Wage Structure of Gas Utilities in January 19471

PRIVATELY OPERATED GAS UTILITIES in cities of 75,000 or more population provided employment to more than 52,000 workers in January 1947. This estimate includes workers in gas departments of utility concerns that provide both electric and gas service, as well as those providing gas service only, but excludes employment in municipally operated plants. Plant workers (production, distribution, etc.) outnumbered office workers by about 2 to 1.

About 40 percent of the utility firms in these larger cities provided electric as well as gas service. The type of gas distributed was found to vary by region depending on the source of supply. All of the firms in the Middle West, Southwest, and Mountain regions and a majority of those in the Pacific and Great Lakes region distributed natural gas; all of the gas utility companies in New England and a majority of those in the Middle Atlantic and Southeastern regions distributed manufactured gas.2

Straight-time average hourly earnings of plant workers in gas utilities amounted to $1.17 an hour in January 1947. Individual rates among the nearly 35,000 workers (including 173 women) employed in various types of nonoffice jobs ranged from less than 60 cents to more than $1.70 an hour with over half receiving $1.00 or more but less than $1.30. The lowest average rates were found in southeastern cities in which plant workers, as a group, earned 87 cents an hour. Workers in cities in the Pacific region averaged $1.33 an hour, the highest earnings in the United States. Over a

1 Prepared by Toivo P. Kanninen from a field survey made under the direction of the Bureau's Regional Wage Analysts.

This study included privately operated gas utilities, in cities of 75,000 or more population, that distributed natural, manufactured, or mixed gas. Such establishments were estimated as numbering 129, and as employing more than 52,000 workers in January 1947; 125 of the establishments having nearly 48,000 of the workers were included in this study. More detailed information will be available in a mimeographed report: Wage StructureGas Utilities, 1947.

1 The regions used in this study are: New England-Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont; Middle Atlantic-New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania; Border States-Delaware, District of Columbia, Kentucky, Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia; Sutheast-Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee, North Car olina, and South Carolina; Great Lakes-Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin; Middle West-Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebras ka, North Dakota, and South Dakota; Southwest-Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas; Mountain-Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming; and Pacific-California, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington.

quarter of the workers in this region were paid at least $1.50 an hour and none received less than 80 cents. Average wage rates in the Middle Atlantic and Great Lakes regions were slightly above the average for all cities combined; rates in New England, the Border States, Middle West and Southwest were below the general average. Nearly a thousand of the 1,169 plant workers who were paid less than 75 cents an hour at the time of the study were employed in southeastern and southwestern cities:

Occupational Variations in Earnings

The occupational composition of the labor force varied from one region to another, primarily because of differences in type of gas distributed. Jobs related to the installation and maintenance of gas mains, gas lines, meters, and appliances are universally found, however, and account for a very considerable part of total employment in the industry. Other work activities that are common to the various types of gas utilities include plant and equipment maintenance, custodial work, meter reading, and office work, the last accounting for about a third of all employees.

Appliance servicemen, the largest single occupational group in the industry, averaged $1.30 an hour on a straight-time basis, as shown in table 1. Somewhat higher average earnings were found in other skilled occupations with a high of $1.43 recorded for maintenance electricians. Laborers engaged in installation and service of gas mains averaged 92 cents an hour, 6 cents less than the average earnings of janitors and 8 cents less than rates paid to watchmen.

Rates paid to skilled workers generally varied less by region than was the case in the unskilled occupations. Furthermore, the occupational rate structure was more compressed in the higher wage regions than in those with lower wage levels. Wage rates paid to appliance servicemen, for example, ranged from $1.15 in cities in the Southeast to $1.49 an hour in the Pacific region. Laborers (main installation and service) were paid 65 cents and $1.12 an hour, respectively, in these regions. The spread between average rates paid in these occupations was found to be greater in the Southeast than in other regions; the wage advantage held by appliance servicemen over the laborer group amounted to 77 percent in the Southeast,

33 percent in the Pacific region, and only 21 percent in New England.

Minimum entrance rates as well as minimum job rates for men plant workers ranged from under 50 cents to $1.05 or more an hour among the utility companies studied. Minimum rates were typically scattered over a 20-cent or wider

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range in the individual regions. The highest and lowest rates, as in the case of the occupational data discussed above, were found in the Pacific and Southeast regions; minimum entrance rates in the Pacific ranging from 90 cents to $1.05 or more an hour and in the Southeast city group from under 50 cents to 70 cents an hour.

Office-worker earnings ranged from 68 cents an hour for office girls to $1.39 an hour for men hand bookkeepers (table 2). Averages of more than $1.00 an hour were found in 6 of the 9 men's jobs and 10 of the 21 women's jobs studied. In occupations in which both men and women were employed, men were generally paid higher rates. Men accounting clerks, for example, averaged $1.27 an hour as compared with $1.03 an hour earned by women in this occupation. Rates paid to office workers in the Pacific region were higher, in most occupations, than in other regions. In both the Pacific and Middle Atlantic regions workers in a majority of the occupations averaged more than $1.00 an hour. A majority of occupations in each of the other regions paid less than $1.00, on the average.

Other Factors in Variations in Earnings

Rates paid by firms providing both gas and electric service tended to be higher than those paid by utility companies limiting their service to gas operations. The greatest differences in rates were noted in the Pacific region where rates in a majority of plant jobs were from 9 to 39 cents an hour higher in the plant group providing both services. In the Great Lakes, Southeast, and Border States areas, however, higher rates were paid by the companies distributing gas only. Other factors, such as size of community and establishment probably exerted considerable influence in these relationships.

Although a summary of wage rates by community size shows that workers in the larger

cities, on a Nation-wide basis, were paid higher rates, the reverse was found in several of the regions. In the Pacific and Great Lakes regions, rates paid by firms located in cities of 75,000 to 250,000 population were higher in most occupations than those paid in cities falling in the 250,000 to 500,000 size group.

The size of establishment, as measured by total employment, appeared to be associated to a greater extent with the level of wages than either the type of firm or size of community. With very few exceptions, occupational wage rates in each region were found to be higher in the larger establishments (those employing 251 or more workers).

Very few workers were paid on an incentive basis; the total so paid (mainly, meter readers) accounted for less than 2 percent of all plant workers in the industry. More than four-fifths of the utility firms studied were operating under terms of written agreements with labor unions, including all in the Pacific region and all but 1 or 2 in the New England, Middle Atlantic, and Great Lakes regions. The proportion of nonunion plants was highest in the Southeast and Southwest regions.

Supplementary Wage Practices

Although multishift operations were reported by 99 of the 125 utilities in the study, only 7

percent of the plant workers were on the second shift and an additional 6 percent worked on later shifts. About half of these firms paid differentials for work on extra shifts, the amounts most commonly paid being 4 cents on the second shift and 6 cents on the third shift. With few exceptions, gas utilities scheduled a 40-hour workweek.

Paid vacations were granted by all of the firms to employees who had completed a year of service, with plans for plant workers about equally divided between 1-week and 2-week vacation periods. More liberal provisions generally applied to office workers, two-thirds of the firms indicating a policy of granting 2 weeks of paid leave in this job group. Utilities in the two regions with the

highest general level of wage rates, Pacific and Great Lakes, provided less paid vacation leave than firms in other areas.

Formal provisions for paid sick leave have been adopted by a larger proportion of the employers in this industry than in most other industries. Roughly, two-thirds of the gas utility companies granted paid sick leave to plant and office workers who had completed a year of service. The equivalent of 2-weeks leave represented the amount most commonly granted. Nearly all of the firms had life-insurance plans, and roughly one-half had health insurance and/or retirement pensions plans, covering plant and office workers. Nonproduction bonuses were paid to plant and office workers by an eighth of the firms. Such additional payment was negligible, however, when averaged over all workers in the industry.

Department Store Inventory Price Indexes

SPECIAL RETAIL PRICE INDEXES to be used in adjusting department store inventory values were recently completed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. These indexes have been designed in cooperation with the Bureau of Internal Revenue and the American Retail Federation to be used by department stores employing the Last-In First-Out (LIFO) method of accounting.

Indexes have been computed for each January 15 from 1941 to 1947, inclusive. Within the next few months indexes will also be prepared for each July 15 from 1941 to 1947 and for January 15, 1948. In the future the indexes will be computed for each January and July. The table below gives the indexes for January 15 for nine major groups of departments and the store total.

The department store inventory price indexes are computed as an average of year-to-year price relatives weighted by inventory values. The indexes for each year are chained to form a continuous series with January 1941 as a base. The prices upon which the indexes are based are collected in accordance with predetermined specifications to insure obtaining the same grade of

Comparative Employment Levels: Construction Projects, 1946-47

MONTHLY EMPLOYMENT on all types of construction projects (both private and public and new and repair work) averaged 1,973,000 workers in 1947, the highest level in 5 years. In 1947 an average of 120,000 more construction workers were employed than in 1946, but nearly a quarter of a million fewer than in the peak construction year 1942.

Because of a 57-percent rise in construction activity, measured by the value of work put in place between the first and fourth quarters of 1947, average employment increased by well over half a million workers during that period. The employment peak - 2,219,000 workers-was reached in the third quarter, but this was only 19,000 over the fourth quarter average.

Slight employment losses occurred in the fourth quarter of 1947 in all classes of construction except privately financed residential and nonresidential building. The record housebuilding program during the last half of 1947 caused an addition of