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$4.38, an increase of 17 percent in 2 years; electrical workers are getting $4.05, an increase of 8 percent in 2 years.

In Phoenix, Ariz., electricians are receiving $3.36 an hour, an increase of 7 percent in 2 years. Automotive mechanics are now getting $3.11 an hour. They have been raised 14 percent in 2 years. Maintenance machinists have been increased 6 percent in 2 years to $3.38 an hour. Truckdrivers for public utilities are getting $2.79 an hour— or a wage increase of 11 percent in 2 years.

These instances go on and on, and in practically every part of the country the average workingman has been getting annual increases in his pay, and the average has been well over the 3 percent per year which the legislation we are supporting would give us in order to achieve reasonable comparability.

It is for this reason that I say the Morrison bill is a comparatively conservative bill. It would give us 6-percent increase over 2 years. Most blue-collar workers in the United States have had their wages raised more than that during this same period.

I would like to add that the average hourly pay of a letter carrier today, as estimated by the Post Office Department, is $2.68-significantly lower than any of the wage levels I have cited. In fact, it is significantly lower than the average blue-collar worker's pay in all but a very few metropolitan areas in the country-and, of course, the vast majority of letter carriers work and live in metropolitan areas.

I might also add that the opportunities for letter carriers to earn overtime are far fewer than are the opportunities in private industry. I might add in step 7, which is the last before going into longevity pay, the hourly rate for regular is $2.66, and, for the starting regular, the hourly pay is $2.10 an hour; so, all the letter carriers up to level 7 get $2.66 an hour or less, and step 7 is the step where we have the greatest number of employees.

Mr. JOHANSEN. May I interrupt to ask a question?

I notice two or three references to blue-collar workers' pay. Are you referring to Federal wage board employees?

Mr. KEATING. No; the people in outside industry.

Mr. JOHANSEN. I wanted to be sure.

Mr. KEATING. That term has been used widely in Government. It was used before that in industry to differentiate between the mechanic and office worker.

Mr. JOHANSEN. Do you have any figures on increases for some of these comparable periods for wage board employees?

Mr. KEATING. We do.

One year ago we published a rather complete set of figures that indicated very definitely that wage board rates have been going up much faster than those of the postal and classified employees. I will be glad to furnish them.

Mr. JOHANSEN. If you can do it without a great deal of work.

(The information follows:)

Comparison of hourly pay increases since 1948 between top-grade letter carriers and blue-collar workers of the Federal Government

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NOTE.-Blue-collar workers have had 14 or 15 increases compared to 6 for letter carriers since 1948.

Mr. KEATING. Since this last pay raise, most blue-collar workers have had additional increases.

I would like to cite some further hourly wage levels from various parts of the country to support our testimony.

In Houston, Tex., for instance, carpenters are getting $3.97 an hour; asbestos workers, $4.33; and operating engineers, $4.18.

In Nashville, Tenn., carpenters are getting $3.75 and electrical workers are getting $3.83.

In Altoona, Pa., glaziers are receiving $3; plasterers, $3.75; truckdrivers, $2.99; and tractor drivers, $3.51.

Tulsa, Okla., carpenters, $3.70 an hour; common laborers, $2.70; operating engineers, $3.85; and truckdrivers, $3.85.

I think, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, this gives you a pretty fair cross section of what blue-collar workers are getting in almost every section of the country. Letter carriers, at $2.68 an hour, are still far behind the average. They will not catch up unless legislation is passed which will grant them comparability—not with what their fellow workers in private industry were getting more than 2 years ago, but with what such workers are getting right now.

I think you all know that this year marks the centennial of the free city-delivery service in this country. This means it also marks the centennial of the letter carrier in America.

To digress for a moment, I would like to say that we are going to mark this centennial with a banquet here on October 26, which we feel will be one of the most notable events of its kind ever to be held in this city. The banquet will also inaugurate our campaign to create a college scholarship fund for the deserving sons and daughters of our members.

The members of this committee, of course, will be invited to this affair as our honored guests—and I sincerely hope you will mark October 26 on your calendars now, so there will be no conflict.

I mention the centennial not only because of its historical and sentimental implications, but also because of the fact that during almost every year that we have had city-delivery service there has been a marked improvement in the efficiency and the productivity of postal employees.

It would be easy for us to make our own boasts about this increase in productivity, but we feel it will be more effective if we quote a more objective source, the recent Postmaster General of the United States, Mr. J. Edward Day.

In a speech made here in Washington last February, instituting the new ABCD service, General Day had this to say:

"We handle 68 billion pieces of mail annually-over half the world's total. Our 588,000 full-time employees make us the largest civilian employer in the country. Even back in 1890 our Department had 150,000 employees. Today we handle 16 times as much mail as we did then, with less than 4 times as many employees ***. Since 1950 alone, our mail has increased by 44 percent, while total man-years of employment in the Post Office have increased by less than 20 percent * * *. If in 1962 we had operated at our 1952 level of productivity, we would have used 69,000 more man-years than we did with a resulting increase in 1962 cost of $345 million.

In answer to critics who claim that foreign postal services are more efficient than our own, General Day had this to say, in Kansas City, Mo., last July 23:

To handle 70 billion pieces of mail annually, the U.S. postal system has 585,000 employees. Both the United Kingdom and Germany hire about twice as many employees to handle a volume of about one-seventh that of the United States.

And in, Omaha, Nebr., on last July 14, General Day said this:

The efficiency of mail handling in the United States has increased by 12 percent in the last decade, and the Post Office Department ended its fiscal year on June 30 with 24,000 fewer employees than earlier estimated * * *. If we were still operating at the 1952 level of productivity, we would need 70,000 more employees than we actually have today.

He went on to say that, despite the volume of increase of almost 212 billion pieces of mail, the Department ended the fiscal year with no increase in employees from the year previous.

Jerry Kluttz had an item in the Washington Post this morning that the Post Office ended the year of 1962 with 1,371 fewer employees on its rolls than it had a year earlier, despite a more than 2-percent increase in postal volume.

That is good evidence of the productivity in the postal operation.

I think that these statements speak for themselves and need no additional comment from us. I don't think that any group of employees in Government or in private industry-can match the record for increased productivity that the postal employees have made over the years.

I have mentioned that this is our centennial year. The past 100 years have been an era of tremendous progress in the postal service. The mail service has improved steadily over those years, the number of services extended to the public has improved, and the quality of labor-management relations has improved.

As far as pay is concerned, the greatest of all improvements would be the realization of the promises made last year in Public Law 87-793, which would give postal employees true comparability with their fellow workers in private industry.

Postal employees have always been relatively underpaid.

The pattern of low pay was set almost at the beginning of the postal service. In 1823, as some of you already know, when James Monroe was President, his Postmaster General-a man named James McLean--had this to say in his first annual report:

I have no intention of paying postal employees a sufficient compensation to provide a livelihood without other means of support.

Although no subsequent Postmaster General ever stated his position quite so brutally as that, the majority of them, by their actions and attitudes, made General McLean's philosophy a reality.

There were some brilliant exceptions. As early as 1866, when the free city-delivery service was just 3 years old, Postmaster General Alexander W. Randall wrote this in his annual report:

I recommend more liberality. The clerks and employees of the Post Office have not been well paid for the services they have performed * * *. The letter carriers claim peculiar consideration. They travel every day from early in the morning until late at night, in heat and cold and rain and snow, all through the cities, distributing letters and papers without compensation enough to pay house rent. I feel the Government ought to pay all these employees better.

Postmaster General Randall's plea went unheeded.

Public Law 87-793 was designed to end, once and for all, this depressing state of affairs. It was not intended as a one-time thing; it was intended as a permanent and perennial system of not only achieving, but maintaining for postal employees, comparability with workers in private industry.

However, because of the timelag I have mentioned, proper and contemporary comparability cannot be achieved unless the Congress approves the Morrison bill and the other bills companion to it which we are supporting.

If the promises implied and, indeed, explicitly stated in Public Law 87-793 are not fulfilled this year, then, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, you know as well as I do, that they will never be fulfilled. The whole principle of comparability will be as extinct as the dinosaur or the great auk.

This, in our opinion, would be a mistake of great magnitude.

This year, 1963, the letter carriers' centennial year, is the crucial year. Your actions, and the actions of your colleagues in both Houses of the Congress, will determine whether the principle of comparability will survive permanently, or whether we must go back to the old days of biennial public haggling over postal pay.

Mr. Chairman, the principle of comparability, if it is maintained, will benefit everyone concerned.

It will benefit the service-because good service depends fundamentally on the morale of the employee force.

It will benefit the Government-because the fiscal authorities will be able to anticipate pay raises based on comparability and make budgetary provisions for them.

And it will benefit the postal employees-who will be able to plan their own household budgets with more assurance and who, above all, will at last be able to live in the prideful realization that their Government employer does not intend ever again to treat them as second-class citizens or as unloved stepchildren in the economic family.

Thank you very much.

In addition to the statement we have presented, we have here a chart of the postal field service schedule. This shows the increases provided for, first, in the administration proposal, and then in the Morrison, Wallhauser, Dulski, and Olsen bill.

I am sure this will be helpful to you in considering this legislation. (The postal field service schedule follows:)

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Mr. OLSEN. It is your position that comparability is something that should be studied every year in keeping with the law that was passed last year. Is that correct?

Mr. KEATING. Yes. We think there should be an annual evaluation. As a matter of fact, it is becoming quite a common practice in many of our municipalities and States to set up a comparable figure and pay is determined annually on that basis.

Mr. OLSEN. That has been the pattern in private industry-that they have a review of wage scales annually?

Mr. KEATING. It has been known previously as the prevailing wage. That is the term usually used to describe it in private industry. Mr. OLSEN. So, to have true comparability under the law, we have to study the prevailing wage every year?

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