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I hope he has great success.

Senator NELSON. I think one of the interesting things is that the Job Corps program came under a lot of criticism from people saying it cost too much per individual.

The cost of basic education in the Job Corps program where the student was present full time actually in residence-was $436.

I notice in the manpower consortium, it is $1,089, and in the jobrelated basic education, it was $852. If the Job Corps was expensive, these are very expensive for basic education. I notice under the Merit Enterprise System program that the job-related education was $852, and it was to be done during such hours as he was to spare away from on-the-job training.

Can you give some explanation of the dramatic differences of the cost of basic education there as compared to the Job Corps, which came under criticism, even on this committee, in the past year in terms of cost?

Mr. HOWARD. Mr. Chairman, if I may, I would like to give some attention to the quotation in the Merit proposal, which would lead one to believe one would be sporadically released from the job if the line were up or down during the day.

The fact is that the Merit management from the outset managed to establish a firm policy of releasing people daily on a demand basis.

We have, for example, and I will be glad to submit a copy for the committee, statements issued to supervisors by the owners of the company saying that only the owners of the company could excuse anyone from job-related education, that they will be released and they will go daily and they will perform.

So I believe the operation is much better than the quoted statement would lead any rational person to assume.

With regard to the cost, I do not have it; I do not have the explanation. Both of those contracts were negotiated without my participation at all, as I said, for reasons that are clear.

As I said I don't know how the prices were arrived at. I don't know the negotiating guidelines, I don't know then what exactly happened. To be very frank with you, I think, from the outside looking in, it would seem to me that some tighter negotiating procedures are indicated, and I believe that has been accomplished in JOBS 70.

It is a much more formula approach with limitations, and I think it makes more sense.

Senator NELSON. Are you familiar with the kind of training program that the Raytheon Corp. conducts?

Mr. HOWARD. I have had only superficial awareness of it. I understand that there was an explication of this yesterday afternoon before your committee, and all I have heard of it is good, in that it involves a company assuming the responsibilities and staffing up to conduct this itself. I expect that the cost exceeds whatever reimbursement it is getting.

Senator NELSON. I thought the testimony was very impressive. Raytheon started out with a retention rate of 30 percent. They now have a retention rate, due to a change in their counseling and assistance and so on, of 90 percent in the program.

After the first 2 weeks of counseling-which is very intensive-after the first 2 weeks they have no dropouts for all practical purposes.

That is, it is less than 1 percent. That was their testimony. This is an operation run by the Raytheon Corp. Yesterday there were two witnesses, I think Raytheon plus the witness from Chicago, Sheldon Roodman, who stated that I am paraphrasing-that you should not have a JOBS program where the wage rate was low and it was a low-skill program, that only your higher skills and higher wages in those areas could be this effective.

Did I understand that to be your testimony as well?
Mr. HOWARD. Yes. Mr. Chairman.

Senator NELSON. The witness from Chicago yesterday, attorney Sheldon Roodman, made the point that, when it is a low-skill job that here is not any point to on-the-job training.

They learn the skill in an hour or a day or two days.

It is unskilled work in which on the job training is being paid for by the Government.

Mr. HOWARD. What is significant in these programs, I believe, would be the supportive counseling, the buddy system, the job-related education, English as the second language.

These, I believe, are extremely significant if we are to attack the turnover problem, as well as develop a good employment experience. In relative terms although it makes a horrible story-in relative terms we did assist in reducing turnover at Merit.

The first approach of Merit was that they had to fill out 4,000 withholding slips in a year for an operation employing 800 people. That was reduced by half through our program. The turnover was cut in half, which actually still is a pretty high turnover, but in relative terms it shows some impact.

The question remains whether the public investment should be made in the low-entry jobs. Again, English as a second language, is a significant factor in the New York area. Practically all of our counselors are bilingual or trilingual, because of the large number of French-speaking workers from Haiti and some of the Frenchspeaking islands.

So you might ask, if the JOBS program is not for these people, what is? There has to be, I believe, some kind of manpower attention paid to them at this level.

Maybe it should be a more effective skill center, or more effective adult education schools. I don't know, but our experience raises a question about attempting to do it through the JOBS program.

Senator NELSON. I am proposing to tailor the program and structure the curriculum for special circumstances. The point being made by these witnesses was that you can't retain with the low pay, and there is not much sense to pay money to train for a skill on a job they can learn in an an hour, a day, or 2 days.

There was one witness who commented to the effect that those who did not have sufficient language skill, just about the only purpose is to have them making a little money while they are learning to communicate in the English language so they can go someplace else.

That might limit your program to basic education, and it might mean that you limit it to people whose problem is a language problem.

But there appear to be all kinds of programs around the country that involve people for whom English is their only language, if there does not seem much point in putting them on low-skill, lowpay jobs and train them for something they can learn without any training at all.

Mr. HOWARD. Mr. Chairman, there is one conceptual aspect here that does take away from the feeling that I share with you that lowpaying jobs and low-skill jobs are not indicated for this program, and that is that the remediation or the job related education often is more meaningful when it is related to the work, or related to the work experience.

The classroom experience can be a disaster for a number of the people with whom we are concerned, and one of the objectives of the JOBS program was to attempt to relate the classroom to work so that there would be a relationship of reality and function, so that the job related education would support performance on the job.

For example, reading of numbers or making of measurements or something of that sort, or simple addition, and so on. I think that is a useful factor in designing a manpower program.

There still remains a question about its utility with low-paying jobs.

Senator MURPHY. We have had a great deal of experience with the Job Corps, and the Job Corps camps, and we still seem to be floundering.

Do you think there is enough available information at this point where we could set out a team of experts and say in a particular area this works and this doesn't work, and some of these efforts ought to be scrubbed? Have we come to that point yet in this great, costly experiment?

Mr. HOWARD. Senator, I am not sure we will ever reach that precise a point in dealing with human problems. For one thing, the environment, the economy, the local situation often switches in midstream, and so our lesson has to be relearned.

That is not to say we haven't learned. I think we have learned a great deal. I believe the new directions in the Job Corps in terms of getting away from isolated transcontinental experiences, I believe that direction is very good, very useful. I think we have learned that.

Senator MURPHY. I thought that was wrong at the outset.

Mr. HOWARD. I believe that has been corrected. Those things we have learned.

We certainly have learned, I believe, in the JOBS program that its efficacy is intimately related to the fluctuations of the economy and when unemployment rises and layoffs occur, the JOBS program is particularly vulnerable.

I think we have also learned that setting up classrooms for standardized vocational training might not relate to what employers

want.

We have learned lessons, but leaping from the lessons we have learned to an answer that will solve the problem, that is a tougher leap, and I am prepared to say that I do not know the answers. I am not sure the answers are all present.

Senator MURPHY. I know in one of these job training schools that I visited last weekend, I have a list up in my office of the jobs they provided, the number of employees, and it is a very high rate. I would think that most of the employment was around $2.50, up to $2.75 an hour, some higher than that. It may be that these are the types of jobs that ought to be concentrated on.

I can remember way back when I first came here. We talked about training people, and I said that there was sometimes a great shortage of people that wanted to do housework, and how long would it take to train a person to do housework. I was told by the former Secretary it would take 32 weeks. I thought that seemed quite a long time. My sister learned quicker than that.

Mr. HOWARD. I think one thing that would be useful is some kind of flexibility within limits. One of our subsidiaries is a vocational training school which has for a number of years successfully trained people for various fields, placing them all, and so on.

It was sought out by employers to design a training program that would be 4 days in the classroom of the school and 1 day on the job. Senator MURPHY. This is what I am hoping to find. Mr. HOWARD. That doesn't fit under any program. Senator MURPHY. Maybe there ought to be a special way to design this.

Mr. HOWARD. I would hope some flexibility in the JOBS program could lead to this kind of mix.

Senator MURPHY. I have no more questions.

Senator NELSON. I just might say that if you figure on 32 weeks to learn housework, it might be fair and reasonable, I know women who have been married 10 to 20 years and haven't learned yet.

Senator MURPHY. That is exactly my point. In some areas you are wasting your time.

For example, I was here one time 2 years ago, and six gentlemen from the department of education were testifying, and I said, "How long do we keep an innovative program going before you make the decision it is good or bad?"

The six looked at each other. I said, "Now tell me what an innovative program is."

And they looked at each other. It was an amazing performance. I said, "You had better be prepared when you come back next year or one Senator is going to vote against any more money for a group of fellows who don't know what they are doing with it. I have been convinced for a long time that we could take the experience of gentlemen like yourselves and tie them down hard, not be so concerned with the labels and with the emotion of helping somebody, but get practical about it and find the areas where systems that work fit. Let's find the areas and set it up on a practical, pinpointed basis. I think we could do a lot. We have paid enough to learn.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HOWARD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Senator NELSON. Our next witness will be Mr. Herbert Butler of Washington, D.C., representing the Manpower Service Training Division of Manpower, Inc., and he is accompanied by Fred Aberlin and Michael Bartels. And William Patton of Peoples Drug Stores.

We will recess for 5 minutes.

(Brief recess.)

Senator NELSON. We will resume the hearings now.

Senator Murphy?

Senator MURPHY. Mr. Chairman, I would like the record to show that I was disturbed about a so-called report which was leaked to the press which had not been shown to the minority side. The ranking member of the minority side was told nothing of this until after Senator NELSON. Thank you, gentlemen.

it was leaked to the press. I was also disturbed by the fact that both sides of this matter had not been heard properly, and I am very pleased to know that today, or I guess as of yesterday, arrangements had been made to give the Department of Labor the opportunity to come back and be heard and tell their side in refutation of some of the statements that have been made, for which I congratulate the Chairman.

I think it is unfortunate that the staff did this. I am sure the Chairman had no knowledge of it. I would like to register my objection so that the staff on either side would not take this unprecedented, bad-mannered approach in the future. I think the least we could do is have both sides of the members of the committee to look at the reports before they become formalized. Sometimes they are misunderstood. The press thinks they are from the committee and very often it is not from the committee at all. I think if the staff writes reports it should stand for them.

Senator NELSON. I went through that yesterday, Senator. We will go through it again.

Senator MURPHY. I hope we won't have to.

Senator NELSON. I think you ought to have the information Senator Javits got yesterday.

Senator MURPHY. I will get it from the record.

Senator NELSON. I will put it in the record at this point.

First, you don't have to be happy about the Secretary of Labor being asked to appear. He was invited to appear long before the report was made. His appearance isn't scheduled based upon the release of any report.

Senator MURPHY. May I ask the Chairman, there was a report that was written, was there not?

Senator NELSON. There was a staff report.

Senator MURPHY. And it was leaked to the press?
Senator NELSON. Not that I know of.

Senator MURPHY. I saw an article that it was reported in the press before I had seen it. That was my objection.

Senator NELSON. I would like to give the Senator information on that. The staff did a report, the 12th one of this year of the Labor and Public Welfare Committee, following the tradition that has been followed in every committee in Congress before either the Sen

every ator or I arrived here.

We had been scheduling these hearings as rapidly as we could to accommodate the administration, at the request of the Secretary of Labor, made personally to me. He had to cancel out his first appearance last year, and I have been scheduling them as rapidly as I

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