Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

from one district to another is seldom made and the promotions are generally solely within the district.

Mr. BACHARACH. We thank you very much.

Mr. KEDDY. Not at all, Mr. Chairman.

STATEMENT OF FRANK DOW, ASSISTANT TO GENERAL ANDREWS

Mr. Dow. One of the troubles we are having is the pay of the laborers in the customs service which is $1,320 a year while the pay of the laborers in the post-office service is $1,500. The result is we get the second-class material. That follows all the way along the line.

Mr. MARTIN. That is, in all of these different ports, where they work for the post office, they get $1,500 and in your department they only get $1,320?

Mr. Dow. Yes, sir.

Mr. BACHARACH. I think $1,500 is small enough pay in these days to get efficient men. Do you have trouble in getting laborers?

Mr. Dow. Well, we have to take the left-overs and second-class material. It is natural with a man who is going to work, when he can get a $1,500 job, he is going to take that in preference to $1,320.

Mr. MARTIN. Do ordinary laborers come under the civil service? Mr. Dow. Yes, sir; most of them. They have skilled laborers and unskilled laborers, in all about six or seven hundred laborers. They all get the same pay.

Mr. BACHARACH. How much vacation do these men get?

Mr. Dow. They are allowed 30 days a year.

Mr. BACHARACH. They are allowed 30 days a year?

Mr. Dow. Yes; but, as a matter of fact, they never take that.

Mr. BACHARACH. It is unusual for a man to take 30 days' vacation? Mr. Dow. It is unusual for them to take that, I would say.

Mr. MARTIN. Does he not get his pay during that time?

Mr. BACHARACH. He gets his pay but, if he works, he gets extra I presume.

pay,

Mr. WATSON. They are allowed so many days sick leave.

Mr. Dow. They are allowed 10 days a year sick leave, which is cumulative. They are not allowed 30 days sick leave any more except in meritorious cases.

Mr. DICKINSON. If he does not take his sick leave, you say it is cumulative?

Mr. Dow. If he does not take his sick leave in one year and the next year he has a serious sickness, he is allowed the full 30 days. Mr. DICKINSON. But suppose he does not take it, does he get extra pay, then?

Mr. Dow. No, he does not get any extra pay; he does not get any overtime pay; he gets regular pay.

Mr. CRISP. If he does not take his sick leave in one year, he gets 30 days the next year?

Mr. Dow. They are allowed 10 days' sick leave each year, except in meritorious cases.

Mr. DICKINSON. Suppose he does not take the sick leave or does not take his 30 days, but goes on and works: Does he get overtime pay, then, or does he get extra pay?.

Mr. Dow. He does not get extra pay. He gets pay while he is on his vacation and he gets his full pay when he is on sick leave.

Mr. BACHARACH. Suppose a man does not take his 30 days, but continues to work-he gets extra pay?

Mr. Dow. Oh, no; he does not get any extra pay.

Mr. DICKINSON. He gets nothing?

Mr. Dow. He gets nothing but his regular pay.

Mr. DICKINSON. That is what I want to get.

Mr. BACHARACH. That is a peculiar situation; you would think they would take their 30 days, anyhow.

Mr. Dow. In actual practice, they do not take their full 30 days. I remember in New York, in the appraisers stores, when I was there, they gave 14 days' annual vacation and, in exceptional cases, 21 days. It was very, very rarely that a man took the full 30 days' annual leave.

Now there are six or seven hundred laborers getting $1,320 a year. The next group is openers and packers. They are in two grades$1,500 and $1,600-and there are about four or five hundred of those in the customs service.

Mr. BACHARACH. Do the laborers get extra pay the same as inspectors?

Mr. Dow. Do they get extra pay?

Mr. BACHARACH. Yes.

Mr. Dow. If they work overtime, after 5 o'clock in the afternoon, on the ships. But I do not think any of them work overtime, do they, Mr. Camp?

Mr. CAMP. It would be unusual for a laborer to be called on to do the kind of work that would carry overtime pay.

Mr. BACHARACH. I was wondering if there was any reason why they were getting $1,320 as compared with $1,500 in the Post Office service, and was trying to figure out if they got extra pay for extra work?

Mr. Dow. The class of work that is done by the openers and packers is a little higher than that which is done by the laborers. The laborers in the custom service move the packing cases from one place to another; they are out on the wharves and on the piers and moving around bags of sugar and that sort of thing; while the openers and packers open the cases, verify the contents and close them up again.

Mr. WATSON. Does the importer have to pay?

Mr. Dow. No, indeed.

Mr. WATSON. What about the parcel post?

Mr. Dow. Well, the importer does not pay for that. Now, what I was getting at was that the lowest group receive $1,320; the next group gets $1,500 and $1,600. Now, if you increase the salaries of the laborers from $1,320 to $1,500, which is the salary of laborers in the Post Office Department, then you have to increase the salaries of the openers and packers; you have to increase the salaries of the clerks and you have to make an increase all along the line. Otherwise, you would not have a fair distribution.

Mr. BACHARACH. But you do recommend, however, that the salaries should be increased?

Mr. Dow. Yes, we certainly do.

Mr. BACHARACH. I mean the department has that frame of mind? Mr. Dow. Yes.

36200-27- 4

Mr. BACHARACH. They think these men are not paid enough money?

Mr. Dow. Exactly.

Mr. BACHARACH. Are there any further questions? If not, we thank you very much.

Mr. MAGEE. While Mr. Bond came in not to testify, I think you might be interested to hear from him his own personal experience, as to just what increase he has received in the last 15 years.

STATEMENT OF WILLIAM H. BOND, DIVISION INSPECTOR, BOSTON, MASS., PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF CUSTOMS INSPECTORS

Mr. BOND. I was very glad, Mr. Chairman, to have the question asked Mr. Dow in relation to vacations, because it brings to mind something which was said to me by our assistant surveyor in Boston yesterday. I have no statement prepared for this, because I knew nothing about the hearing until late yesterday and came down very hurriedly. He spoke about the vacation business. As a matter of fact, the taking of vacations, while we are allowed them by law, we are unable to enjoy vacations which we are entitled to because we can not afford to do it. This gentleman called my attention to this fact, that years ago when he was an inspector himself-I worked with him 30 years ago as an inspector-he could take his family to the country and pay their board and enjoy himself for two or three weeks' vacation and have a little money left at the end of it. But nowadays it is a fact that in our force of inspectors in Boston (and that applies also to other employees) there are very, very few who ever take a vacation, except to do just what you mention-they take their days. off and loaf.

In the last six years I have taken one vacation of two weeks. I spent it with my family, away from home, and paid my board. I can not afford to pay $20 a week board for my family on a vacation. Two of my vacations I have spent with overalls on painting my own house myself, because I can not afford to pay anybody else to do it. That, briefly, is the situation regarding vacations-they can not afford to take them.

Mr. WATSON. Can the employees take a vacation one day at a time? Mr. BOND. Yes, sir.

Mr. WATSON. They can take one or two days off at a time during the year?

Mr. BOND. Yes; you can take one or two days off up to a total of 30 days. That obtains in some ports more than in others. In New York the inspectors are not allowed to take more than 14 days at a time, because they can not get away-the passenger business is so great.

Now, in relation to this salary matter, while I represent the inspectors, I want to say my feeling in this matter is for the whole service; I am not speaking particularly for the inspectors, although I represent them. Of course, I know more about their circumstances, but I am familiar with the whole thing in a way and am particularly familar with the situation surrounding the inspectors.

I want to say a few words in regard to the history of the inspectors' salary situation. We introduced, or had introduced for us, a bill

providing for a statutory salary for inspectors. This was H. R. 15339, which Mr. LaGuardia introduced in December last. We did not expect, of course, any action was going to be taken by the committee or Congress on this thing, but we wanted Congress to know what we thought was proper. The inspector's salary has always been a statutory salary from the beginning of the Government. In 1789 it was $1.25 a day. It was made a daily salary and not a yearly salary, because the inspectors were not employed every day. The inspectors, in those days, were employed at various things; they were farmers, blacksmiths, or most anything else. But when they needed to be inspectors they went out and acted as inspectors, and when they were through with their inspector's job they went back to what they were working at before. That condition prevailed until very recent times.

After the opening of the nineteenth century, their pay was increased to $2 a day; a little later on, in the thirties, I think, it was increased to $3, and then, in 1864, it was increased to $4. Then, for a great many years, we went along at $4 a day.

Every time this increase of pay was authorized by Congress the pay immediately was raised to the amount specified. It was not a mandatory provision of Congress, but a permissive provision; it was an authorization and not a mandatory act. Then, from 1864, while other salaries were going on, the inspectors' salaries stayed stationary until 1909. We had been working a good many years to get the inspectors' salaries up, because their salaries were shamefully low for the responsibilities of their positions. In 1909 we succeeded in getting an act passed which increased our salaries, under the same language that had always been used by Congress, to $6 a day. However, not enough funds were appropriated and that increase never became fully effective; part of the force could not be paid up to the full extent of the $6, and only part of the force was raised to $6 per diem. The supervisors were raised to that and some of the inspectors in the port of New York were raised to $6-$6 in 1909 being considered a fair salary as compared with what they had always been and compared with outside salaries. Speaking of my own case particularly, as an illustration, I am in grade 9, the highest paid inspectors there are. We receive $2,600 per annum. Now, in the last 15 or 16 years, since those grades were established, the increase in pay of the grade in which I come at present has been 18.75 per cent; that is, in 15 or 16 years, that has been the increase in pay, covering the years of enormous increase in the cost of living. During the years when the cost of living was 120 per cent or more above the 1913 level we received, as an increase, only the bonus of $240, which was an increase of about 11 per cent to take care of an increase in the cost of living of over 100 per cent. At the present time, with the cost of living about 73 per cent above what it was in 1913, we have, in my grade, an increase of 18.75 per cent to take care of that. In other words, we are very much worse off than we were in 1913. I speak of this grade particularly, becuase we are worse off than the other grades; the others, while they are getting less pay, their percentage of increase has been rather great. That is a fact, of course, that the higher paid employees are in the worse situation.

This bill we introduced provided a grade of pay which we considered to be very desirable, ranging from $2,400 as the entrance

A

salary to a maximum of $4,000 for supervisory inspectors; that is, the discharge inspectors would go from $2,400 automatically up to $3,600, the supervisory inspectors would go from $3,600 automatically to $4,000, which would be their maximum. It provided for an automatic promotion for two years, providing their service was satisfactory, and the collector of customs at the port where they were employed having the veto power, of course, for cases where the men were not deserving. That automatic provision for promotion is very desirable.

Mr. BACHARACH. How much of an increase would that cost the Government per year?

Mr. BOND. If this bill were adopted?

Mr. BACHARACH. Yes.

Mr. BOND. It would be pretty difficult to say on that, but I should guess you see, we have included those men on the frontier who have the combined title of inspector and deputy collector. We have probably 1,500 to 1,600 men in our force. I think that is about right, Mr. Camp, is it not?

Mr. CAMP. Nineteen hundred.

Mr. BOND. And the salaries will range all the way from in the neighborhood of $1,800 at the present time up to $3,600. It is probable it would take, to put our bill into effect, as near as I could guess, a million dollars or probably a little more. Estimates have been made showing that it was considerably more than that, but I think they are erroneous.

Mr. CRISP. That is just for the inspectors?

Mr. BOND. Just for the inspectors. You understand, the inspectors are probably the largest body of one occupation among the 8,000 employees, the largest body holding one position, and they are stationed at all of the seaports and at all of the frontier ports and at many ports in the interior-those on the frontier and in the interior having the combined title of deputy collector and inspector, usually, or a similar title to that, and those at the seaports having simply the title of inspector.

Mr. BACHARACH. How much longer will it take you, Mr. Bond? There is no desire to cut you off, but the members of the committee will want to be on the floor to-day at 12 o'clock.

Mr. BOND. You are going to meet again?

Mr. BACHARACH. Not before next Wednesday.

Mr. MARTIN. Why could not Mr. Bond present his views in writing?

Mr. BOND. I was going to say I should like to file a brief giving our views.

Mr. BACHARACH. You will have ample time to do that and put it in the record, because we do not expect to take this matter up at this session.

Mr. BOND. That is why we are disappointed, that there is so much time, because in the mean time we are eating hay and not oats.

Mr. BACHARACH. The great difficulty with your bill is that, for your inspectors alone, it would cost a thousand dollars per man in

crease.

Mr. BOND. Oh, no; it would not amount to anything like that.
Mr. BACHARACH. That is $1,900,000.

Mr. BOND. No; it would not amount to anything like that.

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »