Labour Shortage Aids Integration

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31005, 10 March 1966, Page 17

Labour Shortage Aids Integration

[From FRANK OLIVER. N.Z.P..A. Special Correspondent.] WASHINGTON, Mar. 9. The acute shortage of labour which faces the United States as full employment nears is doing more for integration in the South than almost anything else. Various businesses and factories in the South now have no option but to hire Negroes for there are not enough whites available.

The president of a textile mill in North Carolina told the press recently: ‘A Negro looking for a job now has opportunities he’s never had before. If it weren’t for our being able to hire Negroes, businesses around here would be in real trouble.” Economics are achieving things for the Negro which seemed far away only a year

or two ago. It is not just that one sees more Negroes in better jobs as one travels through the South, for figures back up the impression. The national rate of unem ployment is now just below 4 per cent but in North and South Carolina the rate is down to 3 per cent and the press reports that in Atlanta, scene of so much racial trouble in recent years, it is now below 2 per cent. When one considers that there really are some unemployables it seems obvious that Atlanta is as near full employment as any American city has ever been. Figures on the national scale also speak well for the economic improvement of the Negro. A year ago Negro unemployment was running at the rate of 9 per cent. Today it is down to 7 per cent. In factory after factory in the South, Negroes are now working alongside whites and working without friction. Employers are not only recruiting Negro labour but are taking the trouble to train others for jobs later on. This integration of the work force is most noticeable the

many textile plants (which vears ago came down to the South from New England be cause of cheaper labour and a more salubrious climate) but they are being taken into all kinds of other jobs. Some have become bank tellers, others highway patrolmen, still others reporters and copy editors in daily newspapers. In Jackson, Mississippi, a local airline is asking for Negro applications for jobs as stewardesses on its planes. Such an attitude would have been unthinkable in the South two or three years ago. This great change seems to be due to two things, the labour market “pinch” and the fact that more and more Southerners are accepting the integration decree. One newspaper records the case of a Negro With a college degree who, a little while ago, could do no better than 50 dollars a week as a waiter in a club (no tips). Now as a salesman he makes 90 dollars a week and gets a small commission on sales. A Negro bank worker can and does get 100 dollars a week, or twice the legal minimum hourly wage. This turn of events does

not mean that all is harmony in race relations in the South ern states Far from it. but the trend has started to swing towards fuller Negro employment and better pay for better jobs and this trend presum ably will go on as long as the economy continues to flourish Schools and colleges are co-operating by bringing to the attention of employers likely Negroes being graduated from these educational institutions. In some places hiring halls have been set up where personnel officers or businesses and factories can interview Negroes looking for jobs. Most of these places are being established with Federal money under the Manpower Development and Training Act one of President Johnson's supplementary civil rights acts. Federal money is also being used in retraining programmes. Negro domestic servants are benefitting from the changed atmosphere in the South. It would be idle to deny that in the “old days.” which means only a few years ago. they were discriminated against and hired at low wages by whites. Economic necessity and a

long history of subservience forced them to take jobs at less than legal rates. But under the civil rights laws passed in recent years Negroes seem to most observers to be getting more self-assured and better able to stand up for their rights.