The President's Men; 2; Willard Wirtz: Secretary of Labor

The following program is from NET, the National Educational Television Network. Behind every president is a group of men who advise the Chief Executive and carry out his policies. And picked, they serve at his pleasure, and in turn, they help run the National Government. Cabinet members, special assistants, agency heads, collectively, they are known as the President's Men. This is a series of programs dealing with some of those President Johnson has selected as his men. They discuss with reporter Paul Niven, their functions, their thoughts, and their aims. Tonight, the Secretary of Labor, W. Willard Wertz.

The United States was almost a century and a half old before its wage earners got a cabinet level department representing their interests. In 1913, on his last day in office, President William Howard Taft signed into law an act creating the Department of Labor. Trade unions had been calling for the step since the end of the Civil War. The population of the United States was becoming predominantly urban rather than rural, predominantly industrial rather than agricultural. Working conditions were bad and working hours oppressive for millions of men and women and children. Immigration into the country had just passed an all-time peak, nearly 9 million in one decade. The newcomers found liberty, political and religious, but many also found slum homes and sweatshop jobs. The formation of labor organizations was widely and bitterly resisted. So there came into being a small federal department to study and improve the lot of working

people. It had about 2,000 employees and its transportation pool, a single horse and buggy for a time the department grew only slowly. One came the great flow of New Deal labor and welfare legislation in response to the great depression. Someone called it a period of heroic experimentation. Most of the New Deal measures were controversial at first, but most became in time part of the fabric of American society. The Lake Francis Prickin served as Secretary of Labor throughout the 12 Roosevelt years, longer than any other person before or since, and she helped develop much of the precedent of chattering legislation. Many additional functions were added to the department, including administration of the minimum wage by a new wage and our division. These were the years of rapid growth for organized labor and for the Department of Labor. World War II brought massive and novel labor problems.

It also ushered in a new era of scientific and technological change on a scale and at a pace unprecedented in history and with still new implications for the labor force, the labor unions and the labor department. One of the few things that new machines and computers could not do was provide enough jobs for the population. The new society demanded new skills and had little to offer the unskilled. The president's Kennedy and Johnson faced the problem of those for whom there was no work. The problem of widespread poverty amidst general affluence. The new frontier in the great society, if given the Labor Department, still more programs to administer. Though with about 9,000 employees, it remains one of the smallest of the cabinet-level departments. And since its establishment, there have been only 10 secretaries. The 10th is W. Willard Words, who was served under both president's Kennedy and Johnson. Mr. Words is a former Chicago law professor and law partner of the late Adelaide Stevenson.

Mr. Secretary, why after four years of massive and expensive social legislation is our unemployment rate still higher than that of any of the other major industrial countries? Well, it's a hard question to answer. There's one difference in the way we measure it, and yet even take a card. Oh, yes. Taking a card of the difference in measurement, there is still a remaining difference. Of course, in the other countries, almost all of them, there has been a, we call it, all socialized approach. We've stayed away from that. We've figured that some unemployment is worth the price of avoiding a socialized, centralized to kind of control the labor market, but that isn't enough of the answer. And the rest of it has got to be found in this attention to the particular cases. In the Scandinavian countries, in Western Europe, they do go after it, in this situation, on a training basis. We're starting to do that, we'll do more of it.

You said until recently that if we could get it down to two and a half or three percent, that would have been about what we could hope for. More recently, there have been statements that the government does that would be satisfied with four percent. Oh, no. I think it's the other way around. There used to be a good deal of talk about an interim goal of four percent. Now, we've approached that. Unemployment is now down below four and a half percent, as regularly measured. I think the change has been the other way, we're pushing aside that four percent idea, pushing aside any idea that any unemployment is a justifiable buffer against inflation, emphasizing rather that the only tolerable unemployment is that, and it amounts to about two and a half and three percent, which comes just from people moving from one job to another, or just coming in to the labor market. There are about 10,000 more people at work every day in this country than work the day before. And there are about that many more moving from one job to another. So some so-called frictional unemployment is necessary. That probably, along with that very small part of the workforce, which just doesn't have

what it takes, and that's a very small part, probably adds up to two and a half or three percent. I count that about as far as we can go. Well, now some economists claim that the administration is more interested in keeping prices stable and then reducing unemployment. You deny that I take it. Oh, I'm sure it is not true. There could be no tolerance in an administration committed as this one is so fully to the idea of a great society. There could be no tolerance for any person being unemployed so does to avoid inflation in the economy. There are better ways of meeting that problem. Some of the other solutions or partial solutions that have been proposed are the 35-hour work week, double time for overtime and early retirement. Do you favor any of those? I find those really three different points. As far as cutting down the work week is concerned, I don't see the point in doing it by a statute. It's being done to some extent through collective bargaining with the situation being adjusted to the demands of particular industries. That seems to me the right answer there.

As far as the double time for overtime is concerned, I'm very much concerned about the fact that there are millions and millions of people working more than 40 hours a week every week in this country at the same time there's unemployment. And I'm very, very strongly in support of legislation, which would establish a premium or penalty rate of double time for overtime so that that would stop. I don't think that makes sense. As far as the earlier retirement is concerned, I assume that over the years there's going to be a redistribution of man's life and woman's life so that less evidence is spent in what we've called work and more of it in leisure. I'm not 100% sure about the earlier retirement program. I'd like to see the person's work life start perhaps a couple of years later. So there'll be a couple more years of education at the beginning instead of lopping it off at the end right now so that there will be developments along that line. I think they will come rather in connection with the work life and the work year than the work week.

You've been tossing around this idea of two more years of public education in a couple of years now. If you have any response to that, is it administration policy for it? There has been no formal administration policy. Several of the states are considering right now the extension of the required period for attendance in school. Two of them, Texas and Maine this year raised the level from 16 to 17 years. Some of the others are considering it or considering it. In a number of states there's quite a development of the junior college kind of thing and a vocational education program, public programs. Yes, I think there's a growing consciousness that the technological age is going to demand more education and that we simply cannot afford to let a boy or a girl out of school now without some usable skill. It's not going to be two more years of the same old thing a lot of them dropped out of because it wasn't meant for them. We've carried the ideals of democracy and excellence pretty far when we've kept everybody in school on a single track headed toward college when a lot of them aren't going to

get there. I think there will be more education. I think there will be more variety in it and that a good deal more of it will be adapted to the needs of those who aren't going on to college. Mr. Secretary, this department has published a book that the so-called Moynihan report on the breakdown in Negro family role life. Is it the administration's position that this is the root cause of the Negro employment problem? Is this the agenda for the next phase of the civil rights program according to the administration? There's been a great deal of misunderstanding about the report. There was filed a report by the department with the administration prepared by Mr. Moynihan which did cover this point. I think it's a very important point, one that requires attention. I think there's been a legitimate concern that it is perhaps reflected in over emphasis on a particular point. I think it's true that we ought to be looking not only at what's happened within the Negro family but what's happened within every poor family in the country that's been subjected to the pressures of generation after generation of poverty.

I don't think it's just a Negro family problem. The President's speech at Howard commencement last June noted this problem among others. It seems to me more appropriate to say that the administration interest is in the whole of the meeting of the whole of this need, including this part, but I rather think you'll find earlier emphasis on the meeting of the economic needs for jobs, the broader need for education, rather than any exclusive attention directed at the family as such. The report certainly explains the background in the three centuries' mistreatment of Negroes which has caused this, but are not, in fact, most of these problems more acute in the non-white growth and in the white growth. They're more acute in the sense of a higher proportionate concentration, but every time I look at an unemployment situation, every time I look at a poverty situation, the answer is about this, four out of the five people involved will be whites. One of them will be a Negro.

The point is that that represents twice as large a proportion of Negroes as it does of whites. My own approach is to think to it is to think that we ought to seize and that we will seize upon the civil rights revolution as a concentration of our interest on the whole area of disadvantage. And I think it'll be one of the grand developments of the century. Both the nation's whole conscience is pricked by the fact of this one racial protest group, and we answer it not in terms of meeting the Negro situation, but in terms of meeting the whole disadvantage situation. So the problem, you know, the one thing that's been integrated in this country for a very long time is disadvantage. When you get down to the point of disadvantage, you find twice as heavy a concentration on the Negro, but still four times as many whites as Negroes affected by it. It seems to me the proper focus of our attention is the whole area of disadvantage. Is a measure of discernment of reverse discrimination and employment justified and necessary at this point? That's a hard question.

I'm quite clear in my own mind that what you've called reverse discrimination, which I suppose means special preference to the Negro, is completely legitimate at the point of preparation, at the point of education, at the point of training. And it seems to me that we ought to recognize that the fallout of a century of discrimination has been a kind of disadvantage, which we now ought to meet as such. And yes, I think there ought to be preferential attention to the training, to the preparation of the Negro. To make up for what he has lost, it's harder to say that if there are two people applying for a job, equal qualifications, one Negro, one white, that the Negro should be preferred, I don't think we'll get farther, faster that way. I think we've got to recognize that we're trying to get away from this distinction on a racial basis, and I don't like to see preference either way, as far as employment is concerned. But preparation, we better go out of our way to make up for what we've caused. A couple of years ago, in a speech to the building tradespeople in New York, the Union

people, you pointed out that at least two of their locals with some thousands of members had not a single Negro member, is that still a case? There are still some so-called lily white unions, as there are still some lily white front offices in this country. That number is diminishing. The number in the building trades is diminishing. It is not yet eliminated. There is still a problem there. It is part of a broader problem, which is that we are also finding trouble in bringing two, some of these apprenticeship programs, Negro boys who are qualified and are willing to satisfy even the legitimate and reasonable apprenticeship qualifications. But in the course of two years, the situation has improved considerably. It is still not met fully. Mr. Secretary, I fully understand the autonomy of individual unions, but with both presidents Kennedy and Johnson and the National Leadership of the AFLCIO for years, bringing pressure for an end-discrimination, why does it persist?

Oh, it is a free country, which includes the freedom to be wrong. It includes the freedom to be cruel, mean, ugly, whatever may be involved here. There is no authority, which anybody is about to exercise on an unlimited basis. If there is a federal contract involved and there is discrimination within the Union, which is working on that contract, that contract will, if we can meet that situation, be stopped. And similarly, as far as any employer is concerned, but the limitations on the authority are real. Mr. Secretary, may we turn to the state of the Union movement as a whole? Trade union membership in this country has been declining and declining in a rather big way compared to the total labor force. That's right. The numbers have been staying about flat in the unions, but the number of employees have been going up working for about nine years. That's about right. Why? Principally, because we're shifting from being a production economy to a service economy, it's much easier to organize the employees in the large, 10 to 15,000 heavy manufacturing,

producing plant, whether all right there, than it is to organize a service industry, whether people scattered all over the country. This is the ordination in the world, where most of us now are in services rather than in production. It makes organization harder. There's another answer, surely. There was a crusading purpose and a crusading zeal about the labor organization, when they were fighting sweatshop conditions. Mr. Secretary, do you in the president think you're going to have any more luck? We're peeling 14 D in 1966 than you did in 1965, and if you think you can, how are you going to get around Senator Dirkson's filibuster? It won't be a matter of luck. It'll be a matter of a clear recognition that there is a taking of a position here by the legislature. It was by the Senate, which would be a great mistake to think there's some secret power that will control it.

I think that there was an illusion that anything the administration wanted in this field it could get. There was the recognition at the close of the session. A very, very strong legislative position on this. I think there will be a repeal of Section 14B at the next session of Congress. I don't think it's going to be easy. I don't think that there's any basis for assuming that will happen. I think there will be an insistence that this be put up to the Congress, that it'll be put up to the country, that it not be blocked, and I think the decision will be to repeal it. How again are you going to get by Senator Dirkson's filibuster? I don't know yet how full a filibuster Senator Dirkson will mount. I don't... Didn't he indicate quite clearly at the end of the last session that he wasn't giving up and would do the same thing again? There were statements to that effect. There have been statements too that it's tied in with a view about reapportionment and that kind of thing. I don't know.

I have a great respect for the not for the timing, but for the long run, good sense of the Senate, the Congress of this country, I don't know the details, and I don't think anybody does. I wouldn't presume that Senator Dirkson would stand one man in the way, as one man in the way eternally of a decision of this country on this issue, but I don't know. And the related field of collective bargaining, you have predicted that collective bargaining is currently getting its last chance, what do you mean? That was two years ago that that particular statement was made. And I think it improved that last chance very well. It's an extraordinary thing that there has been as little use as there has in the last two or three years of the emergency disputes powers of the government. There has been a less resort to the Taft Hartley Act in the last three years than in any earlier period. There are only now three or four cases a year which even come to the attention of the Secretary of Labor or the Labor Department.

That collective, of course, when they do, we hear so much about them, that the overbalance seem to overbalance all the rest. I think collective bargaining is probably working the best. It has worked well really ever. That the amount of time lost from strikes continues now over a five-year period at a very, very low level. There have been, except in the railroad and the transportation industries, very few occasions for interference by the government in any way, so that if collective bargaining has been exercising its last chance, as I think it did after the steel case in 1959, which met a hundred and sixteen days strike, and after the railroad case in 1963, which meant it had to go to Congress, and I think that did represent a kind of last chance, Parapos Bill, as I think collective bargaining has recovered very well. It's got a new lease on life, you think. I think it got a very, very long life, what's longer than I have. When are you, and the president, and the recent president, and most of the great majority of people in both the union movement and industry, profess to oppose compulsory arbitration?

But when the president of the United States brings the steel negotiators to both sides, to the executive mansion, and in the full glare of all the publicity media, which the president can command, addresses them in stern terms, and warns of grave national danger if they don't agree by tomorrow noon. Doesn't this come pretty close to compulsory bargaining, a compulsory arbitration? I don't see any factor of compulsion on any party in that steel case, as it was handled, which would have been any larger than the compulsion on those parties of a strike. I don't see any stronger force being brought to bear when a president says the country very much needs what you people are about to produce than I see in the compulsion which would come from a stoppage, and one other comparison, five years ago, it went 116 days with a strike of 116 days, and then the government coming in to participate under the form of the Taft Hartley Act.

I see an infinite advantage in the president calling the parties together and saying, not this is the way you are at a settlement, but rather, there must be a settlement, and you stay here and work this thing out together, do in four days, but otherwise, you're going to do in four months and do it without costing the country the effect of a strike. The compulsory arbitration, I think, is a long way from it. But you yourself said the president says there must be a settlement, isn't that pretty close to compulsory arbitration? Hasn't repeated interventions by the White House and by secretaries of labor in industrials disputes, promulgated to an unwritten law that in certain industries and services strikes cannot be tolerated? I added them up the other day, and five years of which I have been equated with this office, the Department of Labor, and occasionally the president, have participated in 19 cases. That's an average of about four years been going down quite rapidly. Over half of those, about ten of them, are in the railroad industry, and I think the point you make is well taken in the railroad industry, the collective bargaining there has

fallen back onto the bad habit of expecting that there will be an emergency board. Four or five of the others are in the other transportation industries. One in the airlines, two on the docks, two in the maritime industry. In all the rest of the industry, there have been only five. Only once in steel. No, I don't think steel has the habit at all of turning to the government. It's been here only once in five years. And so my general feeling is that in the transportation industry, to some extent, in the railroad industry particularly, they've gotten used to walking on crutches as far as collective bargaining is concerned in the rest of industry they have not. Mr. Secretary, you've been having a struggle all year with the fruit and vegetable growers over the issue of the importation of foreign labor. Do you still feel that Congress was right in entering ending the Bracero law, and that you were then right in being very careful about letting foreign labor be right in? Well, let me answer the question in terms of the congressional decision. I think it was completely right, and that the events have thoroughly indicated it. What's happened this year is that a strict enforcement of the congressional decision to

abandon the use of the Braceros, except in the most extreme cases, has resulted in about 25 to 50,000 more jobs for American workers this year. It's resulted in an increase in wages and an improvement of working conditions. It has resulted in about a hundred million dollars staying in this country instead of going out of this country. It has not resulted in any increase in the price of the vegetables involved, what changes there have been a result of weather. I think it's been quite successful for a step along the lines of putting agricultural labor on a sound basis. Some of the growers, who as you know are very bitter against you personally, have demanded your resignation and tried to get some of your functions transferred to the Secretary of Agriculture, claim that even when they offer good wages and good working conditions, you have waited until the crops were rotting on the vine before you'd let them bring in the foreign labor that they needed because they couldn't get any other. Is this not been true in any of these cases?

If the question is whether we played a tough line on this, the answer is yes we did and we had to because a good many of them thought that we were kidding and that we were going to fold at the end and permit the foreign labor to be brought in. The rest of the story is that we didn't. The foreign labor did not come in except at the very peak of the season that made a season particularly in California and the rest of the story is that with the exception of probably some small loss in asparagus in California, probably some slight loss in strawberries at one point, there has been no identifiable significant loss of production in any crop. You hope for an improvement in relations? My guess is that when history finally adds this up, the decision is going to be that not as the result of the work of the Secretary of Labor, but as a result of Congress seizing the right time, the growers cooperating with it, but in these two or three years starting with this year and perhaps needing one or two more to complete the transition, everything that we've tried to do, everything that John Steinbeck protested in the grapes of

wrath, everything that Ed Murrow talked about in the harvest of shame will have been done in the sense that working in the seasonal work which agricultural requires will be on about the same level as most other hard work in this country. We'll have housing, decent kind of housing, we'll have schools, we'll have arrangements of one kind or another which will make it a decent thing to work on the farms. Yes, I think the cooperation of the growers is going to be such that this will be accomplished within a two or three year period. What kind of changes are we going to have in our overall labor force in the next generation? There's going to be more, obviously more automation. More skilled jobs, many fewer unskilled jobs, the machines will be doing the unskilled job, we will have to concentrate, we will have, we really have now almost full employment among adult workers, there will be a larger use of women in the workforce and we're going to have to meet the problem of the unemployed teenager, I expect that the largest change

will be that where there are today, about 0700 to 750,000 unemployed teenagers will move in on that situation, they ought to be in school or they ought to be in training programs of one kind or another and so I expect the general shift will be from blue collar to white, from production to service, a pickup of the disadvantage of the minority group, I think that will be met and most of all a shifting of the younger workers out of the labor market into a training program of one sort or another. We read in time that even punch card operators who we think is people in the most sophisticated of new professions are going to be replaced by scanners that even programmers will not be needed in a year or two in a few years, is this endless this process? Well I hope so because we are completely dependent for full employment on the fastest possible development of technological improvements of one kind and there can be no misunderstanding of that, the machine moves aside the unskilled worker but it is the technological process

that is stimulating this economy so fast that today at the end of the 12 months of the greatest technological advance in history today there are 2,000,000 more jobs than there were a year ago, more total, that's the result of the whole thing, Ikevans for that with the workforce expanding the way it is with this post-war baby crop coming into the market, which has got to be this completely live economy, this technological revolution, this moving for the moon, this cleaning up our backyards, this doing all these things, there is a ferment in the economy today of which technology and automation is very important part, yes it is necessary for the additional jobs that we are going to need. Finally Mr. Secretary what are going to be the problems facing the labor secretary of 25 years from now? In general I say the future attention of the Secretary of Labor directed more at the individual who gets left out of progress and perhaps

less at the working of the system as a whole. Thank you Mr. Secretary, thank you. This is NET, the National Educational Television Network.