EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 24, 1962

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SPECIAL SUBCOMMITTEE ON LABOR OF THE
COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND LABOR,
Washington, D.C.

The subcommittee met at 10 a.m., pursuant to adjournment, in the caucus room, Old House Office Building, Hon. James Roosevelt (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Powell (chairman of the full committee), Roosevelt (chairman of the subcommittee), Dent, Pucinski, Ayres, Hiestand, Goodell, and Kearns.

Staff members present: Don Lowe, subcommittee director; Adrienne Fields, subcommittee clerk; Richard Burress, minority clerk, Committee on Education and Labor; and Tamara Wall, assistant counsel, Committee on Education and Labor.

Mr. ROOSEVELT. The committee will come to order, please.

The Chair would first like to express to our distinguished visitors today the regrets of Chairman Powell, who had wanted to be present but unfortunately there is a conflict with the Rules Committee on a bill concerning higher education this morning and the chairman must be before the Rules Committee.

Our first witness is the very distinguished and long-time friend, George Meany, the president of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations.

Mr. Meany, we want to welcome you again before the committee and say to you that you have never failed to give us not only informative testimony but I think at the same time you have given us testimony which has been very helpful in shaping specific legislation, and we want to thank you for your time and effort in coming before us.

You may proceed.

STATEMENT OF GEORGE MEANY, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR AND CONGRESS OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATIONS

Mr. MEANY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today on behalf of the AFL-CIO to register our support for the enactment of a Federal law to establish fair employment practices.

For one reason or another, the effort to enact fair employment practices legislation has been shunted aside in recent years. I don't say

this in criticism of the Congress; I take it for granted that other matters seemed to be more pressing. But in any case, I am glad we can now discuss the question. To us in the labor movement, it is an issue of tremendous importance, not only to the victims of discrimination, but to the well-being of the United States.

Let me first enter into the record the resolution adopted by the AFL-CIO convention unanimously last month. This resolution says in part, and I quote:

We renew our call for the enactment of an enforceable Federal Fair Employment Practices Act to outlaw discrimination in all employment by employers engaged in an industry affecting commerce, including all employment and training of apprentices and learners, and including all unions which represent employees engaged in employment affecting commerce.

The fair employment practices law we seek should include the kind of conciliation and enforcement powers that have been tested and proved effective in the 20 States that have already enacted such laws.

That's where we stand. It is against that background, and fully conscious of the fact that we in the AFL-CIO are basically involved in all aspects of employment, that I would like to testify.

Discrimination is a deplorable fact of life in America today. We have made progress in America, but not enough. Discrimination is exercised in housing, in the schools, in places of public accommodation-but nowhere more painfully than in employment opportunities. Discrimination is practiced against Jews, Catholics, and the foreignborn-but most of all against Negroes in particular, and nonwhites in general.

So our worst problem in the field of discrimination involves employment opportunities for Negroes. I don't think this conclusion is open to serious question. Therefore, without minimizing other aspects of discrimination, I'll devote most of my attention to that one.

I assume that no sensible citizen, and certainly no member of this well-informed committee, doubts that discrimination is widely applied against Negro job applicants in all parts of the country.

I further assume that Americans as a whole, including the members of this committee, know that in some parts of the United States, certain occupations including almost all the attractive ones-are automatically closed to Negroes.

To cite only one example, a law still stands on the books in South Carolina that forbids the employment of an integrated production work force in any textile mill within the borders of that State. You and I may consider such a law to be un-American. Yet we also know it is in full keeping with the employment practices in that area, law or no law.

The greater difficulty transcends old and foolish laws; it rather involves old and foolish prejudices.

Thanks to the diligence of the Department of Justice, we now know about the communities in Louisiana that place absurd obstacles in the path of Negroes who want to vote.

We have no comparable measure of the obstacles placed in the path of Negroes who want to work—not just in Louisiana or Georgia or Mississippi, but in Illinois or Oregon or New York. And I have deliberately chosen, in the latter group, places where fair employment practices laws have been locally enacted.

I am not minimizing in any way the importance or effectiveness of these State FEPC laws. I am proud that my home State of New York was the first to enact such a law, and in that respect paved the way for some 20 other States. I have here a tabulation of the various State statutes and their provisions, which I ask, Mr. Chairman, to be added as an appendix to my testimony.

Mr. ROOSEVELT. Without objection, that will be so ordered. (The tabulation referred to follows:)