Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

The National Labor Relations Board in three recent decisions involving collective bargaining of unions and the right of Negro members to unrestricted membership, has in effect given the sanction of the Federal Government to discriminatory practices against Negro workers. The Board certified three unions as the exclusive agents of all employees in each of the three cases, although Negro members of these unions did not enjoy the rights and privileges of full membership status. On the other hand, the United States Supreme Court in the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen case, and the War Labor Board in several other rulings, have given opposite decisions. We are convinced that a basic definition by law, or by regulation with the force of law, and Federal implementing machinery are two of the most appropriate and sure means of eliminating such restrictive membership practices.

The United States Employment Service.-The United States Employment Service is, and will probably be, a strategic point of contact for Negro workers and veterans seeking employment. Racial practices in some local, regional, and area offices of the United States Employment Service have advanced in the past 4 years, but there is much room for improvement in the service of routing Negro workers to jobs. Among other things, few offices employ Negro personnel at levels which permit them to share in policy making or program planning. For instance, in region VII covering Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Tennessee, a negligible number of Negroes are to be found as interviewers or counselors despite the high proportion of Negroes in the population of the region.

Civil Service. The number of Negro workers enjoying Federal civil-service status has increased from 60,000 to 273,000 during the war. The majority of these workers have only temporary civil service status, but many of them will seek to qualify for permanent employment now that the war is over. The continuation of fair and impartial practices with respect to the selection and assignment of Negro eligibles to job openings under civil service jurisdiction will aid materially in preventing discrimination against them.

Phases of social security.-The need for a higher level of unemployment benefits has been stressed by the President of the United States. Negro workers, who will be seriously affected by cutbacks, are among those whom the solution of this issue will affect most directly.

Indeed, the social-security program we now have is of little direct benefit to millions of Negroes. The act excludes, from both unemployment insurance and old-age and survivors insurance, employees in private households and farm work-two occupations in which millions of Negroes make their living. Some 45,000,000 wage earners are now building protection against the economic risks of death and penniless old age under the Federal old-age and survivors insurance program. The opportunity to share these benefits is denied to some fifteen to twenty million wage earners, many of whom are Negroes. Of all monthly benefits awarded in 1942, only 6 percent went to Negroes, although they normally represent about 10 percent of our working population.

Unless the Social Security Act is changed, there is also real danger that many Negroes now in industrial jobs and contributing to the social security fund will not be protected against the hazards of unemployment or old age. Many of them who lack the industrial tenure required for benefits may be forced to return to employment not now covered by the Social Security Act. Unemployment insurance, too, excludes from its scope domestic and agricultural service, public employment, and certain other jobs. In many States those who work for small firms are not covered. Here again large numbers of Negroes find themselves automatically left with no insurance protection. Constructive proposals now before Congress would eliminate such discrimination in the coverage of workers. The words "social security" will take on meaning for millions of Negroes if these proposals are enacted into legislation.

HOW WILL RECONVERSION AFFECT NEGRO WORKERS?

(By Julius A. Thomas)

On VE-day I crossed a busy intersection in Harlem, observing the hilarious excitement occasioned by the end of the war in Europe. A few feet away stood a small group of young fellows about to join in the demonstration. One sober-faced youngster who seemed to share little of the enthusiasm of his friends suddenly burst forth with this observation: "Boy, what you so happy about? Don't you know that means the end of yo' job?"

Certainly, I would not say the attitude of this young man was typical of the Negro's reaction to the termination of one phase of the most brutal war in world history. Thousands of patriotic Negro families are rejoicing over the prospects of having husbands, brothers, sons, and loved ones back home again. But for countless other families, Negro and white, the end of the war means loss of jobs and the end of war-born prosperity. Thus, the grim possibility of widespread unemployment hangs like a menacing cloud over the Nation even before we silence the drums of war in the Pacific.

For the Negro worker, war has always been an important factor in shaping his economic destiny. The Civil War gave him the right to sell his labor as a freeman, and the First World War enabled him to taste the fruits of industrial opportunity. The present war has opened wide new doors of employment, thereby permitting hundreds of thousands of Negroes to master new skills and industrial techniques. It is understandable, therefore, that many Negroes should anticipate with serious misgivings the possibility that the return to a peacetime economy will mean the loss of these newly acquired jobs in industry. What reconversion will mean for Negro wage earners is, therefore, an important aspect of the whole problem of postwar employment. We shall not find a satisfactory solution for the over-all problem unless we face squarely and dispassionately the precarious position of 13,000,000 Negroes in our society.

The role of the Negro worker in the American economy is too well known to require additional documentation in this article. The patterns that were crystallized during the long years of slavery have changed but very little during the past 80 years, despite vast improvement in the Negro's educational opportunities. Only the fields of racial service have afforded the majority of trained Negroes a real chance to demonstrate their capacities and abilities, and this fact tends to perpetuate a narrow one-sided philosophy of Negro education. Thus the recent large-scale movement of Negro workers into industrial employment becomes more significant against this background of tradition in racial employment practices.

NEGRO LABOR DURING THE WAR

More than a million Negro workers have been added to the labor force during the past 4 years, while another million Negroes have been inducted into the armed forces. Unemployment has been virtually wiped out in most sections of the country. In the production of essential war materials 11⁄2 million Negroes will be found. About 20 percent of this number are women workers who were among the last persons called upon to round out our wartime labor force. While there has been a decided increase in the number of Negro workers employed in what we consider continuing industries, the majority of Negro war workers have been employed in strictly war production. According to the War Manpower Commission's most recent reports, the Negro labor force in essential employment is distributed in the following categories: Shipbuilding, 192,000; aircraft production, 116,000; ordnance and communication equipment, 122,000; basic metals and rubber, 103,000; other munitions, 160,000. From these estimates it will be observed that 600,000 Negro workers are concentrated in the industries that will suffer most severe cut-backs when peace comes.

Another 210,000 Negro workers have increased the number on the Federal pay roll from 69,000 to almost 270,000. Employed under temporary civil-service contracts, many of these workers will be released 6 months after the end of the war or when their services are no longer needed. A substantial number of these Government workers are in white-collar or clerical jobs, a field which has offered very limited opportunities for Negro workers. It is worth mentioning in this connection that before the war, 90 percent of all Negro workers in Federal employment were classified as unskilled workers and were employed largely as janitors, messengers, and laborers in custodial service. During the past 4 years, according to a study recently released by the Division of Analysis of the Fair Employment Practice Committee, the number of Negroes on the Federal pay roll classified as clerical, administrative, and technical workers constitutes almost 35 percent of the total Negro employment. The percentage of Negro workers in the total Government work force increased during the same period from 8.4 percent to 12.5 percent. This substantial change in the status of Negro-Government workers will be materially affected when demobilization of the vast army of civilian Government workers finally begins.

THE NEGRO VETERAN

Approximately 1,100,000 Negroes have been inducted into the Army, Navy, Coast Guard, and other branches of the armed forces. In this group are more than 50 percent of all Negro males between 18 and 37 years of age. They have come from every section of the country in about the same proportion that they bear to the total local population. As would be expected, almost 70 percent of the Negro enrollment in the military services came from the Southern States, and 50 percent of this number are from rural sections of the South. We have only tentative estimates of the size of our peacetime Army and Navy, but it is very possible that we shall maintain a force of at least 2,500,000 men. Assuming that Negroes will constitute 10 percent of the postwar Army, we may expect the eventual demobilization of almost 800,000 Negro veterans of this war.

The return of these men to civilian life will further intensify the employment problems of Negro wage earners in spite of the provisions of the GI bill of rights. To begin with, relatively few Negroes in the service had jobs to which they will want to return after the war. The most accurate estimates available indicate that not more than 25 or 30 percent of all veterans will return to prewar employment. It is doubtful that 15 percent of Negro veterans held prewar jobs that will satisfy them when they are discharged from the service. We may expect, therefore, the return of some 700,000 Negro veterans to a saturated labor market soon after peace comes. An estimated 50,000 Negro veterans will take advantage of the educational opportunities offered in the GI bill.

The adjustment of these men to our peacetime economy will not be an easy task. To begin with, Negroes in the Army and Navy have been used primarily in noncombat units-engineers, transport, quartermaster, communications, supply, and maintenance services. In addition to the basic military training which they have received, many of them have acquired skills and experience which they could never have gotten in civilian life. Undoubtedly they will prefer jobs in which some of these skills can be utilized. If they are denied a fair chance at available jobs in the occupational fields of their choice, they will have just cause to question the integrity of our peace aims just as they have had reason to doubt the sincerity of war aims when their interests were involved.

NEGRO MIGRATION

In the midst of the social and economic upheavals caused by this war, another significant change in the distribution of the Negro population has been observed. The movement from the farm to the city and from the South to the North-a movement which was sharply accelerated during World War I and immediately thereafter has made the Negro predominantly an urban dweller. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported recently that the male Negro labor force on farms declined from 47 percent in April 1940 to 28 percent in 1944. While this movement did not get under way until the need for workers in west coast, southern, and eastern shipyards became acute, at least 800,000 Negroes have deserted the farms for work in industrial plants during the past 4 years.

Whether or not these people will return to their rural habitat when the war is over is not certain at this point. The prospects are, however, that the vast majority will not return unless the much discussed industrialization of the South proceeds at a more rapid rate. It is even predicted that the end of war will usher in another period of migration from the South to the North, Middle West, and west coast. The movement, according to some observers, will be spearheaded by Negro veterans in search of better working and living conditions for themselves and their families. This unpredictable factor in the postwar attitudes of the Nation's Negro population may exert a considerable influence on race relations not only in the field of employment but in many other areas of community life.

CAN WE SOLVE THE PROBLEM?

Most people agree that if we are able to maintain a high level of employment after the war, many of the problems discussed in this article will be resolved. Of course the future of our national well being can be said to depend on this imponderable. But the cold fact is that the Negro worker will have more than his rightful share of frustrations and disappointments in his efforts to broaden his economic outlook.

In the first place, a disproportionate number of Negro workers and veterans will have to be reemployed. They will be competing in a labor market against the best trained labor force the Nation has even produced. While most employers agree that Negro workers have demonstrated their ability to produce as much as any other workers when given an opportunity, strong pressures generated in an atmosphere of insecurity and fear may prove too powerful to overcome in the struggle for the continuation of fair employment practices after the war.

By no means should it be said that all employers will yield to the undemocratic attitudes which have their roots in race prejudice. The writer has talked with scores of industrialists who have given every assurance that they will continue to employ Negro workers and give them a fair chance to develop their skills and capabilities. But it should be remembered that many employers, even during the war, employed Negro and other minority-group workers only to the extent necessary to comply with Federal directives and regulations. "The end of the war will give us the chance to eliminate many undesirable workers whom we didn't want in the first place," one employer remarked recently. Happily, this does not represent the attitude of the majority of progressive spokesmen for industry and business. Nor does it reflect the thinking of enlightened labor leadership whose influence has played no small part in removing many of the obstacles to the employment of Negro workers in the hundreds of war plants.

The solution to this vexing problem is to be found in the conscience of the American people. In no sense have the depressed masses of Negroes in America had a fair chance in the Nation's economy. The rigid controls imposed by an unyielding caste system have "kept the Negro in his place" more often than they have given him an opportunity to know how it feels to be a first-class individual. This contradiction in our racial practices has not only restricted the Negro's opportunities for profitable employment but it has set him apart in an isolated compartment of our national culture. His personality, his family life, his chances for an education, his house, even the street in which he resides, reflect the devastating effects of cultural and economic ostracism.

The war has afforded an excellent opportunity to examine the basis of human relations in our society. Many thoughtful Americans have come to understand the real meaning of human freedom and equality of opportunity. They are more disposed to extend these fundamental rights to all American citizens regardless of race or religion. It is in this heartening possibility that we shall discover the courage and wisdom to make democracy a living reality.

(The article by Julius A. Thomas appeared in June 23, 1945, issue of the Catholic publication, America. Mr. Thomas is the director of the department of industrial relations of the National Urban League, 1133 Broadway, New York, 10, N. Y.)

STATEMENT OF THE SOCIAL ACTION DEPARTMENT OF THE NATIONAL CATHOLIC WEL FARE CONFERENCE IN BEHALF OF H. R. 2202, THE FULL-EMPLOYMENT BILL The social-action department of the National Catholic Welfare Conference wishes to record approval of the general provisions of the full-employment bill, both the bill that passed the Senate and the bill introduced in the House. One provision of the Senate bill as passed-the one making it mandatory upon the President and not simply permissive to consult private groups and State and local governments-is a great improvement.

The N. C. W. C. social-action department which endorses this bill is that department of the Catholic bishops' organization of the United States that especially deals with this subject. We have been working on it for over 25 years.

The advantages of the bill are simply that it instructs the executive department to make studies, estimates and recommendations on employment and unemployment, sets up a joint congressional committee on employment and unemployment and, in the Senate bill, instructs the President to consult with private groups and with the State and local governments in his presentation of facts and recommendations. There is nothing startling in the bill, and, as far as we can see, no great difference between the bill passed in the Senate and the bill before the House, except in the last point. In both bills the President may set up advisory committees but in neither bill is he instructed to do so. We hope he shall do so.

We are in favor of the bill because it would organize the Federal Government better and would instruct governmental cooperation with private groups and the States, cities, and counties so as better to handle the governmental part of the

job of getting full employment. Yet the bill remains essentially a timid bill in the face of the threat of recurrence of unemployment-second, only to war, as a scourge of our time and itself an incitement to war.

It is a timid bill because it does not set up a way through which Government can help nongovernmental economic life to get the full employment which the bill aims at. As for ourselves we wish that industry councils would be set up in each industry and federated, and, with the Government helping them, work out the conditions of full output and full employment. Sooner or later this proposal will come to the front again. As it is, the bill lets things go, and then when there is failure calls on the Federal Government to act. We should like something more basic. Yet we remain in favor of the bill because if passed it can do a great deal, and because basic proposals have little chance now but may have a great chance if Congress organizes itself to handle the problem and if the President gets the executive department to act and secures the advice of private groups and the State and local governments.

We are not in favor of this bill as a cure-all. We are not in favor of its major emphasis upon governmental action as a remedy for unorganized private failure. We are in favor of it as a beginning toward a joint move by Government and organized industries and professions toward full output, full employment and a good living for everybody and a move by Government to fulfill its functions. The bill should be passed with the expectation that it will be amended later or supplemented to meet the full needs.

Hon. CARTER MANASCO,

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF., October 29, 1945.

House of Representatives, Washington, D. C.

DEAR SIR: The impairment of the economy and the drain on Government finances under the full employment bill seems almost self-evident, and it has come to attention that they are being carefully considered by your committee. However, the likely effect of the operations under the full employment bill on the enterprise, self-reliance, and integrity of the people of this country concerns Perhaps the possible effect can be foreseen through reviewing some results of previous attempts of the Government to nurture great numbers of our adult population.

me.

Prior to 1933 we did not have much evidence as to how large-scale Government paternalism would work in this country. With the WPA and similar made-work programs, and now with the passage of a few years' experience in unemployment insurance and other benefit measures, it appears we have first-hand evidence. It is a rare case where a family, through immediate or distant relatives, has not had one or more of them taking advantage of this outpouring of Government money, and where the individual has adjusted himself or herself to living on these moneys. Also in too many cases they lost their desire to exert any physical or mental effort beyond that necessary to obtain these moreys. Many of these individuals have worked during the war, but it can be anticipated that they will be among the first to appear on new rosters of those receiving Government benefits. These were not necessarily common laborers.

Near one of the small San Joaquin Valley towns a Government compound for housing itinerants, principally Okies, was erected during the late depression. One day a utility division manager telephoned the personnel manager and said that he was having a difficult time maintaining his common-labor force. He said, in substance, "We have been trying to cooperate by giving employment to these Okies, but we find that after a few days they fail to show up, or quit, and that is the last we see of them.. We also hear they have passed the word around that this is a good location because it is easy to get a little money. It appears we are increasing rather than diminishing the local itinerant problem by hiring them." Further investigation revealed that the manager's conclusions were correct. Common labor was being paid $5 per day (strictly pickand-shovel), and the Okies would work a few days and quit. This seemed to provide enough cash to last them a long time and they did not work at local crop harvesting, the principal purpose for which the Government housing projects were located in that area. A check in other locations where there were similar settlements revealed the same experience. This is not surprising, but it is evidence of how little incentive this class of labor has to work and how easy it is to remove that little incentive.

It will be recalled that when PWA and WPA were conceived, its proponents stated that the principal objective was to provide income to the individual in

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »