It is evident that the States with the greatest unemployment problems will be the States least equipped to handle their problems effectively and most in need of prompt and effective handling of such problems. The question of State rights and State independence is a real and important problem in the Government of the United States. States and the people of States have reason to question continuing increase in Federal control. Nevertheless State rights cannot be maintained in the face of and contrary to such trends as 8-hour transportation across the United States, telephone, radio, and other services that make neighbors of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and a host of other trends within which State lines become more and more arbitrary and meaningless. Somehow the State's rights in solution of employment problems should be maintained as strongly as possible, but the United States cannot grow strong under a program of State rights for State rights' sake, similar to the divisions of independences that have bedeviled Europe for centuries. A self-respecting cooperation between States and Federal Government in handling employment questions-in which the Federal Government is equipped to handle the problems that extend across State lines and State interestshould be evolved. [Editorial-Atlanta Journal, Atlanta, Ga., November 1, 1945] DON'T SWAP HORSES Now However strong and valid may be the arguments for returning to the individual States the functions now performed by the Federal Employment Service, the proposal that this be done immediately overlooks certain important facts and needs. In the transition from war to peace millions of persons face urgent problems of readjustment. Jobs must be found for many who worked in war industries which have been closed, for men and women discharged from the armed forces, and for those whom the returning veterans will displace. All this is part of the exigencies of reconversion, now entering its critical stage. The efficiency with which employment and reemployment needs are handled will be a vital factor in the success of reconversion and in the welfare of multitudes of Americans. Is not an agency which already is organized for this purpose and which operates on a countrywide scale better prepared to meet the emergency than 48 separate and independent units would be? This, it seems to us, is a logically compelling reason why the United States Employment Service should be maintained until the crisis is passed. Then it can be returned to the States. Federal management took over activities in this field as a war measure in January 1942, when the imperative need was to find men for jobs. Now comes the equally imperative need of finding jobs for men. This, too, is an interstate and interregional problem, so wide and so complex that nothing short of a unified national effort can master it. The folly of swapping horses while crossing a river would be carried to its extreme if, as bills pending in Congress propose, the reconversion employment services should be forced from a national to a State and local set-up within the next 30 or 60 days. That would be bad for America; bad for the South; bad for Georgia. [The San Francisco News, Thursday, November 1, 1945] JOB FINDERS ARE THREATENED WITH UNEMPLOYMENT-WHEN MOST NEEDED (Arthur Caylor) At the very hour when President Truman, in his role of Mr. America, has been suggesting a basis for wage peace the Nation over, Congress, my agents report, has been preparing to toss California an equally national labor problem-to handle as a State. It's the job-placement problem-as affected by the prospective return of the United States Employment Service to the States. California, it appears, will shortly find itself in the fix of a father whose daughter, sent to the grocery store 32 years ago, has just got home with a flock of extraneous children and some story about being bitten by a stork. Like papa, the State will lack any policy and any large knowledge of what to do about a trying situation. In fact, it appears right now that when the change comes, some three-quarters of the State's professional job finders may be out of a job themselves. Of 2,000 persons who staff the California offices of the USES, around 475 have some fragmentary rights about getting back on the State pay roll. They are the ones who were working for the State when Uncle Sam took over the service as a war measure. They don't even have the attraction of seniority to lure them back into State service. Since January 1942, when Uncle assumed control, many things have changed. The days of Pearl Harbor are a long time ago. As a Federal agency, the Employment Service has grown vastly. Should lack of a 1945 model State policy shrink the personnel to one-quarter its wartime numbers, insiders insist, the depleted State agency will nevertheless face a more difficult problem than it handled as a Federal agency. It has almost no chance to get anywhere-except into a mess. The big change since Pearl Harbor is that the labor market has become national. The day has passed when all an employer had to do was call up Murray & Ready. As everybody knows, shipyard workers came here from every State. What California can't afford to overlook is the fact that workers have retained their travel habits. They think nothing of a transcontinental hop-by jalopy perhaps that would have been considered fantastic a few years ago. This means any new California State employment service must have its lines out all over the United States. Very probably it will have to find ways of maintaining Nation-wide functions which were easly enough when the service was a Federal agency but may be difficult, indeed, as a State agency. Furthermore, serious complications may develop if the Service is allowed to collapse because the State isn't prepared to resume responsibilty. Right now, California leads the Nation in placing veterans. The record couldn't be maintained without skilled and conscientious interviewers. Consider how different are the men who come back from the boys who went to war. They've acquired new maturity, new skills, new responsibilities. Most of them can use a degree of guidance in getting a job that will fit. DARK VIEW AHEAD Again, it is possible that the prospect of a postwar boom will be kicked around to the point where, in not too many months, California will have an unemployment problem of nothing but mean proportions. In such a case, a State employment service that is both well staffed and settled in policy may become just about as desirable as dry land to the seasick. Already the number of unemployed in Los Angeles has officials worried. They don't particularly like to think about what may happen after the first of the year. Yet even the matter of placing war workers who are not on California unemployment insurance is not bounded by State lines. A great many displaced workers, my men learn, after refusing to take one of the low-pay jobs that make up about half the openings listed by the Employment Service, have gone on unemployment insurance—and then left the State. This allows them to get the full amount of insurance for the maximum timewithout supervision. They can collect from California and be working at the same time, if they feel like it. Hence, it's their idea to stay out of the State only until they have exhausted their insurance. Then, the employment experts say, they'll be back looking for California jobs. THEY WILL RETURN Shrewd observers like Lieutenant Governor Houser suggest also that a great many workers and servicemen will be back in California after spending maybe 6 months wherever they came from. It's traditional that people newly from places like Kansas and Minnesota and Pennsylvania wouldn't have California as a gift. But once "back hole" and over their homesickness, they head for California again- satisfied thenceforward to live here. Already in-migration is showing a come-back. One big thing about increased and more stable employment, too, is that it all adds up to greater production. Production is the only thing which can prevent inflation. Only goods in quantities that make them cheap can keep the wage dollar from dying of anemia. It all adds up, the employment people insist, to the argument that the State-knowing it's about to have the USES left on its doorstep-could advantageously decide in advance what to do with it. A REPORT OF THE LABOR COMMITTEE OF THE NATIONAL PLANNING ASSOCIATION A NATIONAL EMPLOYMENT SERVICE At the request of the labor committee, the NPA board of trustees has authorized the publication of this report. Such authorization does not necessarily imply agreement with the report by NPA board members or the members of the other NPA standing committees. The views expressed are solely the responsibility of the labor committee. CLINTON S. GOLDEN, Chairman, NPA Labor Committee, United Steelworkers of America. Vice Chairman, NPA Labor Committee, National Planning Association, 800 Twenty-first Street NW., Washington 6, D. C., December 17, 1945 LABOR COMMITTEE Clinton S. Golden, chairman, United Steelworkers of America Marion H. Hedges, vice chairman, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Solomon Barkin, Textile Workers Union of America James Carey, Congress of Industrial Organizations John Childs, American Federation of Teachers Katherine Pollak Ellickson, Congress of Industrial Organizations Frank Fenton, American Federation of Labor H. W. Fraser, Order of Railway Conductors of America David Kaplan, International Brotherhood of Teamsters 1 Julius Luhrsen,1 American Train Dispatchers' Association George Meany, American Federation of Labor Elmer Milliman, Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees Emil Rieve, Textile Workers Union of America Boris Shishkin, American Federation of Labor Ted F. Silvey, Congress of Industrial Organizations Mark Starr, International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union Lazare Teper," International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union Raymond Walsh, WMCA Radio Station Robert J. Watt, American Federation of Labor A NATIONAL EMPLOYMENT SERVICE Most of the 12,000,000 men and women who went into the armed forces will soon be home and looking for work; 8,000,000 war workers are in the process of changing jobs. This is an employment problem equal to any the Nation has ever faced. It requires a program of national action if full employment is to be achieved. One part of that program should be continued provision for a national employment service. The country already has a national employment service that is a "going concern." That organization is the United States Employment Service. The USES operates a chain of approximately 1,700 local employment offices in large and 1 President on leave. 2 Absent while serving in the armed forces of the United States. small communities across the country. These offices are not uniformly effective at the present time, due principally to financial and staffing difficulties which have prevented the USES from carrying out its full program. Potentially, however, the public employment offices are community employment centers, which should place workers in available jobs, give vocational counseling to all those (including veterans) who need special help in job hunting, assist employers in improving personnel practices, and keep the public informed on the current employment situation. Within our lifetime the Federal Government has had to operate the public employment service every time employment became critical. This happened in World War I, in the depression, and during World War II. A service operated on State lines simply was not adequate when the employment problem became serious. No one can question the fact that the problem of postwar full employment is serious. The committee believes that the Federal Government must accept its share of the responsibility for assuring full employment, including the operation of a continued federalized employment service. The immediate prospects for continuing the USES as a Federal service are poor. The Congress is taking action that will break up the present single national system and make the USES a Federal-State program consisting of 52 separate State and Territorial systems. This retreat from responsibility means that the Federal Government will turn over the operation of the Employment Service to the States, but go right on paying 100 percent of the cost. With millions of veterans and war workers looking for jobs, there could be no worse time to disrupt the national Employment Service. Experience will prove that the public employment service cannot handle the employment and labor market questions that face it today unless it is run by the Federal Government as a single, Nation-wide service. ARGUMENTS FOR AND AGAINST STATE OPERATION Coordination of USES with State unemployment compensation agencies The principal argument for returning the USES to the States is that State control is essential for the administration of State employment compensation laws. It is claimed that these laws cannot be administered efficiently unless the local employment offices at which the unemployed register for work are run by the same agency that is responsible for unemployment compensation. The fact is, however, that the USES already cooperates with State unemployment compensation agencies. It registers benefit claimants and finds jobs for them. Such cooperation is all that is needed. It does not and should not mean the subjugation of the USES to the State agencies. Experience has shown that the domination by unemployment compensation agencies seriously impairs the Employment Service program. There are 47 States with "merit rating" provisions in their compensation laws. In these States the contributions individual employers make to the unemployment insurance fund are based in part on the stability of their employment records, as measured by the benefits paid to the employees they have laid off. It is to the immediate financial advantage of the employer in these States when a laid-off worker, instead of receiving benefits, can be referred to the first job on file in the USES, even though the job is below the worker's skill and past earnings. In every State there is some pressure to favor this kind of referral policy in order to keep wage rates down. Those State unemployment compensation agencies which want the Employment Service returned to the States do not like its present referral policy. They would like to change that policy. If the unemployment compensation agencies dominated the Employment Service, they could require local employment offices to report a worker who refuses to take a job that is unsuitable when compared with his experience and income requirements. Then they could deny his benefits. This amounts to using the Employment Service to force down the worker's standard of living by driving labor into cheap jobs. When the local employment offices are federally operated, they are expected to follow nationally accepted placement standards. The local office may offer the worker a job at lower wages, but only if the job is one that uses the worker's full abilities or skills related to his principal abilities. Local offices under the Federal system are not permitted to send a worker to jobs where the working conditions are legally substandard or where the wages are less than the prevailing rate. It should be remembered that unemployment-benefit claimants are not the only people who use the public employment service. The USES also has the responsibility for helping 1. The employer, who wants assistance in recruiting qualified workers or improving his personnel methods. 2. The veteran, who may or may not be drawing an unemployment allowance, but who wants placement and counseling service. 3. The young person leaving school, who needs job guidance. 4. The worker with a handicap, who needs special attention and help in finding the job he can do best. 5. The minority worker-discriminated against because of race, sex, religion, or national origin, who will be at a disadvantage now that wartime labor shortages are disappearing, and for whom the USES can do a real service. To operate a well-rounded placement and counseling service for all groups in the community, the USES must be a Federal service, free from State unemployment compensation agency domination. Supervision of State employment services Proponents of Federal-State operation generally claim that the Employment Service can be run as efficiently by the States as it can by the National Government. They point out that the Federal Government can withhold money from any State that does not live up to reasonable standards of operation. This sounds as if it would be effective. Actually, it has not been, because it means closing down the service and penalizing the employers and workers who use the service. It makes the public, rather than the State administration, suffer. It has been proposed that the Federal Government discipline a State that operates poorly by recapturing its funds and running the State service itself. Under this plan, the Employment Service could be Federal in some States and not in others. There is a simpler and surer way to supervise the Employment Service throughout the country, namely, to run it as a national service. Local initiative in developing the program Those who favor State operation of the Employment Service claim that employment is a local problem which must be handled locally. They assert that Federal control of the United States Employment Service stifles the exercise of desirable initiative by the local offices in helping communities to meet their particular employment situations. The fact is that Federal operation of the United States Employment Service has not had this effect. On the contrary, community initiative in helping the Employment Service to handle labor supply and demand problems was encouraged during the war years. Local employment officials, assisted by advisory committees of management and labor, ran their manpower programs themselves within broad national standards. The proof of this is seen in the variety of community manpower programs which existed during the war. The Buffalo plan, the Dayton plan, the Louisville plan are only a few examples. Even greater latitude for local initiative and participation in planning the community employment service program exists now that the war is over. The United States Employment Service nationally is continuing its policy of decentralized administration. It puts responsibility on its field offices, which consult with advisory committees representing community interests. It operates an information exchange service, so that the operations of different communities in analyzing and creating employment opportunities can be shared. Local projects, like the employment planning council in Dallas and the communitywide employment committee in Wheeling-which the United States Employment Service locally helped to organize-are evidence that Federal operation and local initiative are compatible. WHY FEDERAL OPERATION MAKES SENSE The labor market itself is national A community in which most workers live close enough to their jobs to travel back and forth every day is a "local labor market." While most workers never leave their home communities, many have to migrate for employment. During the wartime employment boom, for example, at least 15.3 million people moved |