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Show Your Man i In Washington ! By U.S. Senator Orrin G. Hatch Youth Differential In a statement introducing in-troducing his economic package for the nation, President Carter said, "High unemployment is morally unacceptable. . ." Yet during his administra-. administra-. tion the unemployment spiral continues upward with no apparent relief in sight. At the same time the Carter forces in Congress are pushing for an increase in the minimum wage action which the Secretary of Labor, himself, says will increase unemployment. unemploy-ment. The United States Chamber of Commerce Chief Economist, in testimony before the Senate Human Resources Subcommittee on Labor, said, "830,000 people will immediately lose their jobs if the minimum wage is raised from S2.30 to $2.65 an hour. And if the Carter plan is followed through 1980, it will cost the nation 3.4 million jobs mostly young people." Youth unemployment has remained stubbornly above 15 percent for the past three years, and in Utah the youth unemployment unemploy-ment rate is estimated at 16.5 percent. Nationally, among black young people unemployment averages over 40 percent and in isolated areas figures of 60 and 70 percent are not uncommon. un-common. One proposal to offset the inevitable unemployment unemploy-ment that will come as a result of the increased minimum wage is a "youth differential," more commonly com-monly called a sub-minimum sub-minimum wage. This program would allow business to hire young people for a short period of time at less than the minimum wage so they could be trained to do their jobs at a level that would justify the minimum wage. To protect the youngsters, businesses would be closely close-ly monitored to prevent work-force turnovers with strict penalties for those who abuse young people to gain windfall profits. Everyone who earns a minimum wage would like to earn more. Everyone wants to get ahead. But there is false economy in this minimum wage increase in-crease because some people are going to lose their jobs, and our youth will be denied work experiences ex-periences which are so valuable for their future lives. A youth differential is-one is-one of many steps that must be taken to help young people get lasting jobs in the U.S. marketplace. |