B. THE FOLLOWING RATES SHALL BE PAID TO BAKERY EMPLOYEES HIRED BEFORE NOV. 1, 1949

Bakery clerks (experienced).
Bakery department heads.

$2.15
2.30

$86.00
92.00

$3.225
3.45

$111.80 119.60

Mr. MACKAY. The contract provides wage rates of $2.225 per hour after the first year of employment. Postal clerks receive almost a similar rate after 20 years of service. Other provisions of the contract are as follows:

(1) Overtime: All work performed in excess of 8 hours in any 1 day or in excess of 40 hours in any 1 week shall be deemed overtime and paid for at the overtime rate of time and one-half the employee's regular rate of pay.

(2) Sunday work: Double the straight time hourly rate shall be paid to employees for all work performed on Sunday.

(3) Holidays: The contract provides for the recognition of 8 holidays, and work performed on any such holiday with the exception of Christmas, Thanksgiving Day. However, work as such shall be compensated for at three times the straight time hourly rate of pay for all hours worked.

This is in sharp contrast to the present "phony 40-hour week" prevalent for many years in the postal service whereby employees working Saturday and Sunday are not given time and one-half rates but are compensated in straight time with a day off during the following week; with the exception of the last 3 weeks of December during the Christmas rush, when time and one-half rates may be authorized.

The question of fringe benefits, Mr. Chairman, has also been pretty thoroughly covered in previous testimony before this committee. In this respect, however, it is significant to mention that this contract also provides sick leave, up to 3 weeks' vacation as well as a health and welfare plan and pension benefits.

Before concluding this statement, Mr. Chairman, I wish to take this opportunity to refer briefly to a statement made yesterday by a spokesman for the Cordiner Committee. In reply to a question it was stated that there appeared to be, in salary levels below GS-7, not too much disparity in the wage scales of Government employees as compared to employees in private industry. We hope our comparison above to retail clerks may have shed a different light on this situation.

Further, there is a need to emphasize that the skills and training required of post-office clerks are such as to warrant much greater compensation especially when compared to salaries paid those in private industry in jobs of equal skill and responsibility. For example, Mr. Chairman, when I first entered the postal service approximately 20 years ago, I was required to pass a Los Angeles City primary scheme of 36 separations including approximately 3,000 separate items which had to be memorized. Today the same scheme requires 63 separations and includes over 5,000 separate items which must be memorized, passed 95 percent perfect with examinations to be passed each 8 months.

In addition, clerical employees are required to know and keep current on an ever-increasing volume of rules and regulations concern

ing the conduct of postal affairs and must be well informed on the postal rates structure.

I would like to digress to state that in addition to these above factors the many years of night work, the irregular schedules, the uncertain hours of substitute employment, the application of a works performance standards system and the other aspects of postal employment as we know it today are such that combined with these low salaries the average individual who hears about working for the post office throws up his hands and decides to look for employment elsewhere.

Mr. Chairman, I wish to express my appreciation to you and the members of this committee for the opportunity to submit this expression of our views on S. 27. Our members are in dire need of the salary advances proposed therein. We hope and pray for early action that it may become the law of the land in the very near future. We wish to express our thanks to you and the other members of the committee for the exceptional interest you are showing on our behalf.

Senator NEUBERGER. Thank you very much, Mr. MacKay.

The CHAIRMAN. I want to express that point I brought out a few moments ago.

You have to acknowledge that the ones making applications for the examination for the post office when they turn down almost 90 percent of them, that the ones applying for those positions are not qualified for the position. Is that right?

Mr. MACKAY. Yes, sir; Senator, that is very true.

The CHAIRMAN. Now, could you not also say that that is probably the type people that are in civilian life not fitting in and they are not receiving the wage scales high enough to qualify for this position? Mr. MACKAY. It appears to be evident, Senator.

The CHAIRMAN. And it is only the lower, we might say a lot of the lower class qualified classes, I am talking about.

Mr. MACKAY. That is true, Senator. The record seems to bear that

out.

Another factor that I did not mention is that even when these people come in their inability to measure up to postal standards, their inability to pass the schemes, their inability to understand the work is such that they have to be separated some times within 2 or 3 months after they have been hired.

The CHAIRMAN. Does it not also show that the people in civilian life that are receiving pay equal or better are not coming to the post office to give their services or make application?

Mr. MACKAY. We agree with that very thoroughly, Senator. The CHAIRMAN. And that being so, in order to get the class of people that we need in the post office we must pay them salaries equal to the corporations on the outside.

Mr. MACKAY. That is correct, Senator; and that is why we so thoroughly believe in the value that is imminent in S. 27.

Senator NEUBERGER. Are there any other questions of Mr. MacKay? Senator Morton?

Senator MORTON. No. In the interest of hearing the man from the great State of Oregon next I will not burden the record with questioning, Mr. Chairman.

Senator NEUBERGER. Your cooperation is greatly appreciated.

92764-57-11

Any other questions?

Thank you very much for coming here. We appreciate it.
Mr. MACKAY. Thank you, sir.

Senator NEUBERGER. Well, inasmuch as Senator Morton has so kindly announced the appearance of one of my constituents I will not need to announce that fact again and our next witness will be Mr. Richard F. Robedeau, who is a personal friend of mine and president of Local 128, National Federation of Post Office Clerks, from Portland, Oreg.

We have two witnesses in a row that are from 3,000 miles away, so I am taking the liberty of calling them before those who live here in Washington, D. C.

Mr. Robedeau.

STATEMENT OF RICHARD F. ROBEDEAU, PRESIDENT, LOCAL 128, NATIONAL FEDERATION OF POST OFFICE CLERKS, PORTLAND, OREG.

Mr. ROBEDEAU. Thank you for your introduction, Senator Neuberger.

Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, by way of introduction my name is Richard Robedeau and I am president of local No. 128, of the Portland, Oreg., local of the National Federation of Post Office Clerks.

I feel highly honored to be permitted to come before this committee and present a few facts as we in Portland and the State of Oregon see them.

Portland and the principal cities of Oregon have, along with the rest of the Nation, seen a constant increase in the cost of living. The postal employees in this area are typical postal workers in that they find they are simply not getting enough money to maintain an American standard of living.

During the last year, and particularly during the last winter, Oregon, because of the slump in lumber sales, has suffered an economic decline. This has created a surplus labor pool, and unemployment, especially during this past winter, has been a serious problem. The cost of living, though, has continued to rise.

In spite of this scarcity of job opportunities, the Portland post office has found it difficult to recruit new help. One of the most frequently voiced complaints of the Portland postal supervisors is the difficulty encountered in keeping the more competent, younger help interested in the postal service as a career.

It takes months and years of on-the-job practice to develop an efficient scheme clerk. During these months when his scheme knowledge and postal skills are being perfected by practice obtained through the actual working of the mail, the new clerk begins with a very low production rate. This gradually increases with each working day until the clerk becomes a reasonably efficient operator. When a clerk quits, his scheme knowledge and his postal skills represent a sizable investment in him by the post office, incurred during his time of learning by doing, while he was being carried on the postal payroll. This becomes a dead loss if he quits.

The excerpts from a supervisor's letter, introduced by Senator Morton during the first day of the hearings, illustrates this very well.

Another example to show how postal management feels on this question, although many supervisors do not feel free to express themselves openly, is illustrated by the folowing incident:

On April 8, 1957, a group, including the secretaries of the National Association of Postmasters, the National League of Postmasters, and the National Association of Postal Supervisors, presented at the White House, to Mr. Jack Anderson, administrative assistant to President Eisenhower, a joint statement. It expressed the official concern of these organizations of postal management over a proposed temporary layoff of some postal employees during the battle over the deficiency appropriation. The following is an excerpt from this

statement:

We feel that, if any of the present employees are released temporarily, they will procure positions in private industry. Knowing how difficult it is, even now, to attract additional personnel on account of the comparatively low salaries offered, we feel that a large number of the postal people would not return to the service when they find the many additional benefits offered by private industry, such as hospitalization, insurance, better working hours (very little night work, if any) and many of the other so-called fringe benefits.

Postal clerks and carriers, even though they did not help formulate this statement, know that it is true. They know that the beginning base wage of $3,660 per year is terribly inadequate. That the takehome base pay of a first-year regular clerk or carrier with a wife and two children, deducting Federal and State income taxes, 612 percent for retirement, and so forth, leaves only $60.50 per week to support his family. They know that in the Portland post office in 1956, 298 new employees were hired and 282 left the postal service. A wasteful tribute indeed to low postal pay.

This year the State Legislature of Oregon increased the salaries of State employees in order to attract and keep competent employees in State jobs.

The Portland City Council recently reduced the number of policemen and firemen and other city employees so that they could pay the individual members of the curtailed force a larger salary and still stay within the city's budget. It was absolutely necessary, they told the people of Portland, in order to keep competent men on the force, even though it meant a smaller force.

The starting wage of a Portland policeman is now within a few dollars of the wage of a postal clerk with 18 years' experience.

Recently the State legislative representative of the National Federation of Post Office Clerks, Mr. Kenneth Young, made a statewide survey. From the answers, he compiled the following statistics:

Many hours could be spent in giving similar illustrations and presenting arguments showing how low postal-pay scales are detrimental to the welfare of the faithful long-time postal employee and his family; harmful to the community in which he lives and the merchants with whom he does business; harmful to the future of the postal service in that it discourages prospective new employees, and harmful to the taxpayer and the Federal budget in that it is the cause of an extremely

wasteful employee turnover. But, since time is limited, I will close with emphasis on the point that Oregon postal clerks feel the future of the postal service is at stake and that the only thing which will remove this ominous threat is adequate postal salaries.

Senator NEUBERGER. Thank you very much, Mr. Robedeau.
Are there any questions?

Senator MORTON. No questions.

Senator NEUBERGER. Mr. Chairman?

The CHAIRMAN. What was the percentage of the turnover I notice you give here as employing 298 new employees, now do you know how many employees are in the post office?

Mr. ROBEDEAU. We have about 1,800 employees in the Portland post office.

The CHAIRMAN. Eighteen hundred?

Mr. ROBEDEAU. Yes, sir.

Senator NEUBERGER. Mr. Kerlin?

Mr. KERLIN. That was going to be my question.

Senator NEUBERGER. Mr. Robedeau, we appreciate your coming. I am particularly gratified that you emphasized the contrast now between the wages and benefits of other public employment as compared with the post office. It used to be, I think, that working for the Federal Government represented a blue-ribbon status in public employment and more and more I have noted in school districts and in municipal governments, and so on around our State, that the great Government of the United States is dropping ever closer to the bottom of the ladder and the State has provided its employees more than is provided to other public employment. And it just seems to me that

that cannot continue.

We thank you very much for coming.

Mr. ROBEDEAU. Thank you, Senator.

Senator NEUBERGER. Our next witness will be Mr. A. R. Allison, chairman of the national legislative committee of the National Association of Naval Technical Supervisors, from Brooklyn, N. Y.

The CHAIRMAN. To give you an illustration, in South Carolina they claim we work people cheap in the cotton mills, but an ordinary weaver will make from $50 to $75 per week.

Senator NEUBERGER. We hope we are not getting in the state where working for the great Government of the United States will represent a coolie condition of servitude.

Please go ahead, Mr. Allison.

STATEMENT OF A. R. ALLISON, CHAIRMAN, NATIONAL LEGISLATIVE SUBCOMMITTEE, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF NAVAL TECHNICAL SUPERVISORS, BROOKLYN, N. Y.; ACCOMPANIED BY E. J. JEHLE, ASSOCIATE SUPERINTENDING ENGINEER, NAVY DEPARTMENT LABORATORY, BROOKLYN, N. Y.

Mr. ALLISON. Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, I am A. R. Allison; am chairman of the legislative subcommittee of the National Association of Naval Technical Supervisors; and represent the Association of Naval Technical Supervisors, which includes the managerial level, civilian technical employees. This is at the GS-12 and above level.