Box 13, Folder 21, Document 2

Box 13, Folder 21, Document 2

STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLES, GOALS, AND COMMITMENTS
Page 3

recruit, train, and hire the hard-core unemployed. When the private sector
is unable to provide employment to those who are both able and willing to
work, then in a free society the government must of necessity assume the
responsibility and act as the employer of last resort or must assure adequate

income levels for those who are unable to work.

Emergency Work Program



This Convocation calls upon the Federal Government to develob
an emergency work program to provide jobs and new training opportunities for
the unemployed and underemployed consistent with the following principles:

--The Federal Government must enlist the cooperation of govern-
ment 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 unemployed into produc-
tive 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 capa-
bilities and broadens the opportunities of the employees to become productive

members of the permanent work force of our nation.
STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLES, GOALS, AND COMMITMENTS
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--Basic education, training, and counseling must be an integral
part of the program to assure extended opportunities for upward job mobility
and to improve employee productivity. Funds for training, education, and
counseling should be made available to private industry as well as to
public and private nonprofit agencies.

-“Pands 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 exist-
ing levels of employment 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 be-
come part of the regular work force and that normal performance standards
are met.

--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.

Private Employment Assistance and Investment



All representatives of the private sector in this Urban Coalition
decisively commit themselves to assist the deprived among us to achieve
full participation in the economy as self-supporting citizens. We pledge

full-scale private endeavor through creative job-training and employment,
STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLES, GOALS, AND COMMITMENTS
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managerial assistance, and basic investment in all phases of urban development.

The alternatives to a massive and concerted drive by the private
sector are clear. They include the burden of wasted human and physical
potential, the deterioration of the healthy environment basic to the successful
operation of any business, and the dangers of permanent alienation from our
society of millions of citizens.

We propose to initiate an all-out attack on the unemployment
problem through the following steps:

--In cooperation with government, to move systematically and di-
rectly into the ghettos and barrios to seek out the unemployed and under-
employed and enlist them in basic and positive private training and employ-
ment programs. We will re-evaluate our current testing procedures and
employment standards so as to modify or eliminate those practices and
requirements that unnecessarily bar many persons from gainful employment
by business or access to union membership.

--To create a closer relationship between private employers
and public training and emergency employment programs to widen career
opportunities for our disadvantaged citizens. To this end, we will proceed
immediately to promote "Earn and Learn Centers" in depressed urban areas
that might well be the joint venture of business, labor and local government.

--To develop new training and related programs to facilitate the

early entry of under-qualified persons into industrial and commercial employment.
STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLES, GOALS, AND COMMITMENTS
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--To develop large-scale programs to motivate the young to
continue their education. Working closely with educators, we will redouble
our efforts to provide part-time employment, training, and other incentives
for young men and women, We also pledge our active support to making
quality education readily accessible to deprived as well as advantaged
young pein F

--To expand on-the-job training programs to enhance the career
advancement prospects of all employees, with particular emphasis on those
who now must work at the lowest level of job classifications because of
educational and skill deficiencies.

We pledge to mobilize the managerial resources and experience of
the private sector in every way possible. We will expand part-time and full-
time assistance to small business development. We will strive to help residents
of these areas both to raise their level of managerial know-how and to obtain
private and public investment funds for development. We will work more
closely with public agencies to assist in the management of public
projects. We will encourage more leaders in the private sector to get directly
and personally involved in urban problems so that they may gain a deeper
understanding of these problems and be of greater assistance.

We pledge our best efforts to develop means by which major pri-
vate investment may be attracted to the renovation of deteriorating neighbor-
hoods in our cities. We will explore and encourage governmental incentives

to expedite private investment. We will develop new methods of combining
STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLES, GOALS, AND COMMITMENTS
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investment and managerial assistance so that the residents may achieve

a leadership position in the development of their areas.

Housing, Reconstruction, and Education

This Convocation calls upon the nation to take bold and immediate
action to fulfill the national need to provide "a decent home and a suitable
living environment for every American family" with guarantees of equal access
to all housing, new and existing. The Urban Coalition shall, as its next
order of business, address itself to the development of a broad program of
urban reconstruction and advocacy of appropriate public and private action
to move toward these objectives, including the goal of rehabilitation and
construction of at least a million housing units for lower-income families
annually.

This Convocation calls upon the nation to create educational
programs that will equip all young Americans for full and productive participa-
tion in our society to the full potential of their abilities. This will require
concentrated compensatory programs to equalize opportunities for achievement.
Early childhood education must be mad universal. Work and study programs
must be greatly expanded to enlist those young people who now drop out of
school. Financial barriers that now deny to youngsters from low-income
families the opportunity for higher education must be eliminated. Current
programs must be increased sufficiently to wipe out adult illiteracy within

five years.
STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLES, GOALS, AND COMMITMENTS
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This Convocation calls upon local government, business, labor,
religons, and civil rights groups to create counterpart local coalitions where
they do not exist to support and supplement this declaration of principles.

This Convocation calls upon all Americans to apply the same
determination to these programs that they have to past emergencies. We are
confident that, given this commitment, our society has the ingenuity to
allocate its resources and devise the techniques necessary to rebuild cities
and still meet our other national obligations without impairing our financial
integrity. Out of past emergencies, we have drawn strength and progress.
Out of the present urban crisis we can build cities that are places, not of
disorder and despair, but of hope and opportunity. The task we set for out-
selves will not be easy, but the needs are massive and urgent, and the hour
is late, We pledge ourselves to this goal for as long as it takes to accomplish it.
We ask the help of the Congress and the Nation.

et

This statement was unanimously adopted by members of the Steering Committee
and their representatives at a meeting Wednesday, August 23, 1967. Mr. Roy
Ash and Mr. Theodore Schlesinger were unable to attend or to be represented.