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the second year. Similarly funds for renewing the training in the second year for the 25 senior nurse aides and the upgrading of the 25 senior nurse aides to licensed practical nurse would include curriculum and implementation for upgrading 25 licensed practical nurses to registered nurse or whatever other steps might be included in a true career ladder.

All training should be for positions where there are vacancies and satisfactory completion of training would guarantee the worker the job for which he is trained.

All training should be given on paid time at the regular rate of pay at which the employee is reimbursed.

We should insure seniority in the selection of employees and avoid leapfrogging which tends to wipe the opportunities for presently employed lower level personnel.

Basic education should be a definite requirement of a training program, available for those workers who need it. Such basic education to include all of the academic skills of the job for which they are being trained.

If we look at the figures in health manpower, which projects 100percent growth in the next decade, we would see a rather startling amount of growth required, and I am not going to read all of those figures for you, but I will say that there must be an increasing emphasis on using subprofessional personnel to both increase efficiency and make up for the shortage of professionals.

The proliferation of new occupations required by expanding technology will require more training opportunities, and equal emphasis must be made on curriculum modifications to meet the learning needs of the under utilized labor. Substitution and specialization are two trends which will result in the devlopment of new occupations and new careers.

Although we have dealt with health personnel, the same conditions of vacancies and the same dead-end jobs apply to much public service employment.

The same guidelines that we propose for health could be applied to all other employment areas. Our union anticipates a new program next year in which we hope to develop career ladders in all phases of municipal employment.

We believe that public service training must be implemented with opportunities for learning, training and advancement on the job, including academic as well as skills training.

We believe this is the look for the future. When these opportunities are instituted for every job ladder, we believe that the true road upward and outward from poverty will have been established.

Senator NELSON. Now in how many hospitals does your union have employees?

Mrs. MILLER. We are working with three city hospitals in Boston, with three county hospitals in Cuyahoga County outside of Cleveland, and the nine State hospitals in Maryland, so we are trying city, State, and county systems to see how this would be applied.

Senator NELSON. Do you find, in all hospitals where your union has been involved, that they do not have a career ladder system, so to speak, for progressing up to higher jobs?

Mrs. MILLER. Yes; dead-end employment is a characteristics of public service. There are no formal means of progression upward for low-level employees. The means of progressing upward start at the professional level, but no matter where you come into a hospital at a low level, that is where you stay.

If the hospital needs a cook, it does not promote an assistant cook. It goes out and finds a cook as such, and this applies across the board in public service.

Senator NELSON. Thank you very much for your fine contribution. We appreciate it very much.

Mrs. MILLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Senator NELSON. We will next have a panel of Mr. William R. Hutton, executive director, National Council of Senior Citizens; Mr. William C. Fitch, executive director, National Council on Aging, and Mr. Bernard Nash, executive director of the American Association of Retired Persons and the National Retired Teachers Association.

STATEMENT OF A PANEL COMPOSED OF WILLIAM HUTTON, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, NATIONAL COUNCIL OF SENIOR CITIZENS, WASHINGTON, D.C.; WILLIAM C. FITCH, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, NATIONAL COUNCIL ON AGING, WASHINGTON, D.C.; AND BERNARD NASH, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF RETIRED PERSONS AND NATIONAL RETIRED TEACHERS ASSOCIATION, WASHINGTON, D.C.

Mr. HUTTON. Mr. Fitch is not here yet.

Senator NELSON. We are pleased to have you here today. You may present your testimony in whatever way you desire.

Mr. HUTTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It is my privilege to speak on behalf of the two and a half million members of the National Council of Senior Citizens. They have a special concern with manpower training programs.

They want to make sure manpower legislation includes the many low-income elderly seeking employment gainfully. If I may, sir, I would like to submit my statement for the record, and I will hit some of the highlights here to give us a chance to have questions. Senator NELSON. Your statement will be printed in full in the record.

Mr. HUTTON. Thank you.

We have a program operated by antipoverty funds. It is our senior aids program conducted by the national council in some 21 communities across the Nation. It employs some 1,150 men and women aged 55 and over in a variety of community service jobs.

We are glad that there is no upper age limit on manpower training activities proposed under the administration bill, but when members of your committee consider it, our seniors would welcome an affirmative assertion of the right of the elderly unemployed and low-income retirees wishing to return to the labor force to share in the benefits of this proposed legislation on a basis of equality with workers in other age groups.

A great many elderly are physically able and ready to be gainfully employed, if training and jobs opportunities could be made available to them. Despite the 15 percent increase in the social security which became payable in April, the fact is that close to 7 million women and 65 and other aged live at or below the poverty line in this country, according to the U.S. Department of Labor statis

tics.

Now, not all of these men and women are able to work for wages, but undoubtedly many could be gainfully employed if training and job opportunities were opened up for them.

However, until very recently, the State employment services have, I am sorry to say, directed their efforts largely to placement of younger job seekers being influenced, undoubtedly, by the conscious and unconscious feelings of discrimination against elderly job appli

cants.

I want to say here that the National Council of Senior Citizens does not conceive of itself as an organization only interested in the elderly people themselves. We want to build a better America, and we want to give our Nation's youth a proper chance.

What we are opposed to, is the neglect of the elderly with the overemphasis on youth.

I believe the Members of the Senate and the House recognize, and I know that you, sir, recognize the great contributions that older persons can make to this country-and many older Americans are making them right here in this Congress.

The law forbidding age discrimination employment which was enacted in 1967 was fine as far as it goes. But I think you will agree that we should provide the elderly with a more positive guarantee of their right to live in retirement, or, if they wish to, to work either full time or part time for wages or as volunteers in community serv

ice.

I trust that the manpower legislation being discussed here will help clear obstacles to placement of elderly job seekers by modifying the policies and practices which now keep him, keep many elderly people out of the competitive labor force.

Middle-aged and older persons who are unemployed require manpower services ranging through counseling, training, and placement in part-time or full-time employment.

We are concerned about reports that the Administration spokesmen oppose categorical programs, and for that reason are opposed to considering special programs for the elderly.

For example for over a year now, sir, there have been no Special Assistants in the U.S. Department of Labor concerned with programs for older Americans.

During the Eisenhower years, the office of the Special Assistant for Older Workers was in the Office of the Secretary of Labor, and reported to the Under Secretary of Labor. Since then, program funds available have grown substantially through various programs uthorized under the manpower development and training act, and also under title 1-B of the economic opportunity act.

Nevertheless, the Office of Special Assistant to the Secretary of Labor, or for older Workers which started off with the administra

tion, has now been downgraded to lower echelons of the manpower administration, with the result that it cannot serve the best interest of the elderly.

In fact, it seems to have disappeared entirely. Other special groups, the Women's Bureau, minorities, handicapped, the military veterans, all of these are much more substantially represented in the Labor Department hierarchy.

Yet older workers represent 40 percent of the labor force, and middle-aged men and older women are a majority of the adult population. This situation, we believe, is dramatically highlighted by a special analysis which we made of the U.S. budget in 1968.

It revealed that among individuals participating in manpower programs in 1968, approximately 64 percent were aged 21 or less, and 4 percent were aged 55 or over, even though both of these age groups are the same proportion of the work force, and those aged 55 or over represent a large proportion of the adult population.

Yet 64 percent of the Department's manpower programs were with the younger people, and only 4 percent were with those over 55. I would like to add here that the real burden falls on the man, a father of 55, whose son can get a job through the Job Corps quite easily, but the head of the household at 55 or even less, has terrific difficulty in getting into a manpower program of any kind and finding himself a job. He cannot hold his family together.

Recently, the Office of Economic Opportunity finally installed an assistant for programs to meet the problems of the elderly, but the confusion that has engulfed the OEO programs for the elderly in the last few months can only be described as abysmal.

The Department of HEW has the Administration on Aging, but this has been subsumed under HEW's Social and Rehabilitation services and has a low position on the organizational totem pole.

We have found that when so-called noncategorical programs are started, it is the usual thing for the elderly to be bypassed. Show me a place where everyone says let's have no special categories of aidand we will show you where the elderly are being neglected.

I suppose this is natural in a country that has been excessively youth-oriented over the years. It seems to me that to correct that imbalance, we must pay attention to the fact that there are millions of older people out there and I'm talking about 40 million people over 55, who are having a tough time holding their families together and getting a job and who have an awfully tough time getting into any manpower training program.

Isn't it unrealistic to deny the elderly a chance to work? That is what we are doing from age 40 upward. We are denying them reasonable consideration when they ask for jobs. It is incredible that we have permitted our society to become so youth-oriented that the job market, in effect, starts to close after a person reaches 40 years of

age.

We seem to believe one myth after another to justify age discrimination in employment. One such myth is that the young labor force guarantees greater production and less overhead.

This is possibly true with a man operating a jackhammer on public construction, but there are all kinds of occupations where the elderly are just as productive or more so than their juniors.

Another myth is the supposed cost burden of hiring the elderly. Department of Labor studies show that putting an older worker on the payroll, including all benefits, costs an average of only 5 cents an hour more than it would for a younger person.

We have heard that older workers are absent from the job more than younger workers, but the opposite is true.

Unbiased studies show that attendance of elders is good. It has been estimated that from 112 million to 2 million men and women aged 65 and over-and I would certainly say that may go up to 5 million who are 50 and over-are capable of accepting part-time or full-time employment if training and employment were available to them.

Time magazine has estimated that the cost to agencies discrimination for age and involving workers 45 or over is $4 billion a year.

When I speak of the need for an affirmative assertion of the right of the elderly to gainful employment, I have in mind for example, a program such as in S. 3604 which is being sought by Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and a number of other cosponsors. There are similar bills now in the House of Representatives to make available in every community employment opportunities available for the elderly under a community service program funded by the Department of Labor similar to the demonstration programs now run by the national council and other organizations.

The program we launched in June 1968 has won enthusiastic approval and support in each of the 21 communities it serves. Applicants for employment, under the senior age programs must be 55 or older, and have incomes no higher than $1,800 a year in the case of an individual, or $2,400 a year in the case of a couple, one of whom is employed in the program.

These senior aids earn an average of $2 an hour for 20 hours work a week. They earn only $40 a week, but they gain a hundred bucks worth of dignity.

Instead of being on the welfare rolls, they are able to get a dignified job and help others in their community.

There have been seven applicants for each job set up under the Senior Aids program, and in some areas the number of applicants for each job has been much greater. On Monday of this week, I completed a west coast tour, and I have visited recently nearly all the 19 demonstration communities in the program. Each of those communities would like to have funds to employ hundreds of Aids, not merely the 60 who are currently employed in each demonstration project.

They say this community service work is desperately needed. They have plenty of older people who really need the work, need to keep body and soul together in a dignified way, and who could perform vital services. They could employ these elderly usefully under such a

program.

Unfortunately, they don't have the local funds to do it. This is where some of the manpower funds could be usefully properly spent for the benefit of this Nation.

The jobs available in our program range from helping with preparation and service of low cost meals for the elderly to subprofessional and clerical work.

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