United Automobile Worker

Sweatshoppers Still Snipe at Minimum Wage Bill

WASHINGTON
As House-Senate conferees work toward agreement on a final bill increasing the minimum wage from 40 to 75 cents an hour, the sweatshop lobbies backing the ripper bill passed by the House are centering their defense of that bill around

1. definitions of "rates of pay" and "time worked" that would have the effect of wiping out the present statutory normal 40-hour work week before penalty overtime begins. (The bill passed by the Senate retains the language of the present law.)

2. the words "indispensable to the production of goods for Interstate commerce" which, together with specific exclusion of workers in retail and service trades, would deprive up to three million workers of the law's protection.

The Southern lumber lobby is split over the exemption of logging in the House bill. Because the powerful Southern Pine Association would rather the little "coffee pot" sawmills stayed under the Act, along with the big lumbering operators, this ripper provision is likely to go out of the final bill.

Exemption for workers engaged in manufacturing in retail establishments is being narrowed and tightened in committee, to exempt even fewer than the Senate bill, which was not as bad as the House bill.

Indications are that both Democrats and Republicans want to put the bill on the books before adjournment in order to have it to talk about back home between now and January. For this reason, the sweatshop lobby is likely to be defeated in any attempt to stall final House-Senate agreement until adjournment. Senator Taft, who is sitting in the conference committee meetings between campaign trips to Ohio, seems anxious to get the bill through quickly, and in about the form it passed the Senate. He is working on Republican House conferees to abandon ripper provisions of the House bill and accept the Senate version.

CIO is continuing to urge House members to work and vote for acceptance of the Senate bill as a very imperfect best that can be got out of this Congress.