for the legislation that is now before us, which is designed for the purpose of establishing a national committee for the training and development of placement personnel.

Mr. SMITH. I apologize for not being here yesterday, Mr. Con

gressman.

Mr. ELLIOTT. We understood you were unavoidably delayed.
Any questions, Mr. Nicholson?

Mr. NICHOLSON. No questions.

Mr. ELLIOTT. Thank you very much, Mr. Smith.

Our next witness is Miss Marcella Hummell, former placement officer for handicapped, Pennsylvania Employment Service, Pittsburgh, Pa.

STATEMENT OF MISS MARCELLA HUMMELL, LODGE 113, AMERICAN FEDERATION OF THE PHYSICALLY HANDICAPPED, PITTSBURGH,

PA.

Miss HUMMELL. I should like to make a correction, Mr. Elliott. I am no longer with the State employment service. For 17 years, however, I was a placement officer with them. I resigned in September of 1955, and have since been working as a medical secretary and assistant social worker. I am a charter member of the American Federation of the Physically Handicapped.

My handicap is not a visible one. I think anybody looking at me would think I am the perfect picture of health. However, I have been refused insurance by insurance companies. Even Lloyds of London has refused my application for insurance. My handicap is not quite leukemia and it is not quite cancer, but it is nothing that will stop me from doing a job. As a matter of fact, I have been very successful in obtaining employment. I have obtained every job for which I have applied. However, a visible handicap is the type of handicap that causes revulsion in a lot of cases if an employer is not properly prepared. I do have the sensitivity to realize

Mr. ELLIOTT. Could you speak just a little louder?

Miss HUMMELL. I have the sensitivity to realize that if I were to encounter rebuffs from an employer it would be an emotional shock to me. My handicap, therefore, has made me realize the emotional difficulties which a person with a visible handicap encounters when he is applying for employment. He is in need of specialized, guided counseling and placement after he has been trained in work suited to his mental and physiological capacities.

Previously, as I have stated, I was employed by the Pennsylvania State Employment Service for 17 years as a placement officer. I consistently avoided becoming a counselor under the existing situation in the Pennsylvania State Employment Service. My record of handicapped placements, however, was among the highest among the membership.

The counseling program, as presently administered in the Pennsylvania State Employment Service, is totally inadequate, mainly because of two factors, which I believe would be eliminated by the passage of H. R. 9171.

The counselors presently employed by the Pennsylvania State Employment Service are not selected with discrimination. It is my be

lief that a person who is engaged in placing handicapped people should himself be handicapped, or else have the very rare insight to realize the emotional problems a handicapped person encounters. A handicapped person in many cases encounters, if not actual revulsion from a prospective employer, he would like to have somebody that can make what they call a nice appearance and meet the public, and so forth, and that is the situation which certainly lowers the morale of anybody with a visible handicap who is seeking employment. A counselor who is trained, as this bill would attempt to do, would be versed in methods calculated to gain acceptance from the prospective employer.

As the situation presently exists in our State of Pennsylvania, the counselor has no access to job openings. All contacts must be made through a work-badgered placement interviewer, working under unbearable pressure, who, actually, in fulfilling routine duties, has not the time to do a good referral job for the handicapped prospective employee. The counselor, therefore, however he may look longingly at a job placement order for which he knows a suitable applicant, cannot himself make the contact and referral of the applicant to the employer. We have seen, in many cases, jobs being counseled and filled from other sources for which we knew a suitable applicant but could not make the contact and referral of the applicant to the employer. Therefore, there should be some coordination of the program.

Yesterday I was talking to Mrs. Marilyn Woods, of the New Hampshire State Employment Service, who, I think, you will all realize practically lives her job and is very successful at it. Counselors in New Hampshire have access to job orders and, therefore, they can refer a counseled applicant, which we cannot do-or could not do, still living in the past.

A handicapped applicant, therefore, may never have an interview with a placement interviewer. After receiving counseling of a sort, the applicant is, in most cases, unsuccessful in obtaining an interview with a placement interviewer. He is told by the frustrated counselor that he will be called if a suitable opening occurs, and, in most cases, that is the end of his contact with the Pennsylvania State Employment Service. His application card is filed, the busy placement interviewer skips over the handicapped applicant's registration card, and selects the card of a nonhandicapped employee because he requires less selling to the prospective employer. We must admit the fact that a handicapped person requires more time to place in employment. As the Pennsylvania State Employment Service is presently set up, the interviewers must meet a quota system, placing a certain number of applicants in jobs. There is no opportunity, under the present setup, for a handicapped applicant, who requires selective placement, when the interviewer has to place perhaps 25 persons each week in jobs.

In a private employment agency, at an average fee of 20 percent per placement, an interviewer could actually retire on his profits from 25 placements weekly within a very short number of years. And yet interviewers in the Pennsylvania State Employment Service are expected to maintain their quota indefinitely.

I might add that, although I was approached to accept counseling on several occasions, I felt that I could help the handicapped more in my position of employment interviewer, where I actually had more

access to the job orders. As a counselor, I would have considered my work ineffectual and utterly frustrating.

There is another situation which faces the handicapped job applicant-the negative approach by the interviewer who is not interested in the handicapped. I have actually heard placement interviewrs approach an employer by asking, "You couldn't use a handicapped person, could you?" This situation is not an isolated one. I have been shocked at this particular approach many times.

I believe the passage of H. R. 9171 would greatly ameliorate these abuses of persons who ask for nothing more than a chance to become self-respecting and self-supporting.

At the risk of sounding ethnocentric, I quote the old, old cliché, "Charity begins at home," but in this case I am not requesting charity, but humanitarianism. Let us make our handicapped employable.

It is my understanding that the situation which exists in Pennsylvania is true to a great extent in many other States. H. R. 9171 would help adjust many of these inadequacies.

I do have something to add. Mr. Nicholson wondered yesterday about organizations that do advertising. A handicapped person is to apply to such-and-such an industry, and Goodwill Industries was discussed. Goodwill Industries is a sheltered workshop. Why put us in a sheltered workshop? We like to be among so-called normal people.

That is all.

Mr. ELLIOTT. You do not like the concept of the sheltered workshop?

Miss HUMMELL. No. For years I have worked in the Pennsylvania State Employment Service with handicapped people, and there has never been any difference in the work. As a matter of fact, as other people have mentioned, there is less absenteeism and more interest in the work. We have one counselor in the Pittsburgh district who herself is handicapped. She received a double compound fracture which was badly set, and she is in a great deal of pain a great deal of the time and must walk with a limp, and so forth. This person is a counselor who has no access to job orders. She does her contacts through the newspaper with available job openings that she knows she could place people on. She has to take a blind ad in She has to take a blind ad in a newspaper and call an employer and sell an applicant.

Sheltered workshops have their place where a person is very badly handicapped.

Mr. ELLIOTT. I am interested in this whole field and have had experience with the Vocational Rehabilitation Act of 1954 and other similar laws around here for the past few years. I would like to have you tell me what you feel is the proper role of the sheltered workshop.

Miss HUMMELL. It is to provide employment for a person who is so badly handicapped that industry cannot possibly use him. For instance there was a boy-I believe he was a cerebral palsy case-and he wanted work desperately. Every organ, practically, of that boy's body was affected. He could not do telephone solicitation because his voice was so bad. He could not hear very well. He shook badly. He was a wheelchair case. Every function of that boy was affected and yet, in a sheltered workshop, he was taught weaving. If he were ever under a timesaving system he would starve to death. He does

take home a pittance. He makes about $6 or $7 a week. Industry cannot find a place for a person like him.

Mr. ELLIOTT. You think the sheltered workshop might have a field

Miss HUMMELL. For very badly handicapped people whose every function is impaired. But there are so few who cannot do something. This one boy was an isolated case. He was barely understandable. We could always have made a telephone solicitor out of him had his voice been understandable, but it was not. And then his hearing

Mr. ELLIOTT. How did the Pennsylvania Employment Service attempt to place handicapped people, by telephone interviews or by personal interviews?

Miss HUMMELL. Very seldom was a personal interview made. It was mainly telephone. And the indifference that was encountered was quite deplorable. As I mentioned, the interviewers, working on a quota system, did not have the time to take care of the handicapped person. They would have to make the telephone contact, ask the employer if there were steps if the person was in a wheelchair, or, if the applicant had use of just one hand the employer would have to be asked if one hand would be sufficient, and so on. The interviewer simply did not have the time, with a placement quota of 25 a week, to take care of the handicapped person. It was a deplorable situation. Mr. ELLIOTT. We are talking here, of course, about training people who are specialists in the field of placement.

Miss HUMMELL. Yes, sir.

Mr. ELLIOTT. And of course if that were done it would carry with it, necessarily, a recognition on the part of the employment services that there was a field in which to operate and, to state it another way, a job to be done, and would give additional emphasis in that direction.

I would like to ask you this corollary question now: What are we going to do about actually giving training to the handicapped person so as to fit him for one of these job openings? I get the impression our training facilities are very short according to what the needs actually are.

Miss HUMMELL. I think physiological and aptitude testing is very important. I think that is one of the basic things. Then there should be a study made of the various type jobs. We are discussing basically training, I believe. Testing would be the basic facet.

Mr. ELLIOTT. What is done in the field of testing now?

Miss HUMMELL. It is inadequate. Mrs. Woods made the point yesterday of the physical difficulties of testing where a person has to stand up to pegboard tests and things of that sort. It is not suited for a handicapped person. After all, why test a person who cannot walk for a job as a plumber's helper?

Mr. ELLIOTT. You say as a general thing in the entire field testing is inadequate?

Miss HUMMELL. Of course that is one of the phases. It is merely an indication. We have to consider the emotional background. Some people may like a routine job where they have little contact with others. Some personality-plus people may enjoy public contact work and could be an inspiration to those they came in contact with. For instance, when Grace-I do not recall the young lady's last name, from the Veterans' Administration-Cleaves testified, a person of

that caliber, with her insight, her education, her intelligence, and I might add her fortitude, would be an inspiration to anybody with whom she came in contact. She would be a perfect type of person for a placement officer, and there are many of those.

Mr. ELLIOTT. In other words, you are saying we need better testing? Miss HUMMELL. Yes.

Mr. ELLIOTT. And we need better training once the tests have been given to train people for specific jobs. There is no reason why the handicapped person should be expected to do a new job without training.

Miss HUMMELL. Yes.

Mr. ELLIOTT. And then you need, as this bill would provide for, specialized personnel in placement who can really do a job in that regard.

Miss HUMMELL. As the Pennsylvania setup is of course I left there 2 years ago, but previously I believe it had been a 2-week training course. Someone mentioned yesterday at the hearing here that they should be well versed, for instance, in medicine, have a basic background of medical terms, nursing, and so forth. We want to get people in jobs for which they are suited, and then when they realize their physical limitations they will actually be better employees than a person who perhaps does not realize his handicap and therefore will put both hands in front of a drill press and lose three fingers. When you have 5 fingers you will guard the fact you have 5 fingers and want to keep them.

Counseling, as administered in Pennsylvania, is such an indifferent attitude. I have heard our counselor approach the very busy employment service interviewers, and she could hardly get a word in. They are on the telephone; they have an applicant at the desk; they are taking orders. This may sound odd, but I know that during my 17 years with the Pennsylvania State Employment Service I have interviewed at least a quarter of a million people. That is astounding, and that is a low estimate when I consider some of the jobs I had. Mr. ELLIOTT. A quarter of a million people in 17 years?

Miss HUMMELL. Yes, sir.

Mr. ELLIOTT. That is interviewing a lot of people.

Miss HUMMELL. Isn't that?

Mr. ELLIOTT. And, of course, that would indicate a much too rapid rate for proper interview and placement of people with handicaps. Miss HUMMELL. It is incredible. We once had a speed-up system. We were supposed to interview a person in 8 minutes. One can say "How do you do" and get the applicant's name and address and last place of employment, perhaps, in 8 minutes.

Also, I believe after the counselor who has interest is trained in the job, he should have access to the job orders and perhaps the time to make the contacts. As Mrs. Woods said, there should be time for an interview in the person's home. There may be resistance from the family, as in one case of an epileptic who the family said they did not believe should have a job. That man is very happily working now in a garage installing those little extras they put on cars to raise the price from $3,000 to $4,000, you know. That person was placed as the result of a personal contact. They had to break down the family's resistance and get him in a job. The family said, "Johnnie