GENERAL CONDITIONS TENDING TO DECREASE LABOR SUPPLY

Many factors, varying in degree of importance and influence, contribute to the scarcity of labor for household employment. Perhaps the primary reason for the present unpopularity of household employment is the higher status, shorter hours, better pay, and opportunity for advancement which industrial jobs offer today. The increased opportunities for vocational education and on-the-job training in industry are an influence. In addition, potential workers are more aware than they were formerly of alternative job opportunities.

In the past, foreign-born women, who were a large proportion of the houseworkers, were frequently uninformed about other jobs; and the absence of substantial immigration since the First World War undoubtedly contributed to the current scarcity of such workers. (In contrast, the proportion of Negro women workers among household employees, always substantial, increased after World War I.)

Not only did women increasingly fail to seek household work as their first jobs, but during the war women already in household employment also left it for industrial work. Probably a large proportion of the 400,000 domestic workers who withdrew from domestic service in the years 1940 to 1944 accepted industrial jobs. Many of them are reluctant to return to their former work. Of over 600 former household workers in wartime industrial jobs who were interviewed by the Women's Bureau, 90 percent expressed a need for postwar jobs; threefourths of these, however, preferred industrial to household work."

A comparison of household with other fields of employment may help to account for this attitude. Outstanding among the determining factors are the lack of status which has stigmatized household employment, long hours and poor working conditions, the lack of adequate training facilities and poor placement techniques, and no, or only very inferior, protection against insecurity.

STATUS

The effects of the traditional and prevalent disparagement of household employment must be recognized. Many workers consider

• These facts appear from a series of figures constructed with the aim of providing fairly comparable data on domestic servants from 1910 to 1940. Included in the data were laundresses, untrained nurses, cooks, and other workers classified in domestic and personal service, but housekeepers were excluded. Of the group, approximately one-seventh were foreign born in 1930 compared with more than one-fifth in 1910; nearly one-half were Negro in 1930, compared with only about one-third in 1910. (Stigler, George J., Domestic Servants in the U. S., 1900-1940. National Bureau of Economic Research, Occasional Paper, No. 24, 1946.)

U. S. Department of Labor, Women's Bureau. Wartime Shifts of Household Employees into Other Industries. Release, March 1946. (Mimeo.)

domestic service as a last resort when efforts to secure other types of employment fail. Many other persons, genuinely interested in household employment as an occupation, who might develop skill and find satisfaction in it, are discouraged from entering a field so limited in the benefits and dignity accorded it in comparison with other kinds of work and, further, beset with petty personal humiliations.

HOURS AND OTHER WORKING CONDITIONS

The regularly scheduled hours prevalent in industrial work offer a sharp contrast to the long and irregular hours characteristic of domestic service. Many industrial establishments operate on a 40hour week, with compensatory pay for overtime. Household employment, in contrast, usually entails indefinite hours of work, subject to the convenience of the employer; rest periods and time off are generally not free of "emergency" duties. In 1940, 25 out of 100 women household workers reported a workweek of 60 hours or more, whereas of women reporting such hours in hotels and eating places the proportions were 13 out of 100 and 11 out of 100, respectively.10 Not only are hours long, but wage rates in domestic service usually compare unfavorably with those in other service industries. Household workers before the war were the lowest paid of all employed women in the country. The median year's wages in 1939, for over a million female domestic employees who worked 12 months, was $312 in cash wages excluding room and board, and about one-fourth of the women earned less than $174, three-fourths less than $503.11

11

A check in May 1946 on wages offered in classified newspaper advertisements of 22 cities throughout the country revealed offers as low as $8, $10, and $12 weekly,12 even though during the war wages for household employees rose considerably, in many areas reaching $20 to $25 a week. Impermanency of wartime pay levels is a possibility with which the household worker is flatly faced.

In regard also to opportunities for upgrading and promotion, paid vacations, extra pay for holiday work, and the assurance that money earned will be paid regularly household employment suffers in comparison with other employment.

TRAINING FACILITIES AND PLACEMENT TECHNIQUES

Opportunities for training to develop skills are frequently offered industrial workers through vocational courses, apprenticeships, and on-the-job training programs. At times such training is given at

10 Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940. Population, vol. III, The Labor Force, part I. U. S. Summary, table 86.

11 Ibid., table 72.

12 U. S. Department of Labor, Women's Bureau. Household Employment-A Digest of Current Information. September 1946. (Mimeo.)

the expense of the employer, and on paid time. In household em, ployment, however, few such opportunities are offered; working time is usually not allowed for training, and since usually no distinction is made between wage rates to trained and those to untrained workers, there is little inducement to attend training courses.

Placement techniques for household employees also generally lag behind the practice followed in placing other types of workers. Much progress has been made in recent years in defining the type of work to be done in manufacturing and commercial occupations; increasingly such work is fairly clearly defined, and the duties involved and skills required for a job are known to both employer and employee. For the most part such standards do not exist for household employment. Increasing the work load of a household employee in reward for the swift completion of her tasks continues a frequent practice. Duties usually are not clearly stated or defined.

ECONOMIC SECURITY

Household employees do not as a rule have the protection generally afforded other workers by laws that provide compensation for injury, sickness, unemployment, old age, or that safeguard wage and hour standards; nor is it customary, in the absence of legal standards, for employers to furnish such protection voluntarily.

Although industrial workers receive workmen's compensation in all but one State, only three States, California, Ohio, and New York, provide compulsory coverage of domestic employees.13 In California coverage is compulsory only for household workers employed over 52 hours a week by one employer. In Ohio coverage is compulsory only for employers of three or more persons. In New York the law covers workers who are employed 48 hours or more weekly by a single employer in cities of 40,000 population or over. It should be noted that the New York law, although termed "compulsory," does not provide any penalty against the employer for failing to take out insurance, as do the laws of California and Ohio. The New York law merely entitles the household worker upon sustaining an injury to make a claim for workmen's compensation instead of suing in the courts, and the State agency will try to enforce such claims against the employer. Connecticut and New Jersey permit employers to "elect" whether or not they will bring household workers under the law.1 One State, Mississippi, has no workmen's compensation law. The remaining

13 U. S. Department of Labor, Women's Bureau, Legislation Affecting Household Employees (as o October 1, 1947). (Mimeo.)

14 Elective coverage means that the employer has the option of either accepting or rejecting the act, but if he rejects it and the worker brings a suit for damages, the employer cannot claim the defenses he had at common law, i. e., that the worker assumed the risk of the employment, that the injury was due to negligence of a fellow servant, or that the worker himself was guilty of contributory negligence.

States for the most part permit voluntary coverage 15 of household workers, though several States appear to exclude the group through specific exemption without clear provision for voluntary coverage by the employer.16

Household employees, therefore, generally must depend on either their own resources or their employers' voluntary financial assistance when on-the-job injuries require medical attendance or rob them of their earning capacity. Many employers are not inclined or cannot afford to assume such a responsibility. A study in Washington, D. C., known as the 1940 Household Employment Report, indicates that employers included in the study did not generally carry insurance for compensation to injured employees. Of 447 employers answering a question on this subject, only 8 percent stated that they had made any accident compensation provisions for their workers." No information is at hand on the extent to which employers, without insurance or previous agreement with the employee, compensate for injuries after they have occurred.

That household workers lack coverage by accident insurance is particularly serious when one considers available data on the frequency and severity of household accidents and the inability of workers to bear the financial cost. A study of accidents in the personal service occupations made by the Ohio Department of Industrial Relations in 1932-33 revealed that the greatest percentage occurred to women engaged in household employment. A larger proportion of the injuries to these women, as compared with injuries to employees in other occupations, caused over 7 days of disability. Over 70 percent of the women household employees incapacitated reported wages of less than $15 weekly.18

Household employment, on the whole, also lacks planned provisions for sick leave payments. Individual employers may continue wage payments during the illness of their own employees, but there is no standardized practice covering such situations. In the 1940 Washington, D. C., survey on household employment, 28 percent of the 489 employers reporting paid full wages to their workers when ill, and 6 employers paid part of the wages.

Household employees are excluded from sickness benefits in the two States, Rhode Island and California, which provide payment for tem

1 Voluntary coverage means that the employer may come under the act voluntarily but failure to do so does not result in a loss of his common law defenses.

16 U. S. Department of Labor, Women's Bureau, Legislation Affecting Household Employees (as of October 1, 1947). (Mimeo.)

17 Women Domestic Workers in Washington, D. C., 1940. Monthly Labor Review, February 1942, p. 352.

18 U. S. Department of Labor, Women's Bureau. Old Age Insurance for Household Workers. 1947 (Bull. 220.)

porary disability to workers who are covered by unemployment compensation.

The same situation exists in relation to medical and hospital expenses incurred by household employees because of illness. Again, the employers may occasionally assume responsibility in such cases, but only 9 percent of the 491 employees reporting in the 1940 Washington, D. C., study had received medical care for which employers bore the total costs.19

In only one State, New York, are household workers covered by unemployment compensation, and there only where the employer employs four or more workers in his home for 15 days in a calendar year.20

Under the Old Age and Survivors insurance provisions of the Federal Security Act, household employment is entirely excluded from the benefits provided.

21

Domestic employees, furthermore, are deprived of the safeguards of wages and hours which the majority of States afford their women industrial workers by law."1 Minimum-wage laws exist in 26 States and the District of Columbia. While such wage laws in eight States— California, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wisconsin-do not exclude domestic workers from coverage, Wisconsin is the only State in which a minimum-wage rate for domestic employees is in effect. In Wisconsin minimum hourly rates of 45, 40, and 38 cents have been established for towns of specified population for a workweek of 45 hours or less. Weekly rates for 45 hours or more per week, which likewise vary with the size of the town, have also been established.22

Although 43 States and the District of Columbia have maximumhours legislation for women, only one State, Washington, limits hours for domestic workers. In that State a 60-hour maximum workweek, which may be extended in cases of emergency, is in effect for both male and female domestic workers.

19 Idem.

20 U. S. Department of Labor, Women's Bureau. Legislation Affecting Household Employees (as of October 1, 1947). (Mimeo.)

21 Idem.

22 In cities and villages with a population of 3,500 or more the minimum wage is $12 per week if board only is furnished; $8 per week if board and lodging are furnished; in cities and villages with a population of 1,000 up to 3,500, $10.75 per week if board only is furnished and $7.25 per week if board and lodging are furnished; elsewhere in the State, $10.25 per week if board only is furnished and $7 per week if board and lodging are furnished.