The CHAIRMAN. We will have the galley proof on the entire hearings by Thursday and the reporter can make available his printed hearing tomorrow morning and the same thing will be true of Wednesday morning, and I would hope then that we could commence executive session on this bill Wednesday, and proceed to start voting on it and, hopefully, report the bill sometime this week.

Now, our remaining witness, Mr. John F. Nagle, wanted to appear for the National Federation of the Blind. Mr. Nagle is ill and unable to be here and the point he has to present in his statement is not of the nature that other witnesses have already presented, and, therefore, I would like to ask that our chief counsel, Mr. Tom Vail, read that statement to us, and that will be our concluding statement for today. STATEMENT OF JOHN F. NAGLE, CHIEF, WASHINGTON OFFICE, NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND, AS READ BY TOM VAIL, CHIEF COUNSEL TO THE COMMITTEE ON FINANCE

Mr. VAIL. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, my name is John F. Nagle. I am chief of the Washington office of the National Federation of the Blind. My address is 1908 Q Street NW., Washington, D.C.

Mr. Chairman, recognizing the need to improve and expand the existing Federal-State unemployment compensation program, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 15119, a bill intended to provide better and broader protection against the disastrous consequences of unemployment upon a workingman and his family, a bill designed to minimize these consequences.

Presumably, however, Mr. Chairman, the loss of wages resulting from unemployment is considered a disaster only when it happens to a physically fit workingman, for, by specific provision of H.R. 15119, section 104, a facility—a sheltered workshop conducted for the purpose of providing a program of remunerative work for individuals who because of their impaired physical or mental capacity cannot be readily absorbed in the competitive labor market, and the handicapped workers employed in such a facility, are specifically and categorically excluded from the provisions of H.R. 15119.

We ask you and we urge you, Mr. Chairman, to delete this unjust and discriminatory exclusion from H.R. 15119.

Mr. Chairman, much progress has been made in recent years toward the democratic goal that all men should be and must be judged for their merits, that they should be and must be considered and judged as individuals that they not be prejudged and condemned by false and derogatory generalizations, that they not be condemned to live differently because they are physically different.

We who are impaired by blindness share with our sighted fellows the expectations of equal treatment and full and fair opportunityand we have not sat patiently and passively by while others fought our battle to make the American dream a reality for handicapped

Americans.

Rather, we have joined together in our common cause, and we have worked and struggled together against the disparagements of ignorance and the discriminations and denials of cobwebbed thinking,

against the despair of indifference and the despotism of misguided benevolence, and misdirected effort and concern.

And section 104 of H.R. 15119, which would withhold the benefits and protection of unemployment compensation from handicapped workers employed in sheltered workshops-this provision, Mr. Chairman, represents all of the adverse attitudes and embodies all of the adverse forces against which we, blind people, have contended in our strivings for equality of opportunity to achieve, according to our ambitions and our abilities, equality of opportunity, too, to share with our sighted fellows the responsibility for building a better world. Mr. Chairman, are men less than men because they are physically or mentally impaired?

Are the needs of individuals for food, clothing, and shelter different because they are physically or mentally different?

Do the basic living requirements of handicapped workers employed in sheltered workshops end when their wages end?

What of these people, Mr. Chairman, what are they to do when their work runs out and they become unemployed?

Are they to turn to their relatives for aid and private charity, or are they to apply for admission to the relief rolls and ask for public charity?

Mr. Chairman, why is such recourse less degrading and less shameful for handicapped workers than for physically fit workers?

It is our belief that the dignity of the disabled worker, his plight when employment stops, should be of just as much concern to the Congress and to the Nation as the dignity and plight of the physically fit worker when he becomes unemployed.

Unable to secure employment in the regular economic pursuits of the community, the handicapped person-wanting to work and able to work-obtains employment in a sheltered workshop-and he goes to work in a sheltered workshop, not because he cannot be readily absorbed in the competitive labor market by reason of his limited work capacity resulting from his impairment, but he goes to work in the sheltered workshop because employers in competitive business and industry will not hire him, will not even give him the chance to demonstrate the extent to which he can function in spite of his impaired condition.

Mr. Chairman, it is neither just nor equitable to penalize this handicapped individual because of society's failure, because of the prejudices and discriminatory practices of business and industrial employers.

It is neither fair nor just to deny this handicapped worker the protection of unemployment compensation, to exclude him from advantageous legislation intended as a help to laboring men, for this person, too, is a laboring man even though he is physically or mentally impaired, even though he performs his work in a sheltered workshop.

In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, I would remind you that unemployment compensation legislation represents the recognition of an enlightened social concept and its translation into Federal law.

It is a recognition that men who work have a right to and a need for Government-provided help when wages cease and new work can't be found.

It is a recognition that men who work have a right to dignity even though they are unemployed.

We ask you to extend this concept of "dignity in unemployment" to handicapped men and women who work in sheltered workshops.

Again I would remind you, gentlemen, the more than 43,000 handicapped workers employed in sheltered workshops are not obliged to work for their living.

Surely, no one would judge them harshly, no one would condemn them, if they were to accept dependence upon others as their normal of life.

way

But these people have refused the easy and demeaning way, and are striving for self-sufficiency and dependence upon themselves.

These impaired workers could remain upon public welfare for all of their lives, and no one would criticize them for it-but instead, they choose to earn their own living, to support themselves and their families from their own efforts.

It is our belief that handicapped workers employed in sheltered workshops deserve the right, for they certainly have earned the right, to be treated as other workers when they are confronted by the catastrophe of unemployment.

We plead with this committee and the Congress to recognize that unemployment is a catastrophe-whether workers are physically fit or physically impaired, whether they work in competitive business and industry or in sheltered workshops.

The catastrophe has nothing to do with workers' physical condition or with the nature of their employment.

The catastrophe is loss of wages and rapidly multiplying unpaid bills.

We ask and urge this committee and the Congress, therefore, to delete the clauses of section 104 of H.R. 15119, which would deny unemployment compensation to disabled men and women who work in sheltered workshops.

The CHAIRMAN. I am going to ask that our staff undertake to find out the reasons why that provision is part of the law and what the objection would be to deleting it, and how those objections might be met so that this witness' testimony can be fully considered by the committee in executive session.

That concludes the session for today and we will meet again at 9 o'clock tomorrow.

(Whereupon, the committee adjourned at 11:20 a.m., to reconvene at 9 a.m., Tuesday, July 26, 1966.)

UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE AMENDMENTS OF 1966

TUESDAY, JULY 26, 1966

U.S. SENATE, COMMITTEE ON FINANCE, Washington, D.C.

The committee met, pursuant to recess, at 9 a.m., in room 2221 New Senate Office Building, Senator Russell B. Long (chairman) presiding. Present: Senators Long, Anderson, Douglas, McCarthy, and Williams.

Also Present: Tom Vail, chief counsel.

The CHAIRMAN. Today we conclude 2 weeks of hearings on revision of unemployment compensation. We have received oral testimony from more than 50 witnesses and the committee has received even more written statements in lieu of a personal appearance.

The information developed at these hearings will aid the committee in its executive consideration of the unemployment compensation amendments when it begins to work on the markup tomorrow.

Our first witness this morning is Mr. Leonard Lesser of the Industrial Union Department of the AFL-CIO.

Mr. Lesser.

STATEMENT OF LEONARD LESSER, ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT, AND GENERAL COUNSEL, INDUSTRIAL UNION DEPARTMENT; ACCOMPANIED BY JACK BEIDLER, GENERAL LEGISLATIVE DIRECTOR; AND WOODROW GINSBERG, RESEARCH DIRECTOR

Mr. LESSER. Mr. Chairman, my name is Leonard Lesser. I am assistant to the president and general counsel of the Industrial Union Department.

I am accompanied by Jack Beidler, on my left, our legislative director, and Woodrow Ginsberg, who is our research director.

We appear here on behalf of the Industrial Union Department, AFL-CIO's 6 million people.

Mr. Chairman, I have a statement which I would like to file for the record and then just make some oral comments on it.

The CHAIRMAN. We will have your statement printed and then you can go ahead and make your comments.

Mr. LESSER. Fine.

Mr. Chairman, the Industrial Union Department is strongly concerned with the whole problem of our unemployment compensation system.

This program has been a tremendously benevolent force in American life. It has brought help to millions of workers and their families when they suffer the risks of unemployment.