Reverend JONES. It is a combination. I don't know what percentage but some are full-time and some are part-time and some are what we would call deadend jobs. That is why we maintain that if jobs which offer people dignity and an opportunity to break the welfare cycle were available, we feel that that would be a plus.

In answer to your question, a certain percentage is full time and a certain percentage is part time.

Mr. CLAY. All of them apparently are low paying jobs.
Reverend JONES. Absolutely.

Mr. CLAY. Or they would not be on welfare.

Reverend JONES. That is correct.

Mr. CLAY. I think that is part of the basis for the opposition of this bill. There are some people in this country who don't want to destroy such a large reservoir of cheap labor and they would like to keep people unemployed so they can continue to exploit their efforts.

The chairman corrected me. He says not cheap labor but labor that will work cheaply.

In a more serious vein that is part of the problem. We have 110 or 111 Members of Congress who have cosponsored this legislation, the rest of them are out there saying, well, it doesn't have a chance. Why should we get involved, it doesn't have a chance. One-fourth of the Congress has already said they are in favor of this legislation and if the others would stop acting like damn fools in my opinion and get on with the program, we could create these jobs for people.

I certainly endorse the Congressman from California when he says that your Council of Churches and others ought to be out here asking our elected representatives who do they represent because certainly the 14 million people unemployed in this country come from the districts that they are supposed to represent. And it is not the President apparently who is speaking for the masses of the people when he says that we cannot afford $8 billion to create 5 million jobs in this country, but at the same time he recommends a budget to Congress this year that asks for some $30 billion in increased military appropriations and we in our great way cut it to a $22 billion increase. He talks about $8 billion for employment being inflationary when all the economists agree that the most inflationary item in the Federal budget is the defense spending which produces nothing. You give people jobs and they produce materials that can be used.

The thing that causes inflation is the shortage of goods and services. The jobs produce an abundance of goods and services so, consequently, the more people you put to work, the less inflation you will have. To me that is just commonsense but apparently our President does not understand it-and I can see well why he would not understand anything but I can't see why the other Members of the Missouri delegation can't understand that with all these millions of people out of work, and you see 9 out of the 10 Representatives in this State are Democrats. We are supposed to be speaking for the people.

I can understand the Republicans down there not being interested in people working-his people are working, you know. These nine Representatives, this is where the unemployment is hitting so I certainly hope that you will be able to implore and influence your conference to work hard to get these others.

Reverend JONES. We will.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HAWKINS. Mr. Semple.

Mr. SEMPLE. I am interested in this last thought you have here in your testimony and that is your thought that we perhaps could get tax breaks or subsidies to hire the unemployed and train them. Do you think this is a better approach than the President's intention to offer tax incentives for capital investment? Do you believe a tax incentive specifically to hire the unemployed would stimulate the private sector into hiring and training the unemployed? Do you feel it would work? Reverend JONES. My first response would be it would work if. I think if you policed it properly, then it would have some possibilities but in the past in other programs we have had difficulties with the policing in the implementation of it. From my point of view it makes a lot of sense to approach it that way.

Mr. SEMPLE. The reason I am asking that, we are working on just such an approach. It is the feeling of some members of the minority that the Government can do some of the job but the real talent of job training and job placement can be found in the private sector. We are making an effort to do it and if you have any specific suggestions or examples that might work here in St. Louis, it would be very helpful. The fact is that there is going to be some form of a tax policy emanating from Congress and if we are going to offer a $28 billion tax cut, the least you can do is to design such a tax cut to create most employment and not just necessarily capital investment. So I would very much appreciate any comment you may have.

Reverend JONES. I would be most happy as opposed to taking any additional time to perhaps jotting some thoughts down as to my feelings really to this and perhaps forwarding them.

Mr. SEMPLE. Be as specific as you can, what kinds of tax subsidy you might feel would work.

Reverend JONES. Be happy to do it.

Mr. SEMPLE. In addition, if you would, outline the other services available in the private sector, such as the kinds of job training available. Frankly, we must, if we are really going to get private employers in the country to participate, approach them with the right attitude and the right incentives.

Another issue I want to raise is on the welfare problem. Would you agree that there are major disincentives in our welfare system to encourage people to work? It seems to me that our welfare system works backward. We are not really promoting employment and we are not utilizing our social service to enable that person to find employment. Reverend JONES. I think a typical example is we ought to raise welfare to $170 a month.

Mr. SEMPLE. I wonder if you would provide us also with specific examples of where that disincentive takes place.

Reverend JONES. Be happy to.

Mr. SEMPLE. Thank you.

Mr. HAWKINS. Reverend Jones, the record will be kept open for the receipt of the material that was requested and that material will be entered into the record without objection when it is received.

Again may I thank you for your presentation. I think you have been very helpful to the committee.

Mr. HAWKINS. The next witness is Miss Marie Nowak, Work Standards Enabling Committee, St. Louis.

Miss Nowak, you have a prepared statement which will be entered in the record in its entirety. We would appreciate a summary at this time from any of the witnesses so that we can hear as many as possible. You may proceed.

STATEMENT OF MARIE W. NOWAK, STATE CHAIRPERSON, WOMEN'S WORK STANDARDS COMMITTEE

Miss NOWAK. Besides being the chairperson of the Women's Work Standards Committee I am also the president of the St. Louis district of the Missouri State Teachers Association so I can speak a little bit about the unemployed teachers in the district.

As my statement says, "It doesn't cost-it pays." The road signs say, "It doesn't cost-it pays." Full employment I think would pay the Government because if you have people that are earning a salary they are putting money back into the Government. They are also putting money into the private sector so I think it would be to our best interests, everyone's best interests, to have everyone that wants a job having a job.

Of course right now there are many people that are unemployed that have never been unemployed in their life before, they never knew what it was like to be unemployed. Many of these people are the people that have been looking down on people that collected welfare and collected unemployment as being the kind of person that didn't really want a job but now they are finding out that they, too, are reaching the end of their rope and they don't have a job in mind. So the filter-down process is working.

The people that are a little more qualified are taking jobs away from the people who are a little less qualified and therefore the people that are a little less qualified are taking jobs away from people that have no qualifications so therefore they are now unemployed completely. Some of them have come all the way to the end of their unemployment. When we say that people get $85 a month or $85 a week for unemployment it does not mean that everybody collects that same amount. If a person has not been making a very big salary, they won't collect that amount of money so it is sort of a fallacy to say people are collecting that amount of money.

As I point out in my statistics here, the black youth are the ones that are really being discriminated against. They have a very difficult time getting a job and they also are discriminated against sometimes in the educational process so it is very hard for them to get a job.

I think I did have some statistics here about women. Women frequently are even worse off than the men because when they do have a job they don't make as much as the men. Then when they are laid off they have not been able to save any money so therefore they don't have any savings to fall back on. If you notice on page 2 it says this month the number of white women who work all year, more than half earned under $3,500. Even more deplorable is the income level of black women. Two-thirds of the black women who worked all year earned under $3,500. In the main our black sisters are engaged in the most physically

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difficult but necessary jobs as laundry workers, nurses aides, household workers, hospital and cafeteria workers, and child care to name a few. If we could have a full employment, we would not always be striving against each other to get the few jobs that are available. There are many necessary jobs. For instance, in the school we can have nurses aides. We need nurses aides even in the schools to help some of the children become well. We need aides for the teachers.

Now a federally funded program has run out in the city of St. Louis and many of us do not have all the aides in the school any more. The typing and all the ditto work and things like that we have to do that ourselves which is not bad but still it could be done by somebody else and would give us more time to teach.

Also the public service jobs such as day care attendants, medical assistants, and nursing home attendants could be taken over by people. If any of you have gone over the river, the bridge is falling into the river and is in need of repair so there could be some road work done there. We know how deplorable our railroads are. Why can't we put some of the people to work fixing up the railroads, putting in the lines that they need, and things like that? We pay $112 billion out for our defense. Why can't we pay out $15 billion or $20 billion to put people to work so they can put the money back into our economy?

Children that come from homes where people are unemployed come to school with a poor attitude and you can understand it because the poor kids don't have much help; things are rather depressing at home and therefore they come to school with the same attitude. So I think that we need to do something about that situation, too.

At the present time many companies work people from 10 to 12 hours a day and they pay time and a half for overtime work. Other workers could be hired if they would cut out this overtime work for some of them. They could cut down the number of hours and they could give more people a job. If they did this, their workers would probably be a little bit rested and better workers.

With the present rate of inflation it is impossible for the average worker to save for a rainy day. When somebody becomes unemployed he does not have anything to fall back on. His unemployment soon runs out and then he has to go on welfare or try to find some kind of a job from someone else that really needs the job."

In H.R. 50 it calls for national institute for full employment to carry out functions of the Full Employment Act. As part of this institute a national commission for full employment policy studies could be created, this committee to be composed of 15 members broadly represented in many groups. We would endorse adding to such a commission a women's policy bureau of consultants and experts on the status of women for use in all areas of policy study and implementation because frequenlty women are not represented on these commissions. It is all policymaking but the women don't have any input into it. What they do have is not very important or not looked upon as being very important.

Just sort of as my last thing I have some statistics from the St. Louis school systems and they had 2,500 applicants on file for teaching positions. Out of that they were able to hire 292 individuals for teaching positions. Now I can remember when I first started teaching school 25 years ago the cry was, wouldn't it be great if we had teachers so we

could have 20 or 25 children in a classroom and then we could really do something with these children. Now we have the teachers and no one has any money. We have the buildings. We have plenty of facilities so I think it is really disgraceful that we have not done more with this thing that could help these children.

Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF MARIE W. NOWAK, STATE CHAIRPERSON, WOMEN'S WORK

STANDARDS COMMITTEE

As the road signs say, "It doesn't cost-it pays," so does full employment pay. Instead of taking from the taxpayer in welfare and unemployment, the fully employed give back to society-in taxes and purchasing power for the private segment. In a democracy we must assume the responsibility of helping those less fortunate than we. The millions of unemployed are indeed unfortunate.

One of our human rights, which was a priority with the United Nations as long ago as 1949, is protection from unemployment. Anyone who is willing to work should be able to obtain a job. Today the unemployment situation has become a national disgrace.

Since 1973 the unemployment rate has increased from 5.0% to 8.9% for the overall population while the rate for blacks and other minorities has gone from 9.2% to 14.6% (April 1975). Even more dramatically, for young people (16-19) the unemployment figure has gone from 13.1% to 17.3% (minority youth 40.2%). This indicates that those who need jobs the most have the least chances.

Recently while we were still involved in an all out costly war there was, even then, much unemployment. Now that "peace" has been established, the money wasted on war should be channeled to help people. Decent jobs for all Americans must be made available. There is nothing that will destroy a person's feeling of worth and dignity more quickly than remaining unemployed for an extended period of time. Many people who had never felt the necessity for drawing unemployment payments find themselves reaching the end of their eligibility with no prospects of a job. Many professional and highly qualified people have lost jobs which are no longer in demand or for which demand has been greatly reduced. The filter down process has therefore begun. Over qualified people take jobs from those less qualified. Therefore, we have unemployment and underemployment. Women frequently are even worse off than men. They find themselves in a vise. They were the last hired on many jobs and therefore are the first fired. At best working women usually make much less than men. In Missouri of the numbers of white women who work all year, more than half (53%) earned under $3500. Even more deplorable is the income level of black women in the state. Two thirds (66%) of the black women who work all year earned under $3500; and, in the main, our black sisters are engaged in the most physically difficult but necessary jobs such as laundry workers, nurses aides, household workers, hospital and cafeteria workers, to name a few. When women are unemployed there are no savings on which to rely and the amount of their unemployment compensation is so low they cannot survive. The elimination of cut-throat competition for decent jobs would guarantee women and equal chance. Union wages, which this bill would guarantee, would give us a chance to come up from the degrading level in which many women find themselves now. It would eliminate the constant effort to legislate for minimum wage bills and would also eliminate the constant effort to amend the minimum wage laws in existence. That's why we support it.

Public service jobs such as day care attendants, medical assistants, and nursing home attendants are areas much needed in all communities. The government has long subsidized large companies who could not exist without some public assistance. Therefore, precedent has been set as these corporations use government subsidies for their livelihood and existence. Surely millions of individual citizens can expect no less from their government.

Therefore, the notion of the government as the employer of last resort seem just to us. The cost of implementing this bill would be far less than the $112,000,000,000 military budget.

Many public service jobs, in addition to those mentioned above, would produce tax paying citizens. It is economically feasible to provide public jobs for people.