New Jobs or New Agony?

Once again the White House is pushing for legislation that would allow employers to hire youths under 20 years old at a sub-minimum wage of $2.50 an hour this summer. And once again members of Congress, black and Latino leaders, labor-union leaders and others are caught up in emotional debate over whether this exception to the $3.35 standard would be good or bad for the nation.

The Reagan Administration moves with more hope this time, since a majority of the nation’s black mayors voted last year to accept the sub-minimum wage on a trial basis. Unemployment among black teen-agers stands at 43.1%, and most of the 390,000 jobless black youngsters live in depressed areas of the nation’s cities.

Recently resigned Labor Secretary Raymond J. Donovan told black leaders that the sub-minimum wage program could generate 500,000 new jobs and that “if only 160,000 of these jobs went to minority youth the jobless rate for this group would fall by one-third.”

Many black mayors wanted to reject the subminimum wage on grounds that, as the AFL-CIO argues vehemently, it is an opening gambit by those who don’t want any minimum wage at all; that it would not create half a million jobs, because employers would simply replace older workers with lower-paid teen-agers, and that the sub-minimum wage would be a cruel diversion away from what this society ought to do to give needy teen-agers a chance to live productive lives.

Opponents of the sub-minimum wage point to the unfairness of having a 19-year-old and a 21-year-old doing the same work, with the latter paid 85 cents an hour more than the teen-ager. They point out that many employers, facing applicants who were 18 and 20, would be likely to hire the one who came 85 cents an hour cheaper.

Americans hear so much about teen-agers out of work that they are oblivious to the fact that unemployment among 20-to-24-year-olds, people just forming families and with the first baby perhaps, is a serious problem. In February joblessness among Americans 20-24 was up by 56,000, reaching 11.2%.

Do we want a sub-minimum wage that eases unemployment among 16-to-19-year-olds, only to heighten it among those 20-24? That would be absurd social and economic policy.

The proposed legislation would impose penalties on employers who might fire current employees so as to hire youths at lower wages. But almost no one believes that the Reagan Administration would enforce such penalties. Furthermore, the sanctions would not apply in cases where an employer decided to hire a 19-year-old rather than a 24-year-old applicant.

A report that I saw the other day from a privately financed group called the Roosevelt Centennial Youth Project offers strong evidence that the sub-minimum wage fight may blind Americans to the real challenge: how to keep our teen-agers in school and give them the training that is essential to their finding profitable and productive places in the work force.

The Roosevelt project cited Labor Department statistics showing there now are 3.3 million 20-to-24-year-olds who are high-school dropouts. In this same age group 40.8% of Latinos and 23.2% of blacks have not completed high school, compared with 14.6% of whites.

How do we keep more Latinos and blacks in high school, knowing as we do that the dropout is far more likely to wind up at the unemployment office, on welfare or at someone’s soup kitchen than the youngster who completes high school? How do we train those who already have dropped out to be responsible, productive citizens? To what extent is that a task for the Labor Department or the Department of Education specifically, and the federal government in general?

Weighing all these facts and factors, I dissent from the resolution approved by a majority of black mayors. I think that in desperation they invited a Trojan horse into their already-troubled midst. They seemed never to consider the truth that a sub-minimum wage this summer would not induce a single company to create jobs in ghetto communities where they never before have been willing to invest. That sub-minimum wage would not bring a single supermarket, car dealer or department store back to the center cities.

It is in this nation’s interest that the concept of a minimum wage not be watered down, especially when doing so would delude Americans into believing that they need not face up to the overriding weaknesses of our society that cause so many young people to be out of work and out of sync--socially, criminally and otherwise.