Sketches by Richard Mantz
Unemployment=poverty in Lawrence
By FRED PARRIS
Kansan Staff Correspondent
A Lawrence woman taking home less than $250 a month is afraid to talk about her low-wage problems for fear she will lose her job.
The manager of a Lawrence hotel is concerned more with profit and loss statements than employeewelfare.
About 425 persons in Douglas County are out of work. Hundreds more are working, but at pay which provides a bare subsistence.
Government officials are fond of citing reasons such as a lack of vocational training, a disadvantaged childhood, an influx of destitute "outsiders" and racial and class prejudice as causes of poverty.
But pragmatically it comes to this: the poor in Lawrence as in every American city, are the unemployed and the underemployed.
The Feb. 1969 Employment bureau newsletter lists the Douglas County unemployment rate as 1.9 per cent—about 425 persons.
Unemployment rates are easy to figure. On the underemployed-jobholders not earning enough to maintain a decent standard of living-little data is available.
- For employees of companies engaging in or producing goods for interstate commerce—$1.60 an hour.
- A frequently cited standard of a "ground floor" wage is the federal minimum wage law which currently lists two minimum wage categories:
- For all hospital, construction, school and laundry employees and employes of other businesses grossing $250,000 annually—$1.30 an hour.
Employees of all other businesses—those not specifically included in the Fair Labor Practices Act—are not covered by present minimum wage laws, says William Kuehn, regional operations officer in the Kansas City Labor department office. They can legally be paid whatever the employer feels like giving them, be it $3 or 80 cents an hour.
Typical of many local low-income workers is "Mrs. Smith" (she requested the withholding of her name for fear of losing her job.) A divorcee and the mother of two teenagers, she works full-time at a local manufacturing plant, where she earns $2.06 an hour.
In Lawrence, despite its apparently prosperous blend of commerce, industry, agriculture and education there is a sizable minority of residents who face the daily hardships of low wages.
Several nationally known companies have either built new plants or warehouses here or are planning to do so in the near future. A new Kresge warehouse employing 400 workers is slated for completion soon. B.F. Goodrich warehouse is expanding its local warehouse, with more employment resulting. The new Packer Plastics plant is expected to employ 120 persons up from its present 75 payroll employees in the next 24 months.
The upshot of all this, says Max Kepple, local labor union president at Stokely-Van Camp, is that not only will there be work for those now jobless, but employees currently working for what they consider substandard wages will have employment alternatives.
Established employers will have to make their wages competitive with what the newcomers pay or else, in the best "supply and demand" tradition, workers will shift from their present jobs to greener fields.
After taxes and deductions, she said her take-home pay is about $250 a month. From this, she pays $45 a month rent on a ramshackle house in East Lawrence. Utilities average $37 a month in the winter and groceries come to about $140 monthly for her family of three.
With the remaining money, less than $25, she must buy shoes and clothing, pay medical costs, upkeep on her 9-year-old car, and other expenses which come up.
"I don't know what's wrong with Lawrence," she said. "They'll charge you loads for groceries, rent and everything, but they don't pay no wages."
Compared to some residents, "Mrs. Smith" is well off. Some persons are attempting to support families on wages of less than $1.60 an hour, or about $250 a month before taxes. Many of them rapidly learn that they can't live on that income alone and take a second job, sometimes working 14 to 16 hours a day. In some cases, wives and children work to make ends meet.
Virtually all low-income employees contacted feel that the present minimum wage is too low. It is simply not adequate to meet the current cost of living, they say. Estimates of a more realistic minimum wage range from $2.00 to $3.00.
While workers bemoan the low wage-high-price trap, local employers voice different complaints. More than one employer said the minimum wage requirements, guaranteeing the meager sums they do, represented unwarranted government intervention in the affairs of business. It is nearly impossible to pay a genuinely "living" wage, keep prices competitive and still make a good profit, one retailer commented.
Typical of a number of local firms is the Eldridge Hotel. Bound by law to pay all employees at least $1.30 an hour, it is more concerned with staying out of legal trouble than with giving employees an adequate wage.
"The hotel is in business to make money," said Mrs. Ruth Van Vleet, hotel manager. "We don't subsidize people by giving them a higher rate of pay just because the government thinks that's what they ought to be getting."
Mrs. Van Vleet is pessimistic about proposals to raise the minimum to $2 hourly wage.
"If we paid everyone $2 an hour, there wouldn't be anything left," she said. "They'd run everyone out of business. There wouldn't be any jobs then."
Asked whether present Eldridge wages were sufficient to maintain a decent standard of living, Mrs. Van Vleet replied, "I don't worry about it. We pay the minimum and we pay what people are worth."
Many Lawrence merchants, however, are regulated only by their consciences and the laws of supply and demand. Among these are many shopkeepers and operators of restaurants and motels.
At the Virginia Inn Restaurant, manager Paul Sinclair said, the lowest starting wage for a non-tipped employee is $1.25, the salary for dishwashers. Waitresses are paid $1 an hour, plus
whatever they receive in tips. Cooks receive $1.85 and up.
Sinclair concedes that it is probably difficult for a person to live decently on $1.25 an hour. He notes, however, that the restaurant business has the highest rate of failures of almost any business in operation.
The situation in local motels is not much different. Those managers who would discuss their wages at all, said they paid maids from $1.25 to $1.40. As with laundry workers, maids haye no guaranteed amount of work. They do what there is to be done and leave.
While the lowest wages in Lawrence are paid by downtown merchants, KU also contributes its share of meager paychecks. Indeed, the University of Kansas, with more than 268 full-time employees receiving less than $1.60 an hour, is by far the largest local employer paying substandard wages. KU workers paid less than $1.60 include janitors, cooks, clerks and general laborers.
Another 382 KU employees, including hospital attendants, key punch operators and cashiers, receive $1.60 to $2 an hour.
In March of this year, Governor Docking and Republican legislative leaders announced that they would seek a pay raise for state employees which would set the minimum state civil service rate at $1.60 per hour. The proposal, expected to be approved by the state finance council, this spring, would go into effect July 1.
Laundries are another source of low-paying jobs. At the Lawrence Laundry and Dry Cleaners, office manager William Dockery said, these employees are not guaranteed a 40-hour week. They work only as long as they are needed.
Dockery said he did not consider the $1.30 wages excessively low considering "the particular type of work and the type of people we get to work."
One Lawrence Laundry employee, who asked not to be identified, said her paychecks after taxes averaged $31 to $46 a week. This, she claimed, isn't even enough to pay for food, rent and utilities.
The state is not required by the federal government to pay the $1.60 rate until 1971, but it is widely felt by state employees that the raise is needed now.
"Present salaries are not in the least bit adequate," Rankin said. "I don't see how people can live on what we pay them now."
The proposed pay hike has the strong approval of KU personnel officer Phillip N. Rankin. He feels the raise is a must if KU employees are to maintain anything approaching a decent standard of living.
Kansas Union workers, although not civil service employees, are bound by the same pay rates as the rest of the University, said Union manager Frank Burge. Like Rankin, Burge feels that the current wages for lower-grade employes are grossly inadequate.
"I really feel for this category of personnel," Burge said. "It requires moonlighting, or jobs for several members of the family, for them to maintain a tolerable standard of living."
So far as starting pay is concerned, the city of Lawrence is somewhat ahead of the University. The starting salary for a full-time city employee,
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