Senator NELSON. The question I would like to ask is, there have been a number of programs that have been called to my attention, of high quality such as Raytheon. Did you look at Raytheon's testimony?

Mr. WEBER. I looked at a summary of it, sir.

Senator NELSON. Their trainees, I gathered from their testimony, met all the standards for coming under the program. They had an educational level, that is, formal education, of third grade through high school. Well, I was quite impressed by the testimony, which made the point that it required, they thought, a very intensive orientation counseling program, and that when they started out with the same type of employee they had a 30-percent rate of retention, and that now, as they have developed their counseling, they have a 90percent retention, if my memory is correct, and that after the first 2 weeks they have less than a 1-percent dropout.

I visited here in the District, the IBM program, which I thought was quite impressive.

I realize in each of those programs success is going to turn on the kind of leadership and quality of the people they have in it, and they obviously had some very high quality people in the Raytheon program and the IBM program.

I wonder whether there would be any value to trying to spread this expertise around the country, that is, try somehow to induce the employers to send personnel to observe the program.

I suggested to the Raytheon representative that maybe a handbook of what they do, showing how they do it, and their successes, might be valuable.

Have you given consideration to that?

Mr. WEBER. We do it to some extent already, Senator, but not to the extent that I think is warranted by the spillover effects of these successful experiences.

As the Secretary indicated in the testimony, he has directed the staff of the Manpower Administration to give wider dissemination of information on those cases that have worked and why they were working.

We have done some of that through our systematic process of evaluation, through the meetings in various metros and we can and will do much more of that.

The problem is that the Raytheon's and the IBM's and the A. O. Smith's, are big, sophisticated companies with specialized staff and training. When you get down to the smaller employer, whose scale does not justify it, problems develop due to the lack of managerial capability in initiating the programs.

Many of the subcontractors have developed because they do have this scale and expertise, and that is constructive.

Among the things we are working on that will accomplish this is a consortium arrangement. Rather than signing a contract with a small employer for five slots, when he has total employment of 40, and the boss is also the engineer, the personnel manager and the accountant, we prefer to negotiate with a larger consortium of which he is a member.

In specific answer to your question, we have done some of it. We should do more,

Senator NELSON. I note that, from my understanding, anyway, that you are attempting to expand into some of the smaller companies more broadly, and you do have consortium arrangements and there are some very experienced and sophisticated contractors in the educational field.

I am just wondering if then it would not be of considerable value to try to put some substantial emphasis both to the subcontractor, the contractor-the consortium arrangement and the employers who have a financial capacity, if not the experience, in order to try to build into their programs the demos that have been so successful in a number of programs around the country, including these.

I would think, as an employer, that anybody would be impressed by raising their retention there from 30 percent to 90 percent, using exactly the same profile of trainee.

Mr. WEBER. I agree. Certainly it is true, Senator.
Senator NELSON. I don't have any more questions.

Thank you very much for coming.

(Whereupon, at 1:05 p.m., the subcommittee adjourned, subject to call of the Chair.)

MANPOWER DEVELOPMENT AND TRAINING
LEGISLATION, 1970

THURSDAY, MAY 14, 1970

U.S. SENATE,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EMPLOYMENT, MANPOWER, AND POVERTY

OF THE COMMITTEE ON LABOR AND PUBLIC WELFARE,

Washington, D.C.

The subcommittee met at 10:15 a.m., pursuant to notice, in room 4232, New Senate Office Building, Senator Gaylord Nelson (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Senator Gaylord M. Nelson.

Staff member present : Robert O. Harris, staff director.

Senator NELSON. Our first witness this morning will be Mrs. Betty Miller, who is appearing on behalf of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees.

Jerry Wurf, president, was unable to be here this morning.
Mrs. Miller, your prepared statement will be printed in full in
the record. You may present it however you desire.

STATEMENT OF BETTY MILLER, ON BEHALF OF THE AMERICAN
FEDERATION OF STATE, COUNTY AND MUNICIPAL EMPLOYEES,
AFL-CIO

Mrs. MILLER. Mr. Chairman, and members of the subcommittee, our union is comprised of 460,000 public employees, of whom about two-thirds are employed in blue-collar, low-level jobs, and it is on behalf of these workers

Senator NELSON. Would you mind pulling the microphone over and speaking directly into it, please?

Mrs. MILLER. Surely.

Many of whom can be classified as hard core unemployed, because they are undereducated and underemployed, that we favor a meaningful public service career program.

Since 1962, Manpower Training has been an increasingly important factor in the fight against poverty in the United States. More recently this policy has been augmented with special proposals for training the hard-core unemployed for public service employment. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, data for 1966 shows that 6.8 million persons, worked 50 to 52 weeks that year, but earned less than $3,000. The poverty level was $3,250.

These are the working poor, the hard core employed. Much more than half of them are working women who are heads of families.

Our union is in favor of a public service employment policy, if such a policy is accompanied by the creation of more jobs and

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advancement opportunities. It is specifically in relation to the opportunities for advancement of public employment that we speak today. Our experience with a recent manpower training program has led us to the conclusion that the components of career development and training are the key to meaningful public service opportunities.

Let me describe briefly what we are doing in our own career development program. Under a grant from the Department of Labor and the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare for public hospitals, the union has developed career ladders in various areas. The ladders are a series of jobs ranging from a step abore entry level to the professional level.

I brought one of these ladders with me to show you what they are like. This is one for the Boston City Hospital. It looks a bit like a design for a subway system, and there is some similarity.

You get on at one level and you move from station to station. All of the little boxes are jobs. Many of these jobs were newly created in that hospital because that is where the performance needs were.

But if you look at that ladder, you will see that the original entry level worker in Boston City Hospital came in as a medical worker. and he stayed there, and the only opportunity to advance was to senior medical worker.

When we came into the hospital last year, there were 572 medical workers and 25 senior medical workers. The opportunities for advancement were very limited.

We have since restructured the job titles and created hundreds of jobs where there is an opportunity for these medical workers to advance. Similarly, the career ladder illustrates the upward mobility now possible for kitchen workers and housekeeping workers.

We have done that through a job analysis, a rating of jobs by complexity and a restructure. We took the less complex tasks from the professionals and created intermediate jobs at the mid-level.

What we are seeking to do is to utilize the experience of the workers. We are training those workers who have been in employment 10, 20, or even 25 years in the same job, and they have never qualified for moving upward.

They have demonstrated their dedication, their work records are known, and frequently they are performing at a higher level though they are unable to quality for the high positions because of unrealistic formal requirements.

The curriculum that we write is designed to teach the new job, including the skills training, in a classroom setting, and goes on to job experience.

Our career ladder training also provides for the basic education required to perform the next higher level so that the trainee's motivation will aspire to the next step.

If the worker has been hindered in advancement because he required some certain academic credentials we now include such education to meet the standards of the new job.

All of the vertical ladders have one additional advantage. Because the training and the knowledge required is in small amounts, it is possible for a worker to transfer horizontally.

This is most important. Entry level workers are hired for the position which happens to be open on the day that they apply at the