Proclamation 2331—Employment Week and Employment Sunday

By the President of the United States of America
A Proclamation

As industry and business make substantial progress toward recovery there are ever-increasing employment opportunities for all groups. It is important to our social equilibrium that these opportunities be equitably shared, and that no group in the population shall feel itself discriminated against in hiring policies. It is particularly important that those men and women who have reached the age where their family responsibilities are at a peak receive their fair share of the new jobs, and are at least allowed to compete for these openings on the basis of their actual qualifications, freed from the handicap of an unfounded prejudice against age alone.

I am mindful of the fact that among those over forty years of age are a great body of our most experienced, able, and competent workers; that this group as a whole is not sharing as fully as other age groups in the employment revival; that many of those over forty have lost their jobs through no personal failing but because of circumstances over which they, and their employers, had no direct control; that among those over forty and still actively in the labor market are practically the entire group of World War veterans (whose average age is 46), a group that is surely entitled to look to our society for security and economic independence.

A committee of distinguished representatives of industry, labor, and the public has recently issued its report to the Secretary of Labor in which it analyzes the factual basis for the alleged prejudice against hiring middle-aged workers and finds no good reasons that would support the continuance of this prejudice.

In view of these considerations, I should like to ask employers throughout the country to give special consideration to this problem of the middle-aged worker, to review and re-examine their current policies in order to determine whether applicants who are over forty years of age are being given a fair opportunity to qualify for jobs, and to study their various departments. and processes with a view to seeing where the qualifications and abilities of these older applicants could be utilized. I want to urge social agencies, labor organizations, and the general public to join in giving this problem their earnest consideration:

Now, Therefore, I, Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, do hereby declare the week beginning April 30, 1939, as Employment Week, and do hereby declare Sunday, April 30, 1939, as Employment Sunday, and urge all churches, civic organizations, Chambers of Commerce, veterans organizations, industry, labor, and the press, throughout the United States to observe that week and that Sunday as Employment Week and Employment Sunday to the end that interest in the welfare of the older workers may be stimulated and employment opportunity afforded them.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States of America to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington this 26" day of April in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and thirty-nine, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and sixty-third.

FRANKLIN D ROOSEVELT

By the President:
CORDELL HULL
Secretary of State.