(The information referred to follows:) Mr. LEO H. IRWIN, ACTORS' EQUITY ASSOCIATION, Chief Counsel, Committee on Ways and Means, DEAR MR. IRWIN: Enclosed please find statistics on the employment of Actors' Equity members as requested by Chairman Mills. This information is part of a report prepared for us by the Martin E. Segal Co. of New York, consultants in welfare, health, and pension programs, and is dated February 16, 1959. It is possible to determine the total percentage of employment for any given period by using the number of actors employed as compared to a fairly constant total membership of approximately 10,000. I should further call to your attention that these figures are calculated on weeks worked under equity contracts only, and do not take into consideration employment in other areas of the entertainment industry such as motion pictures, television, etc. Nor do they account for seasonal fluctuations. Should you require any additional information or statistics we will do our best to provide what you need promptly. I wonder if it is possible for us to have a copy of the official transcript of our delegation's testimony before the committee? I should like to have it for our files. I further wish to express appreciation, on behalf of our delegation, for the courtesy, consideration, and indeed friendliness that you and your entire staff extended to us on Monday. It was an experience that I, for one, won't soon foregt. Sincerely yours, EDDIE WESTON, Chairman, Committee on Unemployment Insurance. EMPLOYMENT UNDER ALL EQUITY CONTRACTS, 1953-58 SEASONS What follows is a summary of the weeks of employment when all types of shows are combined. The total employment figure for the 1953-54 season represents an understatement because of a previously noted deficiency in the recorded data with respect to stock. However, the data included for that year may be considered dependable with respect to the longer periods of employment (30 weeks or more) since the totals reported are hardly likely to be affected to any great extent by stock. Here again, the employment can be seem to have increased to the 1955-56 season and declined thereafter. The percentage distribution each season with respect to duration of employment remained remarkably stable. In the latest year, 55 percent were employed for less than 10 weeks, considering all types of shows. A total of 24 percent were employed for 20 weeks or more. TABLE B-14.-Weeks of employment under equity contracts, 1953-58 seasons TOTAL EQUITY EARNINGS-1948-58 SEASONS In putting together the picture of total equity earnings over the 1953-58 period, we have thought that it might prove of interest to present this side by side with a corresponding tabulation which equity prepared in 1953 for the five seasons within the 1948-53 period. The results of those earlier equity figures were published in an article by Alan Hewitt in the January 1954 issue of Equity and a summary of the results are presented in the upper half of the table which follows. We want to repeat once again the previous qualifications that employment in the four lower brackets of the 1953-54 season are understated in this tabulation because of a deficiency of data with respect to stock. Over the 10-year period, the total of actors employed has increased from 4,692 to approximately 6,920. Normally, one would expect to find a drift over the 10-year period up into the higher earnings brackets. However, while the total number of actors who have earned $5,000 to $10,000 a year and better has increased, their numbers have done nothing more than generally to keep pace with the overall growth in the number of actors employed. The percentage distribution into various earnings brackets has been remarkable for its consistency over the years. In considering this table, the following should be understood: 1. Data for 1948-53 from previous study by equity. NOTE. 2. Data for 1954-58 from present study. 3. Data for 1953-54 season deficient in data on stock. Miss BANKHEAD. May I say something, Mr. Weston? You are an expert on this and know all the ins and outs. I do not think there is a summer theater in this country that runs 4 months. I think that 3 months is an exaggerated time. I think from 2 months to 10 weeks is the longest they have and on that sometimes they make their livelihood, you know, for the rest of the year. They do not get the salaries that they get in a Broadway show because they are very small theaters. Some theaters only hold 600 people and they get very small salaries because they cannot afford more. The producer has to make his little profit, too, because he may have to live for the rest of the year on his summer theater run, you see. The CHAIRMAN. Miss Čass, did you have something you wanted to say? Miss CASS. No, sir. I think we have taken up more than the 10 minutes of your time that was allotted to us and we thank you very much. The CHAIRMAN. Are there any further questions? If not, we do thank you, Mr. Harding and ladies, for coming to the committee. Miss BANKHEAD. Thank you very much, gentlemen, for your courtesy and kindness. The CHAIRMAN. We are very glad to have had you back here where so many of your relatives served with such distinction, Miss Bankhead. Miss BANKHEAD. Thank you. God bless you all. The CHAIRMAN. Without objection, the committee will adjourn un til 2 p.m. (Whereupon, at 12:45 p.m., the committee adjourned until 2 p.m., this same day.) AFTERNOON SESSION The CHAIRMAN. The committee will please be in order. Our next witnesses represent the Textile Workers Union of America. The Chair understands Mr. William Pollock is not present, but Mr. Stetin and Mr. Cook are here to testify in his stead. STATEMENT OF WILLIAM POLLOCK, GENERAL PRESIDENT, AS PRESENTED BY SOL STETIN, VICE PRESIDENT; AND STATEMENT OF WESLEY W. COOK, VICE PRESIDENT, TEXTILE WORKERS UNION OF AMERICA, AFL-CIO Mr. STETIN. Yes, sir. The CHAIRMAN. Will you please identify yourself for the record by giving us your name, address, and capacity in which you appear. Mr. STETIN. My name is Sol Stetin. I am vice president of the Textile Workers Union of America and its regional director for New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Stetin, I had thought that Mr. Wesley W. Cook would accompany you. Mr. STETIN. Mr. Cook is on his way over. I guess traffic is a little slow sometimes and he may be a little late, but he is definitely on his way over. The CHAIRMAN. You are recognized, sir. Mr. STETIN. I might say at the outset that the reason Mr. Pollack is not here is he was called into a position in North Carolina where we have a rather long labor dispute. We are trying to settle it. It was important to him to be in that situation. Federal action to establish minimum standards for the amount and duration of unemployment benefits and to provide reinsurance grants to States whose reserves have been depleted by heavy drains upon their State unemployment insurance trust funds is vital to modernize the laws, to equalize competition, to meet the nature of the new unemployment problems resulting in this age of automation and to implement the insurance principle in the unemployment benefit fields. The unemployment problem in the textile industry is of such a grave nature that the shortcomings of the present State standards and the difficulties of securing improvements are most sharply projected among the workers associated with this industry and in the areas where textile workers reside and work. The continuing contraction of textile mills, the displacement of hundreds of thousands of workers and the continued distress in these areas in the New England, Middle Atlantic, and Southern States all conspire to make the present provisions inadequate. The benefits are too low to meet the original intent of the law and to keep up with the rising costs of living and wage standards in the United States. The duration of the benefits is too short to meet the needs of people faced with long-term unemployment. The present laws make no provision for applying the insurance principle outside of their individual State. By breaking up the plan into separate State funds, the sharing of risks is effected within but not among the States. It is vital therefore that insurance be applied on a national basis. The failure of the repeated efforts of the President of the United States to secure general improvements in the provisions for unemployment insurance indicates that reliance upon voluntary appeals is futile. They have been made since 1954 but no State has yet come close to recommended standards. As a matter of fact, in 1959 sessions, only 11 States enacted any changes in the amount or duration of unemployment benefits. Gains in the form of higher payments and longer benefits have often been offset by more rigid qualification requirements. Among the textile States, Georgia adjourned without action, Tennessee increased the amount of wages on which benefits are computed but made no other changes. Nothing has yet been done in North Carolina. We are happy to note that the Governors of the following textile States have already indicated their support for the proposed legislation: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusets, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. But the textile States where improvements are most urgently needed are not in this list. Federal action is needed to humanize the benefits under the act and to assure a real insurance program. To digress from the statement, I might say at this point that I read with much interest the editorial of the New York Times of yesterday which in its statement on unemployment says the following: Among the palliative measures are those which would give more adequate protection to the unemployed, both as to benefits and the length of time they are paid. The emergency Federal assistance to States has helped, but has been far from adequate. A Federal law setting minimum standards for State benefits is certainly called for. The severity of unemployment in textile communities is great. The problems of the textile worker are due to the serious contraction of the mills and the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of jobs in the industry. Productivity has been increasing at the rate of 4 to 5 percent a year and this year, it is estimated, at an even higher rate. As total production has not increased, many mills have been closed and people displaced. No part of the country has been spared. The Senate Special Subcommittee under the chairmanship of John A. Pastore has concluded that the industry "failed to share in the postwar growth which has occurred in our economy since 1947." It most succinctly summarized the problem in the following paragraph of its recent report: Production has declined slightly, but employment in the industry has dropped precipitously as technological change has reduced man-hour requirements by a much larger relative amount than the drop in production. Because consumers are spending a declining portion of disposable personal income on textile mill products, the aggregate domestic demand for textiles has increased at a slower rate than the rate of population growth. Meanwhile there has been a pronounced decline in the industrial demand for textiles due to the substitution of a wide variety of nonwoven materials for textile mill products. Finally, the domestic textile industry has lost two-thirds of its export market due to heightened competition in the world market for textiles, and at the same time there has been a substantial increase in the flow of textile mill products into this country from abroad. As a result of these developments unemployment in textile areas has been exceptionally severe, affecting a large part of the labor force and extending for long periods of time. In January 1959, when the average rate of unemployment for all nonfarm wage and salary workers was 7.3 percent, the unemployment rate in the textile industry was 10.3 percent. In February 1959, the industry employed 860,000 production workers, a reduction of 403,000 jobs from the peak employment level achieved in February 1951. This marked decline affected all sections of the country in which substantial numbers of textile workers are employed. While New England and the Middle Atlantic States have suffered the greatest declines, the South has also had a considerable drop in textile employment (table I). In States where textiles comprise a large portion of the total nonfarm jobs, unemployment tends to be appreciably higher than the United States average. In the latest week for which information is available (week ended March 21, 1959) insured unemployment represented 5.4 percent of average covered employment in 14 major textile States, compared to an average of 5 percent for the United States as a whole (table II). The disparity between textile areas and the national average was particularly marked in States like Maine, with an insured unemployment rate of 8.4 percent; Pennsylvania, 8 percent; and Rhode Island, 6.8 percent. These figures understate the severity of the unemployment in textile States because workers who have exhausted their unemployment benefits are not included as unemployed. The State averages do not tell the full story of the seriousness of textile unemployment. Textile mills are generally located in small |