Testifying for the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, Justice Meier Steinbrink told a Senate subcommittee on civil rights here that fair employment laws without enforcement provisions have only “a minimum of effect in eliminating discrimination.”
The retired jurist, who is honorary national chairman of the ADL, appeared in support of the Humphrey-Ives bill for an enforceable FEPC. The legislation is now before the subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare.
Justice Steinbrink testified that employment discrimination remains an existing evil “on a national scale.” He cited from state reports and organizational surveys which showed statistically the inequality in job opportunity that threatens most members of racial and religious minorities.
This, he noted, was particularly true in the cases of skilled jobs and managerial posts so that minority group workers were forced into “an economic ghetto and the more servile jobs that do not allow them to attain the highest, most skilled and most productive level of which they are capable.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.