Logging camps and contractors employing 12 or less, by States

Source: County Business Patterns, U. S. Department of Commerce, 1953, citing OASI and Bureau of Census Statistics.

Mr. HARTUNG. Mr. Chairman, I would like to just add this verbal statement:

Most of this timber that is being logged by 12 people or less is owned by these large corporations. They are merely using the contract system that I presume originated out of the provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act where it exempts contractors from coming under the main bargaining unit.

Senator DOUGLAS. You mean they will pay so much per thousand feet

Mr. HARTUNG. Yes, to some individual; and they will then hire the crew. It is a well known fact-especially in the Pacific coastthat they own all of this land that these small operations are logging and bringing into their mills. And it is only these large corporations

that have paper mills or hard board plants that can use that type of wood. It all goes for hard board or paper purposes.

Senator DOUGLAS. Is this true in the South where the so-called small loggers are called I believe "peckerwood operators"?

Mr. HARTUNG. Yes, they use that phraseology down there, Mr. Senator.

Senator DOUGLAS. Mostly because they resemble woodpeckers in their attack upon the timber?

Mr. HARTUNG. Well, they go out there with some very poor equipment, I presume. However, in the South there are 11 large companies, and these 11 companies have 69 plants. Such as Olin-Mathieson Chemical, Johns-Manville, International Paper, National Gypsum, Flintkote, Cleo-Tex, and Masonite. Those are the large giants of the South. And there is absolutely no reason why the products that go into those mills should not be covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act. Because, without it-the raw material-the mills would not be able to operate.

And I do not think there is any argument that certainly the finished product goes into interstate commerce from all of these plants. We hope that the bills that are now introduced will have added to them the elimination of the provision that excludes these loggers.

We support the other provisions of the bill. However, we feel that we have been overlooked and treated as a stepchild. After all, the lumbering industry is one of the most profitable industries in the United States. And there is every indication they will continue to be that way.

Senator DOUGLAS. Well, as a former lumberjack, I think I know something about that.

Mr. HARTUNG. The lumberjack is not so profitable.

Senator DOUGLAS. Thank you very much. The committee will recess for 5 minutes and then we will resume.

(Whereupon, a short recess was taken.)

Senator DOUGLAS. The committee will come to order, please.

The next witness is Mrs. Julia Algase, legislative counsel, New York Hotel Trades Council.

STATEMENT OF MRS. JULIA ALGASE, LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL, NEW YORK HOTEL TRADES COUNCIL

Mrs. ALGASE. Mr. Chairman, in spite of the fact that I have a prepared statement here, there will be some interpolations because of material that I have acquired which I think will be of interest to you and is pertinent to the discussions that we will have.

You heard this morning a very, very excellent presentation on the statistics and facts with respect to the retail trades. I might almost say that we could take that and adapt it to the needs of the hotel industry and hotel workers all over the country.

I am going to address myself to the problem of hotel workers. And I can add here that the Hotel and Restaurant Employees' and Bartenders International Union, which represents over 420,000 workers in the country, has asked me to say that the statement was made by Mr. Meany for the American Federation of Labor and the CIO states their position quite definitely. They have reiterated in convention proceedings.

The necessity for extension of the Fair Labor Standards Act to hotel workers throughout the country. We ourselves are a New York City union. However, we have prepared material on the situation as the country is affected.

You have also heard repeated several times what the express purpose of the Fair Labor Standards Act is-to correct and as rapidly as possible eliminate in industries engaged in interstate commerce labor conditions detrimental to the standards of living of workers in regard to health, efficiency and general well-being.

I have said that I would leave to the experts such as Mr. Tyson, such as Mr. Ruttenberg, who testified here, and certainly to Dr. Blum, the question of what is an industry in commerce or affecting commerce; because in spite of the fact that Professor Blum said that he thought it ought to be left to lawyers, I thought that he did an excellent job this morning in explaining that it is not a question of what happens at the local level, but a series of factors that combined affect the entire picture of what is the industry and how does it affect

commerce.

But I want to go on from that for the moment to the question of labor conditions detrimental to the health, efficiency and well-being of workers not from the point of the minimum wage laws, because we have all said time and time again that a dollar and a quarter is the minimum that we need for these minimum needs, but from the point that the minimum need of one worker is the same as that of another worker, regardless of the industry he is in.

The New York Times in a recent editorial has put it very well, saying, "After all, the wage necessary for the healthful maintenance of a laundry worker is not any more or less than for a clerk in a grocery store."

This particular editorial was directed to New York State minimum wage needs at the time. I want to adapt it, however, and enlarge it and say that after all the wage necessary for the healthful maintenance of a worker presently covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act is not any more or less than for a hotel, motel, or restaurant worker. Professor Blum took as his point of departure for the minimum needs the needs of the workingwoman without dependents. I have brought with me the Cost of Living for Women Workers in New York State which bears out quite definitely, and supports, what Professor Blum said.

Senator DOUGLAS. Are you submitting that for the record?

Mrs. ALGASE. Yes, sir.

Senator DOUGLAS. To be printed in the record?

Mrs. ALGASE. I would like to have it submitted for the record; yes, sir.

Senator DOUGLAS. If it has not been printed in the record for last year, it will be printed in the record following your testimony. Mrs. ALGASE. Thank you.

This is the latest report that was made. On the basis of that report, you will notice that the standards that were set by Mr. Blum are just about the same; that is, the ones that were mentioned by Professor Blum. This shows that the New York State minimum needs would be $2,588. And it is interesting that the New York City needs are $2,609. And the needs, let us say, of Glens Falls in upper New York State is $2,655, more than New York City.

The reason I mention it at this particular point is that in New York City, where we are highly organized, the minimum wage for New York for the hotel industry is higher than it is upstate where workers are mostly unorganized and where there is a lower differential.

Senator DOUGLAS. Even though the cost of living

Mrs. ALGASE. The cost of living is higher up there. And this is one of those peculiar disparities that go on all the time between one branch of a labor department and the other branch of a labor department, because minimum wage boards, as you know, are called by the labor department.

But I do not want to get involved in that at this moment.

There must be general agreement that it is neither fair nor human to discriminate against some low paid workers as against other low paid workers. That hotel workers are low paid can hardly be questioned. The hotel industry is the sixth largest in the country. There may be some doubt. It may be the seventh largest; but I understand that it has gone to sixth place.

Business magazines such as Fortune and others have commented on this. The employees of the hotel industry are at the bottom of the earnings tables. And I will submit to you a little abstract which shows the average wages of hotel workers throughout the country on the basis of Department of Commerce statistics.

The January 1955 issue of Fortune describes the chain situation in an article by Robert Sheehan, called The Chain Reaction in Hotels. And this is what it says:

As every businessman who gets around the country knows, a tremendous turnover in the ownership and management of hotels is taking place in the United States today. As he finds himself checking into the Sheraton-Astor in New York, the Deschler-Hilton in Columbus, Ohio, the Sheraton-Palace in San Francisco, et cetera, the businessman traveler can be forgiven for concluding that the great chains have gobbled up just about every worthwhile hotel in sight.

From a table in the article we see that starting with June of 1953, the Sheraton Corp. added nine hotels to its list, in Washington, D. C., California, Illinois, New York, Massachusetts, and you will see later that they are going into the motel business.

The Hilton chain acquired all the Statler Hotels in 10 cities spread throughout the country. And only recently was it obliged to settle an antitrust suit by disposing of at least one in each of several cities, including New York. And I have among my papers a news item on it showing that one of the hotels they disposed of was then bought by the Sheraton chain.

Another significant quotation from this Fortune article is that there are always plenty of bidders among the smaller chains for the discards, and that no change is foreseen in the trend toward concentration in chain management. In fact, it has

grown.

Perhaps reference will have been made before by others to hotel workers' earnings. Studies made by the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that hotel workers in the South receive as low as 30 cents an hour. It should be borne in mind that the South includes the gigantic hotels of Florida where, for instance, the big Alsonnett chain operates 7 of its 32 hotels. In Texas, where this chain operates another 7 hotels, workers receive as low as 32 cents an hour.