Box 7, Folder 13, Document 30

Box 7, Folder 13, Document 30

STATEMENT BY THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE URBAN COALITION
On
PUBLIC SERVICE EMPLOYMENT

The Urban Coalition Executive Committee calls upon the
Congress to enact urgently needed emergency legislation to
provide at least one million jobs through public service
employment.

In support of this objective, The Urban Coalition's
Statement of Principles, Goals, and Commitments, endorsed in
August, 1967 by 1,000 representatives of business, labor,
religion, civil rights, and local government, calls for action
consistent with the following principles:

--The federal government must enlist the cooperation of
government at all levels and of private industry to assure
that meaningful, productive work is available to everyone
willing and able to work.

--To create socially useful jobs, the emergency work program
should concentrate on the huge backlog of employment needs
in parks, streets, slums, countryside, schools, colleges,
libraries, and hospitals. To this end, an emergency work
program should be initiated and should have as its first
goal putting at least one million of the presently unem-
ployed into productive work at the earliest possible
moment.

--The program must provide meaningful jobs--not dead-end,
make work projects--so that the employment experience
gained adds to the capabilities and broadens the oppor-
tunities of the employees to become productive members
of the permanent work force of our nation.

--Basic education, training, and counseling must be an
integral part of the program to assure extended oppor-
tunities for upward job mobility and to improve employee
STATEMENT
March 14, 1968
Page 2

productivity. Funds for training, education, and coun-
seling should be made available to private industry as
well as to public and private nonprofit agencies.

--Funds for employment should be made available to local
and state governments, nonprofit institutions, and federal
agencies able to demonstrate their ability to use: labor
productively without reducing existing levels of employ-
ment or undercutting existing labor standards or wages
which prevail for comparable work or services in the
area but are not less than the federal minimum wage.

--Such a program should seek to qualify new employees to
become part of the regular work force and to meet normal
performance standards.

--The operation of the program should be keyed to specific,
localized unemployment problems and focused initially on
those areas where the need is most apparent.

The Clark-Javits Emergency Employment Act proposed in the

last session of Congress was responsive to these principles and
was endorsed by The Urban Coalition. It is now even more urgent
for the Congress to respond to the conditions of unemployment
despair revealed in hearings held by the Senate Sub-Committee on
Unemployment. The principles endorsed by The Urban Coalition

are consistent with the findings and recommendations of the
National Committee on Technology Automation and Economic Progress
(Feb. 1966), the White House Conference to Fulfill These Rights
(June, 1966), and The National Advisory Commission on Food and

Fiber (July, 1967). The Report of the President's Commission on

Civil Disorders leaves no doubt as to the nation's responsibilities.