VETERANS' REEMPLOYMENT RIGHTS Senator STENNIS. That is not the veterans' reemployment rights? Secretary MITCHELL. That is a different one, sir. Senator STENNIS. That is where my inquiry had intended to be, on the reemployment rights. Mr. Chairman, if it is proper to ask the Secretary right here to make a statement on that Senator HILL. Certainly. Secretary MITCHELL. Here is one area where this Bureau of ours is the only one that can help the veteran in this area. It is a function of this Bureau to see to it that the veteran who leaves private employment, does his stint in the military, and returns to private employment, that the veteran is assured of all the rights which the Congress has given him, in terms of regaining of seniority, of comparable position, and so on. It is the function of this Bureau to adjudicate disputes, as it were, between the veteran and his employer, and to advise the veteran of what his rights are. As the veteran population of the country increases yearly, as it does, the demands on this Bureau become greater, and particularly they become greater when you get into any stabilized employment situation. The veteran who leaves a job and does his 2 years in the Army, when he returns, his seniority today in industrial plants is becoming a more precious asset than it ever was, in terms of health and welfare funds, pensions, pension rights, and all the other things that go with employment. So the veteran, instead of seeking another job today, usually wants to go back to the job he came from, because he has a stake in it. For that reason, the activities of this Bureau have increased. The Director of the Bureau will be here with the data showing the increased load. Senator STENNIS. You got a $46,000 increase, as the chairman said. But that was still $46,000 under your request? Secretary MITCHELL. Yes. RESTORATION REQUEST Senator STENNIS. You are asking for a restoration of that $46,000? Secretary MITCHELL. Yes, sir. I might make this clear, Mr. Chairman, that while I am addressing myself to what might be called the high spots here, nevertheless we believe that our original budget was a soundly evaluated budget, and that every cent of it is required for the operation of the Labor Department. So the fact that I am not addressing myself to all of these cuts does not mean that we are satisfied with them. Senator HILL. Thank you, sir. Do you have any other questions, Senator? Senator STENNIS. No, Mr. Chairman; thank you. UNEMPLOYMENT COMPENSATION Secretary MITCHELL. May I go back to one thing that I overlooked, and that has to do with grants to the States for unemployment compensation. Mr. Goodwin and others will be here to talk about is it, but I would like to comment on it. It is grants to States for unemployment compensation and the employment service administration. If you will notice, our request for employment service was $81,813,000. The House action caused it to be cut to $73,180,000. It my strong belief that one of the major ways to get at this problem of the proper administration of unemployment compensation, which is always one that is criticized throughout the country, is to see to it that your employment services operate at a maximum efficiency. The tendency has been, over the years, since the employment service and the unemployment compensation administrative funds are always tied together, that in the States, when the States are hit with an unemployment compensation peak payment they rob the employment service to meet the crisis of paying out checks and meeting claims. I think that is pennywise and pound foolish, because our job basically is not to pay unemployment compensation but to get the fellow a job. You cannot get him a job unless the employment service is properly run. We feel that this cut of nearly $9 million in the House is one that will seriously impair our ability to improve the employment service operation. Senator CHAVEZ. Will not the States have more money to take away from the employment service if that is restored? Secretary MITCHELL. That would be one way of putting it. But I do not think they want to, Senator. It is not that the States want to do this, but when faced with a crisis, they have to do what, in their best judgment, they have to do at the moment. It seems to me that, looking back over the years, that not enough attention has been paid to this very vital thing of employment services in this country. We have not done the job we could do with the skilled worker, the semiskilled worker, the technician, even the professional person, in helping him get placed. The load of the employment service has been too much on the unskilled worker who needs the service. But with an improved service we would be of greater service to a larger part of our population. HOUSE ACTION Senator THYE. Mr. Chairman, as I note the figures here, in 1953I think that is the correct column; that is the grants to States, is it not? It is on the large worksheet. It states "Grants to States" and I notice the item here that in 1953 you had $197,110,000; in 1954 you had 204,305,000; in 1955, $229,500,000. Your request for 1956 is $250,280,000. The House allowed you $250 million. Now we are faced with the question there of whether we agree to the House figures—whether we concur in the House figures. I would like to get a clear expression from you on this question. With this increased amount of money, what did you accomplish in the past, specifically? Nothing could be more convincing than that we could say the increased money alleviated either this hardship on the part of so many people, or it corrected what was abuse of an employee that that had certain rights in the industrial field, but he had been too timid to press his rights and no one had been present that looked after his rights, and consequently there was a man that should have had reinstatement into certain categoric work responsibilities or positions that failed to get that position because no one looked after his interests and he himself did not have the courage to look after them. If he could get that pretty well explained, I think it would help us to defend either your position, or defend the increase in the request there, because we are going up the ladder pretty rapidly with the increased appropriations there. REASONS FOR YEARLY INCREASES Secretary MITCHELL. I do not have the details beyond here, but talking from this, Senator: Beginning with 1953 I gather your question is what is the reason for these yearly increases and what has been accomplished with the money. Senator THYE. That is exactly it. Secretary MITCHELL. There are a number of factors. One, part of the increase in all of these has been the increase in the salaries of State employees to whom this money is granted. Another reason would be naturally, in 1954 and 1955, as compared with 1953, the increased load placed on the State bureaus by reason of increased unemployment which took place beginning with the fall of 1953, 1954, and 1955. Senator STENNIS. Would that be the State paying out unemployment, or State adding the numbers of supervision or personnel to aid in the replacements? Secretary MITCHELL. In this amount here, in this grants to States, this has to do with State administrative personnel. Putting it on a simple basis, if in 1953 an unemployment compensation office handled a thousand claims a month, and in 1954 they were forced to handle 12,000 claims a month, or 15,000 claims a month, the increased administrative cost would be inherent in these figures. INCREASED CLAIMS Senator THYE. Have you records that could be placed in the record to show the number of increased claims so as to justify both the increased personnel expenditure as well as the increased request? Secretary MITCHELL. Yes, sir. (The following material was supplied:) Comparison of selected unemployment insurance data, fiscal years 1953-56 1 Weeks of unemployment were 64.6 percent higher than in 1953, but there were 6.2 percent less employees assigned to unemployment insurance activities and 13.1 percent less assigned to employment service activities. The effect of these cuts on the quality of State operations is illustrated by these examples: (a) Nonagricultural placements of workers in jobs dropped from 6.6 million in 1953 to 5.5 million in 1954. (b) Claimants were not paid benefits promptly to replace wage losses because States took claims and paid benefits biweekly instead of weekly. 2 The $20,780,000 requested increase over 1955 estimated obligations is for: (a) State salary rate increases authorized by law......... (b) Workload increases including 1 million more nonagricultural placements of workers in $4,961, 200 2, 150, 600 (c) Providing more effective employment services to workers and employers. 6,323, 200 1,501, 000 (e) Larger workloads in the programs of unemployment compensation for veterans and 2,007, 000 1,381, 000 2,456,000 20, 780,000 LOAD INCREASE Senator THYE. So that you could see the load there, because if you cannot show a load increase you do not have much basis of our supporting you. Secretary MITCHELL. That was the reason that I addressed myself to one part of this, which was the reduction in funds of the employment office, which I do not consider to be a load increase but an increase requested in order to do a more effective job which has not been done. For example, I want to show you that these figures here represent the relationship between the unemployment-insurance personnel and the employment-service personnel from 1948 through 1955. As you can see, in 1948, there were 18,000 unemployment-insurance people and about 17,000 employment-service people, average through the State. You can see what is happening to the little man handling employment services. He is shrinking all the time in relation to the total. Senator THYE. Let us go back to the size of your first two men there. If you are referring to them with regard to stature, they are almost the same size. Does that mean that there is a veteran placement officer? Secretary MITCHELL. This has nothing to do with the veterans, sir. This is the employment service people. The employment service people place veterans and the unemployment insurance people pay veterans. Senator THYE. What I am trying to get clear from that chart is: Do you have as many men looking after the unemployed as there are unemployed people? That chart would indicate that the two of them stand almost the same physical size. Secretary MITCHELL. I probably have not made myself clear. Senator THYE. The chart is not understandable to me, because those two men are the same size, and if one is looking after the other, then you have as many looking after the others as there are of them. That is what I want to get clear. Secretary MITCHELL. May I explain, Senator. This is 1948. In 1948 in the States of this country there were approximately 18,000 people employed by the States who were handling unemployment insurance claims for all people who were eligible for unemployment compensation. At the same time in 1948 there were about 17,000 people working in the States who worked in the employment offices, whose job it was to interview, place people seeking jobs. Senator THYE. In other words, they were coordinating with the Federal and sort of supplementing the Federal; am I right on that? Secretary MITCHELL. There are no Federal people. Senator THYE. I grant you that; I am trying to get straight in my mind why these two on this particular chart should stand in physical size about equal, and then you gradually go down to a much lesser size as you proceed. Secretary MITCHELL. That is the point I was trying to make, Senator. In 1948 the employment service people equaled, in size, in the States, the unemployment compensation people. You see, there is a relationship in this respect, of course, of which you are aware, that when a man makes a claim for unemployment compensation, the first effort of the Government at the State level should be to get him a job rather than pay the claim. That should be the first effort; to get him a job rather than pay the claim. Senator THYE. That is it, exactly. NEED FOR EMPHASIS ON EMPLOYMENT SERVICE Secretary MITCHELL. What has happened, however, has been that we have been more interested in paying claims, as indicated by the stature of this man on the chart, because that is the critical thing: A man is unemployed, he files a claim and is eligible and the effort is made to pay him. And that is proper; it is right. What I have been trying to say is that if we paid more attention to the employment service and gave more strength to that program we would not pay out so much money in unemployment compensation. Senator POTTER. In other words, Mr. Secretary, when your unemployment claims go up, the tendency has been for your employment services to go down? Secretary MITCHELL. Yes. Senator POTTER. And what you want to do is to equalize it. When your unemployment goes up, your employment effort should be that much greater? Secretary MITCHELL. Yes. And as you see here, we have ground to recover because we have permitted this to exist. Senator CHAVEZ. As you go up with the men on the right, the man on the left will come down; is that your idea? Secretary MITCHELL. That is right, sir. Mr. LARSON. Mr. Chairman, so far as the employment service is concerned, it has gone down steadily from 1948 right through 1954. The people who are actually the ones who have gotten jobs for others have gone down every year since 1948. Senator HILL. Whereas the unemployment people have gone up? Mr. LARSON. That is right. Senator HILL. The ideal would be the other way around? Secretary MITCHELL. Our first effort should be to get the man a job. Senator HILL. Instead of paying him unemployment compensation SALARIES OF STATE OFFICES Senator CHAVEZ. I want to ask this question, Mr. Secretary: The salaries of the State unemployment offices and employment offices are all paid by the grants; are they? Secretary MITCHELL. Yes, sir. Senator CHAVEZ. Do you know who fixes those salaries? Secretary MITCHELL. The State. Senator CHAVEZ. Do you have anything to do with it at all? Secretary MITCHELL. No, sir. Our statutory obligation which_we discharge is that certain standards of civil service, not money but standards of performance, efficiency, be observed. But the State salaries are a matter for the State governments. But in this sum are the actions of State governments in increasing their salaries. Senator CHAVEZ. And they do, right or wrong; do they not? |