160 85th DOCUMENTS LABOR-HEALTH, EDUCATION, AND WELFARE MONDAY, APRIL 8, 1957 UNITED STATES SENATE, SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS, Washington, D. C. The subcommittee met at 10 a. m., pursuant to call, in room F-82, the Capitol, Hon. Lister Hill (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. Present: Senators Hill, Hayden, Stennis, Thye, and Dworshak. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY STATEMENTS OF JAMES P. MITCHELL, SECRETARY; JAMES T. O'CONNELL, UNDER SECRETARY; J. ERNEST WILKINS, ASSISTANT SECRETARY; ROCCO C. SICILIANO, ASSISTANT SECRETARY; JAMES E. DODSON, ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT SECRETARY; AND V. S. HUDSON, ASSISTANT TO THE ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT SECRETARY BUDGET PRESENTATION Senator HILL. The subcommittee will come to order. We are glad to have with us this morning the Secretary of Labor, Secretary Mitchell. Mr. Secretary, we will be happy to have you proceed in your own way and make any statement that you see fit with reference to the bill as it passed the House, or as to the budget as sent up by the President, and give us any facts you may have. I shall insert at the outset this table showing the obligations by objects for the entire Department. I note that, for "Grants, subsidies, and contributions," there is requested a total of $345,940,045, or 89.93 percent of the total budget estimate. 1 Secretary MITCHELL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Senator Hayden. I have filed with the committee a statement which describes the program and current needs of the Department for fiscal year 1958. (The statement referred to follows:) SOME ACCOMPLISHMENTS AND EVENTS OF INTEREST IN THE FIELD OF LABOR The Department has and is continuing to aggressively administer the labor laws and programs for which it is responsible. Its scope of coverage continues to grow, December figures show a total civilian labor force of more than 69.9 million. At the end of calendar 1955 the labor force was 69.5 million; and 67.8 million in 1954, and 6 years ago, the end of 1950. it totaled 62.9 million. We were exceptionally successful in our Supreme Court cases in 1956. In a year which brought the largest number of cases the results were 100 percent favorable to the Department's interpretation of the 2 major Federal wage and hour laws. A total of 12 decisions or final orders were handed down by the Supreme Court. Investigations by the Wage-Hour Division have disclosed underpayments of $9,020,000 affecting 88,000 workers during the 6-month period ending December 31, 1956. Over $5 million was found due in the quarter ending December 31, which is at the highest annual rate in 10 years. A total of almost $225,000 was restored to workers who were not paid in accordance with the Davis-Bacon Act. Nearly 500 wage determination actions establishing pay minimum on Federal-aid highway construction in 32 States have been issued affecting 743 miles of new road construction. Two million four hundred and three thousand nine hundred and thirteen dollars was recovered in third-party tort cases under the Federal Employees' Compensation Act. The fiscal year 1956 saw improvement in management's and labor's programs for developing high-level mechanical skills. With the assistance and promotion of the Bureau of Apprenticeship and Training, industry stepped up its expenditures for employee training in order to meet demands arising from continuing expansion of the economy. Registered apprentices rose 17,000 during the year to 180,000. Counseling programs for the hard to place-youth, the handicapped, and older workers were stepped up. We estimate we will make 1,100,000 counseling interviews during fiscal 1957 as against 1,068,000 in fiscal 1956. In 1958 we expect to step this up to 1,460,000. Experience shows that the effort expended here pays off in more and better placements of these workers. For example, in 1956 more than 290,000 handicapped workers were placed in gainful employment. Job placements in total for all workers exceeded 151⁄2 million. Total coverage under unemployment insurance laws has risen to 43 million. Average weekly benefits rose from $25.03 in 1955 to $27.22 in November 1956. Statutory minimum wage rates were adopted in Rhode Island and Puerto Rico applying to men, women, and children. Safety training was given in 38 courses in 16 States to over 700 State, labor, and management officials and to 800 Federal officials. Third quarter injury frequency rate for manufacturing (12.3 per million man-hours worked) was the lowest third-quarter rate ever recorded. The rate for the same quarter of 1955 was 13.1. In December the hourly worker wage reached $2.05 for manufacturing for the first time in history. The statistics of the Bureau of Labor Statistics continue to be widely used by the public, by labor and industry in a great variety of practical and effective ways. For example, approximately 700,000 steel and aluminum workers covered under collective bargaining agreements adopted wage escalator clauses based on the consumer price index. The total of all workers now covered is approximately 3 million. With respect to the Hungarian relief program, we have assigned special interviewing staff at Camp Kilmer and have dispatched interviewers to Europe for assignment on Navy transports to interview these people, while en route to this country, for placement purposes. The State employment security agencies are cooperating fully in this program. We have developed job orders for 3,000 of these people and registered several thousand others for employment. OLDER WORKER-SKILLS OF WORK-FORCE PROGRAMS As you know, we have been conducting two major departmentwide projectsthe older worker and the skills of the work force. Initially, these projects were solely for research and planning-to analyze the problems, determine what the Department could and should do about them, and to lay our specific plans for undertaking this work. Initially, these projects were planning programs and not action programs. The older worker project was at first a research undertaking. In the current fiscal year, it became a continuing action program. The skills of the work-force program-with a small planning staff this year-will go into its action phase next year, in fiscal 1958. Accordingly, there has been a reduction of $176,000 in the proposed appropriation for my office for the major planning phases of these two programs. The action program to be carried on next year is shown in the budgets of the appropriate bureaus. Coordination and other departmentwide phases of these two manpower programs, will continue in my office, under the supervision of the Assistant Secretary for Employment and Manpower. We have made real progress in both of these fields. I want to report briefly on this year's work, and, if you wish, I will submit more detailed reports for the record. I specifically want to stress the action programs proposed for fiscal 1958. Older worker As this committee is well aware, the number of our older workers has been increasing rapidly, and with each passing decade, they make up a larger share of the Nation's total population. Several agencies of Government are concerned with their well-being. In the Department of Labor, our primary concern is with the employment of older workers, the conditions under which they are employed and discharged, the circumstances surrounding their retirement. Although the Department has long had programs which aid older workers— especially in the Federal-State employment service the special programs of the past 2 years have enlarged and intensified all aspects of the Department's work. Our ultimate aim is to help to provide increased employment opportunities for middle-aged and older men and women, in accordance with their abilities. First, therefore, we undertook a comprehensive program of research and education, designed to shed new light on the employment problems confronting older workers and on their skills, capabilities, productivity, and adaptability in a dynamic and expanding economy. These studies have been largely completed, except for a continuing study in the Bureau of Labor Statistics on the production records and performance of older workers in comparison with other workers in selected industries. I should like at this time to present for the record a list of these publications which have been issued so far: 1. Job Performance and Age: A Study in Measurement, Bureau of Labor Statistics Bulletin No. 1203, September 1956. 2. Older Workers Under Collective Bargaining, Part I: Hiring, Retention, Job Termination, Bureau of Labor Statistics Bulletin No. 1199-1, September 1956. 3. Older Workers Under Collective Bargaining, Part II; Health, Insurance and Pension Plans, Bureau of Labor Statistics Bulletin, No. 1199–2, October 1956. 4. Pension Costs in Relation to the Hiring of Older Workers, Bureau of Employment Security Publication No. E150, September 1956. 5. Older Worker Adjustment to Labor Market Practices: An Analysis of Experience in Seven Major Labor Markets Areas, Bureau of Employment Security Publication No. R151, November 1956. 6. Counseling and Placement Services for Older Workers, Bureau of Employment Security Publication No. E152, September 1956. 7. How To Conduct an Earning Opportunities Forum in Your Community, Women's Bureau Leaflet No. 25, 1956. These publications are now being given very wide circulation as part of our educational program. We want to describe the present status of older workers and try to convince employers that age restrictions on hiring should not be arbitrary, but that individuals should be considered for employment on the basis of their abilities. We also want to make clear that some of the barriers employers see to employment of older men and women, especially pension costs, are not as serious as they think. On this particular point, we have the findings and the recommendations of a group of pension and insurance experts, which I convened last year. This is in the publication entitled “Pension Costs in Relation to the Hiring of Older Workers." The findings of the Department's program have just been summarized in brief form for use by the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, which is issuing a series of publications entitled "Studies of the Aged and Aging-Selected Documents" under a resolution passed in the last Congress. Also in the process of publication by this committee is a very useful little book prepared by the Department, which gives graphic illustrations of facts concerning older workers. I should like very much to present copies of these documents to this committee as soon as they are off the press. Now with reference to the action programs initiated this year-ways and means to get suitable jobs for these older people. You may recall that last year the Department undertook an extensive demonstration project in seven cities, through the State employment services-Detroit, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Philadelphia, Seattle, and Worcester, Mass. In these surveys, we found that many job orders placed with the employment service and many companies hiring directly on their own had age restrictions on particular occupations. Now, while some of this is inevitable in jobs that require men who are young and physically strong, to some extent it is just tradition or custom. ("We don't want a stenographer over 31."-That kind of thing.) But, in the demonstration, it was evident that local employment offices could greatly increase placements for older workers by intensive counseling and placement efforts. After discussing the matter with State agencies, the Department made special grants of approximately $450,000 to the States to be spent to augment their existing services by appointing older worker placement and counseling specialists in each State office and in about 70 major cities throughout the country. This is in addition to funds for workloads for employment services which includes service to older workers. It is proposed to continue this work in fiscal 1958. |