What must be done; Employment

My name is Percy Sutton. I'm the president of the bar of Manhattan in the city of New York. For the next 30 minutes I'll be moderating a different kind of panel program. It is one of a series called What must be done. The title of these programs what must be done has two meanings. First it poses a demand for urgent solutions to America's greatest problem the crises of the urban ghetto and the black community. But it also refers to what can be done and what must be done by you the listener because nothing stimulates action as effectively as the demand of an A-Rod's population. This series of programs takes as its point of departure the award winning issue of Newsweek magazine published last November the 20th on the Negro in America. Today's topic is employment. The members of our panel on Mr. Larry Mark's journal editor for Business Newsweek magazine Mr. Don slay mine director of civil rights department if the valve's CIO commissioner Cyril Tice and chairman New York City Human Resources Administration Mista

Gary Robinson director Opportunities Industrialization Center of Roxbury Massachusetts and this to RJ Miller vice chairman Ford Motor Company ditto. This is a continuation of a previous discussion about employment this time who began when this disclaimer of the FARC aisle unfollow with Commissioner Tyson gentleman will the black community be satisfied with jobs at minimum wages. Are they looking for something more. Mrs. Lehmann first then commissioner Tyson I believe that there are large numbers of people who are unemployed or on welfare that never take a job for a dollar a month you know I really took a situation you've got to present YOUR they will take those kinds of jobs if it is tied to a career ladder system. But I would say to the gentleman from the Troy it would rather they had a backlog of work you know they reached a decision coincident with riots and also over the strike and so they had a backlog of work and they had people hired. My question on institutional changes and it's and you may have the answer for

me is whether the procedures that you utilize for that experimental situation on now standard procedures of your company for all people so that it's not just that you took another look at what the nature of the rest of us you know just for that particular project but whether you were now taking a whole look at your overall personal procedures across the bow. What in order to begin to look at whether the blacks whites greens or blues that labor market in a different way. That's what I mean by institutional change. So we you know we can't you know we just can't buy that you talking about the percentage figure. I'm telling you the Bureau of Labor Statistics can't just what I read in my neighborhood so your question is that now standard procedure. Yes. Article about. That's a situational change and that's really what other institutions and you're fine. Now he took my three point a you know they didn't want a flood. If you're talking about three point eight unemployment rate in the country it's

a law I unless you can square off for me. How do you get the average of three point eight against the high unemployment rate different in different age categories but still high 10 12 20 percent in different age rates in these minority communities. It can't that the plus the fact that some people only that show up we know that. So three what I'm saying is that three point a right is then not a real figure it's a fallacy that you know you know whether this is slavery. Is he in the wrong room on the floor. Good for Negroes is important. I'll agree with you solving it doesn't solve all the problem but I don't worship it when you get those stories around the face you make out it doesn't matter to the people who run the progress they will get $4 an hour jobs. No I say that we gotta get people to work there we gotta get those to work and to his good jobs as possible and use him for them to get those to work.

I'd advocate a living wage. We saw for the federal government and so it was the urban coalition with us so it was the Ford Motor Company and so was the civil rights movement for the federal government creating jobs which aren't high skilled jobs which pay so much over the minimum wage to a million people to work now and then train them for better jobs not to leave them until we solve all problems on the relief when I say the right. I'm the one that I say they won't move anywhere. You're showing me this second comedy program up Grady people who are already here. Let me ask you a question are you for or against the old Harrah bill to spend four billion dollars to provide a million public service just for the unemployed Now let me ask you Are you for or against the fact that industry has to make a major commitment to upgrade minority people who are already in the system. I say yes I guess they really are just silly mantra. Yeah so dismayed when what is your hair and then I think an American listening would want to hire someone

they'll have as introduced a bill which has a lot of signatures which scores for for a billion dollar appropriation by the federal government to give meaning to municipalities to create jobs not unnecessary jobs but jobs for facilities recreational facilities other rehab facilities that cities are not able to afford now to provide immediate useful jobs. I decent pay about three dollars and out of decent pay a reading at least for people who aren't now qualified to carry just the baby of the existence of ice just a little higher and Bill is part of the reps administration the old public that's your choice and truly this is me. I think for Mr. Tyson I probably have some familiarity with this because in the city of New York very recently we allocated X number of dollars I think a smaller sum of 8 million

dollars for the creation of such a program for the summer. I think the industry has to get into the training business has to form a creative partnership with our educate our educational establishments. I think industry has to get into educational policy and sort of right on down the line. But but let us not end up keeping everybody in the training pipeline as a rationale for not getting I want a job the immigrants that came in go to any damn training program. You know they got on the job and they learn on the job. Now you know you we've got these. Friendship program that it takes two or three years to do that. Don't take two or three years to be anything in this society. I mean I know right Americans you know who get on the job and learn on the job. So don't I'm saying is that if you don't understand me you're not going to stand the people on the streets. And that's part of the communication problem with economics Laman I've got Mr. Miller here in this nation to say something Mr. Miller I think has clearly demonstrated

to all that this is not only a complex but a very emotional problem as I see it I think we're emphasizing different aspects of it in different degrees and really there's a probably a common ground that most of us could agree on first I certainly would have degraded to three point eight percent is a national average. And certainly the much higher unemployment that exists in the in the ghetto among the black community is something that can't be tolerated and this is what we first need to do. It seems to me is to recognize that second thing I think we could agree on that all of the people in America that want jobs are entitled to go to work this is what our system should provide a man willing and able to go to work should be provided the job this is what the heiress bill is about we've had this on the mob books since 1946 a full employment act and we haven't carried it out. We've got some more work to do some more execution to do there. Secondly and this is what Mr.. Tyson is saying once they get a job that's not the final answer there must be upgrading on that job be they must not be blacked out. Blocked out from from

progress. Then there's a third area that hasn't been discussed here yet either today or in the prior meeting that we had and that's the importance of education in the in the job sector. I think that there is now a willingness on the part of industry to hire negro professionals that did not exist two three five years ago I can I can document this because we hire some thousand college graduates a year and all of the schools tell us that if you're Negro you can get more money at the same grade level and skill level is if you're white. Now so there is a demand and look in and people I think that are coming out of the schools educated do really have a chance and I believe that in our highly technical society the real solution in the long run solution though is to recognize this fact and encourage as many of our talented and qualified Negro youth in the city and elsewhere to go on to get all a school a name can because all the records show that it's it's the pay out and as things get

more complex we really think this is a different thing now and in earlier societies earlier days you could be in a good could get a boat on the job on the railroad reconciled up a railroad president that is not so or practically not so in our society so the real way we have to integrate. Are minority groups is larger through education because let's face it the man that comes in at the bottom just isn't going to live long enough to get up to the top it's the more educated person and I think our society recognizes that and I hope will more so and so as I said earlier if we had courage of people to get a job if you buy up if you can stay in school by all means stay in school and get the maximum out and I think more and more they'll be money and grants and loans and so forth and this is really the way out for all of our minority groups you know the thing you mention is to measure the fact that we have some difference today that is persons coming here today in this automated mechanized program society have a bit more difficult didn't require a lot more education to make it. Before we finish I'd like to ask the question before I move to Mr. Marks I want to pose that question

hoping that some will answer it later. Can America for an all of the jobs that are needed to employ all of the people and if America cannot do theirs is the ultimate. After we've finished all of the jobs and if they're still unemployed would we then move to a guaranteed annual income to those people who cannot gain employment but before that is the mark to the end user will restore the training there is to the question. The National Commission on the emission technology and economic progress are diverse. You know 266 addressed and so off to this question and they decided to if we were to do this socially useful work that could be done we could still enjoy it survive for three million people overnight. That there is this much work Gray have to be doing way there of education. For the world for the protection that could usefully be filled and could provide people with incomes I would like to run if I

came into first a question of whether of the black people today are different from other immigrant minorities and asked. After looking ones for all thing all over New York means we can do to do that was not much question that they are different that they face different problems that they have more to contend with a new way to prove using Google Groups that had previous ethnic groups and there is very little to be gained by making the comparison in the expecting to do these Negro who is who is unemployed or under-employed lineage acute or undereducated. So ROOM the discrimination they face to try and compete in the world that we had expected reviews or recruits to do. I don't know I was rich. Ray has got a message to Mr. Robinson to come back to you sir. Droppings. Yes I'd like to say something in regards to what Mr. Miller said and I think this will also

carry him to the point that you've expressed. You take for instance incomes into communities you have the majority of black communities where a person makes $100 a week. Ninety four dollars of that money goes outside his community so when you look at a right community will at least 40 percent of that income stays in the community. We have community development. But if black people do not have the two words developing their community then they're going to be around 15 years from now with their hands out to industry into the federal government looking for the same type of welfare payoff to these type of jobs that we're talking about. In this one we're going to get something must not only be jobs in the black community must be jobs with dignity and jobs with the possibility of developing in the community as a whole is that it down economic terms that really what he's getting at is that that right now in these communities the black people are straight men for the floor money through them and out of the community. You cannot create the capitalized base

unless you develop the kind of productivity factor that makes possible a multiplier effect of the dollar within these communities and it is not to insulate the black man within the community but to develop the kind of base so that he can negotiate himself out of the Commune and be accepted by the structure he will have. To make sure the company disturbs you so through disturbing me very much. I would agree that the negro the procession in the south today is not the position that you would replace in your 50 years ago there was a different technological society. But I get a little worried when you say Care compete the fact is you would share this and give you some motivation and give you the jobs there and so extra training he can compete with everybody. Well let me tell you of the wimp role really we've worked with a man to rock you I think what they're saying is they can't come. Pete I think Mrs. March said with you they cannot be expected to compete right on that education.

Is a little liberal or a good actually right. Next up for going let's make Britain a practical thing like Mr. Millet has done one of the most difficult areas that we've looked at is the area of getting youngsters into apprenticeship programs and skilled trades. First people want to ensure there was no discrimination and thought that would be an automatic flow we found this wasn't so that the education gap the past discrimination the motivation gap look like there could not be results. The fact is with the intelligent recruiting program with the openings there with a fair procedure without any great institutional changes in existing voluntary apprenticeship programs we have seen youngsters coming out of the ghetto schools the so-called inferior schools or really inferior schools with a little prep being compete and maybe the toughest apprenticeship programs in New York and Chicago with Washington plumbers electricians steam fitters workers I mean.

One of the things mentioned by the Presidential Commission on Civil disorders in the scutcheon of the comparison often made between the black immigrant and the Puerto Rican and minority groups immigrant and others is that tendency on the part of individuals that he just did and that is not identifying individual cases of success and suggest that all others could be just as successful I think Mr. Lawson let us say I just couldn't let this go by I have to react to that statement. The only thing in my answer would be to what you just said is that what would happen to that guy if he had to get a decent education dead through all those stumbling blocks had gone and done a job is fine or fine act than a person with the proper training and education. There's no telling what that person could have been and that is the great injustice to decide in a type of school systems prevail on people. And this is one of the big hang ups This is why they follow what he's getting at if I can see directly the great thrust as a result of the unemployment has been on a

certain level of training programs you know to get people employed. We do want people to work. The real question is rather than really the potential of some of these people on the saying all of them. And what I'm suggesting here it is that we still have not come to grips with the fundamental problem. Equal access equal access. On this continuum cannot just be a linear approach. We have to be able to have horizontal movement in and we don't have horizontal movement in and what you did by Howard's arm really means it means that we have to be able to have people coming in within the system. At levels within that system. Other than that you're saying that the potential lawyer or whatever you know ends up being in the mechanics training program because we want to get everybody employed. I'm saying that while great strides are being made while great efforts are being made that the

problem is geometric and we still are only moving arithmetically and by the time we engineer many of the programs and it which means to implement them they are not relevant because the situation has been redefined and that we're going to the. But we got cobblestone streets and that unless we understand that we have to make dramatic leaps not steps dramatic leaps. We're not going to come to grips with the problem. We will still be saying many of us that we're working hard we're doing the best we can and we won't understand while this ride there's still despair in the community and why people look at us who supposedly are leaders in our areas of expertise as sellouts as people who are not really doing the job because we will say we're working 18 hours a day to solve the problem. We we have not come to grips with the fully equation of what has to be done at what rate of speed in what timeframe in order to meet the

problem before we finish yours. I wonder if we could move now towards an issue that has been raised here and that is with regard to the urban coalition. Someone said recently that there's no more commitment on the part of industry and labor and those joined in the urban coalition to change the conditions of poverty than they is on the committee. A commitment on the power of Congress to change the conditions of poverty. I says Mr. Miller you come from history and you are in the 19 years you have been very active in trying to get the four involved. Do you believe there's a commitment on the part of the urban coalition greater than the commitment of Congress to the problems of the poor. I would answer that. Well I'd hate to make a relative comparison but speaking of the urban coalition I think there. Where I do know the people involved I think there is a new dedication a new recognition a problem when you see the caliber of people like John Gardner devoting full time to this task who heads the urban

coalition he could have been president of any number of universities and spending his full time and going around the country and you see the caliber of the people of what is needed back of this in addition to working on today's problems. We need better planning agency these problems of the cities that we're talking about are the most complex problems in our society. And as a businessman as I look at them they're frightening they're more difficult than the problems of the Ford Motor Company and there's no planning going on no basic long range plan and these problems we're talking about in today's evidence interrelate when you talk about jobs you get to education. We could soon get to a location of industry land use transportation air pollution congestion all these come together and these problems can be worked on and they can be solved. But they aren't going to give in to ad hoc efforts. So what I'm saying here is that the same time the urban corelation is working on the immediate problems there is a need for a planning agency and part of this is a plug really that mean that there was a stack placed

that couple months ago an Urban Institute announced by the president which. Going to be far a national planning agency in the end we hope to be do work on this so that two or three or five years now we come back to round table Mr. Sutton of Newsweek we will think we have done some basic find it had be done three to five years ago we would know better how to proceed today. I want to write as I always say just so roughly a start I ask you I just ask direct that question to Mr. Miller from the industry's point of view and the urban coalition. I know Ali you from labor you're from his civil rights department of the FARC ideal is their commitment on the part of labor in your belief to do something about changing the structure of Labor's relation to the poor so that there will be more breakthroughs more job opportunities more breaking down a barrier so that the poor will not have the opposition of the organized labor movement in their effort to break through the barrier. Let me first this is of course your system will I think beard coalition is

trying to get the Congress to move forward. They're supposed to but I think that no matter how powerful industry. How forceful labor can be that unless the voter on the street Mr. and Mrs. Starling votes for those representatives in the Congress who will vote for the kind of measures that we need to solve these problems. They will be futile efforts. So the first thing that I would say to Alice is is look at the U.S. shoes look at what is needed what kind of legislation and vital for those people who will put that legislation through second language. Will you argue your own community in your own union in the room business group to amend this legislation if you will work concurrently to see that it is effective and your efforts are effective. I might say that one of the films the labor movement does in helping the poor to get out of poverty is to organize groups the best

anti-poverty measure is to get people to raise their conditions not merely the. It's not merely the working conditions there are opportunities this service is dignity. They're taking care of the problems. Well the job is a function of your rooms not by whom you leaders alone but by union members. So there is no question to the degree that we organize like the garbage workers in Memphis. We are hoping the poor to Oak themselves out of poverty into society. So what you've said is Flavin is that where you're going to get apparently from your suggestion we're not going to get in the teens in the condition of minority groups. Poverty and employment housing and other unless we get change in the type of Congress with that we have. You don't believe that this urban coalition through its own effort can bring about change. And doesn't this seem rather far sighted. A goal for those who are caught in the trap of poverty that they've got

to change the Congress of the United Stated for their conditions of understanding change and they don't want to hire she's the guy. It's a big reason the dreams that Congress will choose the people who are now in the Congress. Yes but they don't the poor don't have this power the poor are in the minority. We can't pay for lobbyists and we can't you know what we do since what we're talking about the urban coalition is a coalition of labor and business and religious groups and public figures who do provide lobbyists to go to the congressmen and say you must stop cutting budgets when necessary program I say look what I say so your suggestion is that the early question as one of its functions will perhaps in the future have to do a better job of pressuring Congress to bring about the change the read not get occurring correct. But sometimes I think we have to do all of those things but I don't think the issue is just an issue of the Congress. We got a free enterprise system going in this country and that free enterprise system has said that it had the technology and the power to do fantastic

kinds of things. I think what was mentioned by the gentleman from Roxbury is it's a long a long list of this approach and that is that if we're going to through Adriel institutional change we've also got to do it in the private sector for us to change a Congress completely means that it really is same we've got to have enough black folks in this country so. Dispersed in congressional districts to be enough of the population you know to really have an effect. And we're going to go through three or four generations before that. The real issue here is is there a funding. Is there a fundamental moral commitment on the part of this country to. Is there a real understanding of its own economic survival. You know not doing anybody any favors. The people who are not being productive adversely affected gross national product. They not only do not produce but we have to use tax money to keep them in a survival state in the sickness their own self interest.

Gentlemen I'm sorry again we're coming to the close of a half hour period when you and I might move very quickly to a summing up by each person. But in the summing up with regard to you Mr. Miller I wonder if you would answer the two questions I asked earlier that is just CANNOT how economies provide jobs for all of the people number one and two should we guarantee income to those out of work. Mr. Sutton I think those are two very perceptive and basic questions and to both I would like to say yes as long as people in our country want more goods Beate Hauser's services food both your forgive my using cars here as well. There should be no unemployed. Realistically though we know that at certain times there will be people out of work. In my opinion our society is rich enough to provide income to these people as well as to all of those who can't work the aged and the young and the blind etc.. At the present time

most people would agree about 28 million people in the United States are below the poverty line of home only 8 million are on welfare. In other words our current welfare system system simply is not working. A system need to be installed it seems to me that that's three things First it should cover all not just 8 out of 28 but all of our citizens. Second it should provide incentive to work and improve income of those at work which our present system does not do. Because when they get a job they lose income and parity should be efficient. The idea that seems best to me here is one called a negative income tax which I believe is deserves a lot of intensive study. Mr. Robinson I'm sorry you're going to be deprived because we only happened four. Right I just like to say this I don't think it's a matter of whether we can do it or not I think that this is love this is the richest country in the world and we have the resources available. I think that the real problem is whether this country as a

whole wants to survive and if we want to survive then it's not whether we can do it it's whether we've got it we have to kill it. Mr. Slater of the AFL CIO civil rights department Well we're greedy that we should change for us but I do it at the door though I don't think it's useful suitable if we just had goodwill we would take care of the problems. It requires political action legislative action individual action. It requires intelligence. Flailing I would agree with Mr. Lewis will agree with Mr. Pearson. It requires some significant changes that this is capable. This country is capable of making you see Tyson no individual or institution gives up power. Power must be negotiated in order to negotiate power. One must have an answer or a base of power with the

minorities in this community individually and collectively. Let's take the whole of the dead taking begin to redefine in assess their own dignity must develop the institutional strength of power not to maintain isolation but as an instrument of negotiating their way into the largest system so that the full integration of this American society which I'm sure we all desire can be achieved. What can be done. Change of attitude on the part of America. Education for purpose of employment retraining for employment. I combination of government industry labor and civic organizations I am working towards full employment for blacks and whites. Is this a solution. What must be done was created and produced by Sam chase for Debbie ally B Radio in New York with the cooperation of Newsweek magazine. I am Percy Sutton saying thanks for our panel this

program was distributed by the national educational radio network.