 5, 245 Crude-petroleum production 5, 244 Steam-engine manufacturing_ 5, 231 Telephone installation____. 5, 213 General building contracting 5, 211 5, 204 5, 183 5, 177 5, 168 5, 163 5, 133 Stamped-metal-product manufacturing- Lithographing-- Steel-foundry operations____ Industrial-chemical manufacturing---- 5, 119 5,066 5, 034 5,025 5, 019 |