Page images
PDF
EPUB

Mr. Sims, Mr. Scherle had to go to another committee meeting and wanted you to know that. Sometimes these things get overscheduled.

I have only one question. I am sorry about the time. You have made a very useful statement, and I am sure that members on our side as well as the other side will read it with a great degree of interest. The Urban League has had a tremendous amount of experience in this field. I know from my personal knowledge you have made some really splendid contributions along the line.

Mr. SIMS. Thank you, sir.

Mr. RADCLIFFE. You speak of the degree of authority that is abdicated to the State governments. I am afraid the rhetoric may tend to obscure the position here. Perhaps not. You say you are disturbed by the high degree of authority abdicated to the State governments, proposed by authors of two bills before the committee, and I am sure you mean the administration bill and Congressman Steiger's bill.

Are you indicating that you are opposed to any degree of State or local governmental participation in these programs?

Mr. HOLMES. If we may, our concern relates, as a background statement to my answer, we operate at the present time under contract from the Labor Department, perhaps the largest manpower contract under the manpower development training act of 1962. We currently operate one. What we discovered and what our experience has taught us in this is, as we try to deal with local cooperative area manpower planning services and at the State levels, as we under our interpretation of the bills that you are considering, one of them is that the notion of a local or standard labor market area data-and I could use Philadelphia as a case in point-the Mayor of the city of Philadelphia has a right to submit to the Governor of Pennsylvania what he perceives. The Governor has a right to accept or reject, and then the Federal Establishment deals directly with the mayor.

But when you add the other condition to the labor market area, you then include Camden. And when you start doing that, you have people, because the commuting distance is across the river and people do commute-and we could use New York City as an example where you have that kind of problem-does not necessarily tend to concern itself with the problems of those people where the industry is and the job is, as to how do they get there and are they included in such kind of planning when it is done at the local basis.

I would submit-and we indicate in our testimony-that political subdivisions do not necessarily lend themselves to the problem we are defining here.

Mr. RADCLIFFE. I think that is quite true; we have had that observation made before and there are obvious difficulties with this. But I don't think that you are being entirely responsive to my question.

Mr. HOLMES. Let's phrase it another way and we can draw an analogy on one of our concerns. If we look at the legislation, as Mr. Sims indicated in the latter part of his testimony, as relates to the education elementary and secondary bills, and the application of the enforcement, or the inspection and monitoring of those provisions, has left much to be desired from our point of view.

Mr. RADCLIFFE. I think it has left much to be desired from the point of view of many members of this committee, if not the majority, but not because of anything the States have done or failed to do, but because of factors built into the program legislatively.

Mr. HOLMES. Therefore, we are saying, given that, then do you submit another piece of legislation which has or allows the potential for the same kind of interpretation that administration regulation

Mr. RADCLIFFE. Aren't you making the assumption that, because there have been problems with State-administered programs, as there have been, that the only answer is the approach of having federally administered programs? They don't always work as envisaged either. But, to repeat my question, are you saying that you are opposed to any degree of any kind of State and local governmental participation in the manpower programs?

Mr. SIMS. We are not saying to any degree. Let me add some other things to what Adolph has said. In 1877 the Federal Government made the first decision to abdicate its responsibility for its disadvantaged citizens to the States, and the climate unfortunately was quite similar to this one. There was belief at that time that we could turn additional problems over to State boundaries and get them solved. So we dissolved the Freedman's Bureau. We moved out the Federal troops. We disassociated ourselves from any responsibility with Freedman. We took a different attitude toward the Indian, as well as Mexican Americans and Chinese who were coming in on the West, and matters got worse. They did not get better.

States were unable to really deal with problems that were bigger than their boundaries, and problems were created in other States because of the inability of individual States to solve them.

Another caveat that rides into this whole thing is that the history of State and municipal government is a history of conflicts that have not been resolved.

There has been a meeting in New York State between six and seven of the largest mayors there on the question of priorities, the question of where most of the manpower problems are, and how the States deal with those problems and how the cities begin to deal with those problems. I think we are a long way from creative federalism or cooperative federalism. We are a long way from that kind of thing.

Mr. RADCLIFFE. I don't want to prolong this, because of the time, but ignoring the question of whether or not there is a particularly good analogy between 1870 and 1970, I would observe that the authors of these two bills would not consider that they were abdicating Federal responsibility. They would consider, rather, that they had retained a very, very high degree of Federal direction and control of these programs.

Mr. SIMS. I was in part of OEO when Donald Rumsfeld took over, and we discussed this whole strategy before I left to accept another position. And I was a non-political appointee. So this is a nonpolitical statement. So the theory was, as I perceived the administration, that the States are there and they ought to be made to do their jobs. And I can understand that noble aspiration on the part of this administration.

But the people whom we serve can no longer afford to suffer on the basis of theoretical experiments. We are dealing with a crisis in urban America and in many parts of rural America that can't allow for the administration in an effort to prove which may be a very fine theory at the expense of the constituency that we serve. And there is no proof or rationale that the States in large measure have the kind of resources, commitment, and understanding concern for serving all of its people on a somewhat equitable basis. We are not saying no control. We say that if the Congress defines the criteria rather precise and somewhat accurate, and if it obtains and develops a mechanism to insure that it has some means to disallow any effort of States which interfere with the impact and objective of manpower programs, this is what I am talking about.

Mr. RADCLIFFE. I think that Mr. Steiger, if he were here, would think you were describing his bill.

Mr. DANIELS. Gentlemen, I want to thank you on behalf of the committee for your contribution to the hearings.

I would like to announce that future meetings of this committee to be held in Washington will be announced by the Chair.

However, the committee will not stand idle. As a matter of fact, the committee proposes to utilize the time that Congress will be in recess from March 26 to April 6 by conducting hearings on the road. There are many persons who have expressed an interest in this legislation who are unable to come to Washington for many reasons, or who cannot afford the expense of coming to Washington.

Therefore, the committee will endeavor to accommodate them and it is our intention to conduct hearings on manpower in Detroit on Monday, March 30; Tuesday March 31, in Des Moines, Iowa; and on Wednesday, April 1 and Thursday, April 2, at Seattle, Wash. And, finally, on April 3 and 4, at Los Angeles.

So you see this is a working committee, and we hope to get the views of many, many people who are interested in this legislation so we can bring a meaningful and productive manpower bill to the attention of Congress this year.

Thank you. The committee stands adjourned.

(Whereupon, at 12:10 p.m., the committee adjourned, to reconvene March 30, 1970, in Detroit, Mich.)

MANPOWER ACT OF 1969

MONDAY, MARCH 30, 1970

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
SELECT SUBCOMMITTEE ON LABOR OF THE
COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND LABOR,

Detroit, Mich.

The subcommittee met at 10 a.m., pursuant to call, in the Federal Building, Detroit, Mich., Hon. Dominick V. Daniels (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Daniels, O'Hara, Ford, Hawkins, and Steiger.

Staff members present: Daniel H. Krivit, counsel to the Select Subcommittee; Loretta Bowen, clerk; Marty LaVor, minority legislative coordinator, and Will Henderson, assistant minority clerk.

Mr. DANIELS. The Select Subcommittee on Labor will come to order. We meet today for the purpose of considering H.R. 10908, H.R. 11620 and H.R. 13472, bills to establish a revised national comprehensive manpower program.

The Employment Act of 1946 adopted as a national policy the commitment to strive to maintain a total supply of jobs in the Nation. Since that time numerous legislative enactments have implemented this important goal.

Originally it was widely believed that the fault in being jobless rested almost exclusively with the unemployed. But experience has revealed that if people were deficient, so too was the system.

The unemployed or underemployed not only lack basic job skills and education, but also are often trapped in the slum-ridden core of inner cities and poverty-stricken rural areas.

Ironically the most disadvantaged of our citizens are those least likely to know about manpower services. Thus, many of the present unemployed and underemployed are disillusioned. Their training and placement in jobs are compounded by many obstacles such as family and child care problems and legal and credit questions, and transportation to and from places of employment.

According to the President's 1969 Manpower Report, about 11 million people were jobless at some time during 1968. Of this great pool of unemployed about 4.5 million are nonwhite. Half are women. Four million are youths under 21 years of age.

Three million live in urban slums and 3 million live in rural depressed areas. About 2.8 million persons were without jobs in an average week.

purpose of these field hearings is two fold; first, we want to learn from the administrators of manpower programs and from

elected officials how to coordinate and improve the delivery systems of manpower services; and secondly we want to question the recipients of manpower services to learn how to make manpower programs more responsive to the individual needs of the unemployed and/or underemployed.

The three proposals under consideration by this subcommittee are similar in the respect that they all propose to consolidate authority for the wide variety of manpower programs and their related activities under the Secretary of Labor. A significant difference among the proposals lies in the degree of responsibility to be given to the Federal, State and local levels of government in program development, administration and operation.

H.R. 10908, the Comprehensive Manpower Act, has been introduced by my colleague, the Honorable William Steiger of Wisconsin. Mr. Steiger's bill would require the States to develop a comprehensive manpower plan which would be submitted to the Secretary of Labor for final approval and funding.

These plans would be operated by the Governors of the respective States according to the guidelines and standards prescribed by the Secretary of Labor.

Of the three proposals before us only the Steiger bill authorizes. specific funds to be dispersed beginning with fiscal year 1971 through fiscal year 1974.

The Honorable James O'Hara of Michigan is the sponsor of H.R. 11620, the Manpower Act. This bill would vest ultimate responsibility for the development of a comprehensive manpower services program and for the coordination of all manpower related activities solely in the Secretary of Labor, and would not require him to seek concurrence in program administration and operation from any other State or Federal department or agency.

Unlike the other proposals, the O'Hara bill would also authorize the Secretary of Labor to contract with any Government agency or private nonprofit organization to provide public service employment for the unemployed.

H.R. 13472, introduced by the Honorable William Ayres of Ohio, is the administration bill. This proposal, referred to as the Manpower Training Act, consolidates all federally assisted manpower programs and their funding sources under the authority of the Department of Labor, but places the primary responsibility for program operation and implementation with the States and local government units.

Governors would have to establish a comprehensive manpower agency for administration of unified manpower activities, as well as a comprehensive manpower planning advisory body for coordinating manpower plans and policy. The Governor and communities would designate prime sponsors responsible for regional coordination and community plans.

A novel feature in the administration bill is the mechanism for automatic additional appropriations of 10 percent to the appropriation for any year in which the national unemployment rate reached or exceeded 4.5 percent of 3 consecutive months.

The subcommittee has already held 13 days of public hearings in Washington, D.C. before embarking on this field trip, and will continue to receive testimony in Washington upon our return.

« PreviousContinue »