Let me go back and develop these as concisely as I know how. I am not opposed to decategorization in principle. I believe that ultimately we should decategorize the program. They should be decategorized when we reach the point when we are ready for decategorization. Mr. GAYDOS. Would you yield? Won't that happen through the national process of attrition? Aren't you saying that? Mr. COHEN. NO; I am saying that we do not yet know enough about the several manpower programs to be able to say to the States, "Here is a laundry list of kinds of programs. Go ahead and develop them." Let me give you an example of what I am talking about relative to the Neighborhood Youth Corps. I am talking about having the answers to knowing what program does the best kind of a job for which group, or what is the best way of operating each type of program to get the best results. The Neighborhood Youth Corps' news design, NYC-2, is presently the subject of controversy. They are divided over questions like this: Who should be served in the Neighborhood Youth Corps program? The Manpower Administration says it ought to be the 16- and 17-yearolds. The 18-year-olds are adults and should go into adult programs. The Neighborhood Youth Corps directors dealing with these youngsters on a daily basis say that they have 18-year-olds and older who are not mature, and that they need a youth program rather than an a-lult program. In other words, there is a division over what is the definition of the population to be served in the Neighborhood Youth Corps program, by two knowledgeable groups, which you assume have good will and integrity, and yet can't get together on who should be served by that program. I submit that if you decategorize these program now and say to the States, "Set up your programs," we have not given the States the guidance they need in setting them up. Let me give you a second example of what goes on in the new design for the Neighborhood Youth Corps. The program has been redesigned by the Manpower Administration to establish a rather traditional or conventional formal training program. No youngster can come in unle he is able to benefit from a full year's training. The total approach is largely a classroom type with some on-the-job raining, but it basically either ignores or eliminates or delimits the work experience approach which is the approach that the Neighborhood Youth Corps has used up to now. As you know, under the work experience approach, the youngster is offered a very concrete situation, a job in the form of work experience, and he is paid a wage, even tough it is in effect a stipend. Here, again, we have a deep division of opinion as to what is the orrect way of working with those young people in the NeighborFood Youth Corps. I submit that if NYC directors and the Manower Administration are divided on this, how can we expect the States under decategorization to know what to do? As a final example, let me cite the fact that as yet nobody has me up with an adequate program for dealing with the problems of rural youth in the Neighborhood Youth Corps. What I am saying is that we don't have the answers to all our probems, to all our questions. We don't fully know, even after 4 or 5 years, what are the best ways to run the Neighborhood Youth Corps. There are honest differences of opinion, and I think to decategorize at this point, until we have found some of those answers, would be a mistake. Let me go on to my second point, which is that, as I said earlier, this program, these bills, this legislation, must pay a great deal more attention to job creation than it does. I don't want to sound like an alarmist, but I think it is time that somebody did sound the alarm loud and clear. As we attempt to deal with the problem of inflation, we are running into rising unemployment that undoubtedly will get worse before it gets better, and the only issue now is how much worse it gets before it gets better? Every time the unemployment rate goes up 1 percent, 800,000 people lose their jobs. The Government is carrying out a policy of fighting inflation, which has the effect of increasing unemployment, and therefore has the effect of offsetting one of its other manpower policies; namely, the JOBS program. Because, as unemployment rises, those who were last hired under the JOBS program are the first to be fired. I was told yesterday that Chrysler Corp. in Detroit has laid off 1,000 persons who were employed under the JOBS program. Now, it sounds like we are solving inflation at the expense of the employment of the poor and the minorities. So you will forgive me if I say that there is a kind of unreal quality an almost Alice in Wonderland quality, to talk about the coordination of training and manpower programs when people are losing their jobs. In the 1960's, this was a valid concern, but in the 1970's with rising unemployment, I think we have to start thinking about a new ball game and start thinking about some new issues. In fact, we are faced here with more than just a manpower question. This is not just a question of what do you train people for if there are no jobs. I think, in part, at stake is the effectiveness of all our efforts to solve poverty, and to equalize employment opportunities for minorities, because with unemployment, there will be fewer jobs, obviously, and less income. We have raised expectations, but if unemployment continues, people are going to let down, and in a sense we will be worse off than if we hadn't tried at all. So I would recommend very urgently that either this legislation be amended, or if need be, new legislation be drafted to deal with the problem of unemployment. Mr. GAYDOS. Thank you, Secretary Cohen. I would like to introduce the counsel for the minority, Mr. Radcliffe, who may have some questions. Mr. RADCLIFFE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I don't quite follow your logic, Mr. Cohen. If you are saying that we cannot offer the States a range of choices, because there is a certain lack of knowledge or a difference in opinion as to the most effective programs, I would think you could just as logically conclude that what we need is a more flexible approach. Given your premise, and I think you are right in it, then it seems to me that it is the highly categorized and highly centralized pro www grams which, in fact, don't offer much hope for finding the answers, for discovering what will work. Mr. COHEN. I quite agree that what we need is the opportunity to experiment more and to find more answers, but I think where you and I possibly part company is how you do that. I think to do this in some kind of complete laissez-faire way, and have people experiment here and there with no order to it will not provide the answers we are looking for. I think what we need are fairly controlled experiments, controlled in the sense that they be part of an overall plan that says we ought to look at this, this, and this, and we will look at it in those and those and those ways. Rather than turning over to the States, as we will do under at least two of the bills, a laundry list, as I said earlier, of the kinds of programs that one might set up, we ought to give them the tested guidelines on how to set them up, in what ways, for what groups, and so forth. Mr. RADCLIFFE. Aren't you really putting together, or attempting to put together, two quite separate things? One is the question of decategorization, and that is what I thought was your first point made in your testimony. The other is the question of how the programs will be administered and where the focus of decisionmaking will be located. Just on the question of whether these programs should be decategorized, I understood you to say that you opposed that because we didn't have enough knowledge of what works. I am raising the question, assuming that we need more knowledge, of whether it isn't better to provide more flexibility in our approach to these problems, wherever the administrative responsibility is located, than it is to continue with highly categorized, centrally prescribed programs? Mr. COHEN. I guess where we disagree is that I don't necessarily assume that you don't have flexibility in categories. I don't necessarily assume that categories lead to rigidity. The bone of my contention is that we are not ready to as yet say, "Forget all about program categories and set up what you think you need," because I don't think we are able to tell people enough, give them enough information as to what kind of program will work given certain needs. I would like to see, and I share your view, the utmost flexibility at this point within the categories so that we can test out and measure out to the maximum degree what each category will do. Having done that, at that point I would then be in favor of decategorization. I want to make it very clear that I do not oppose decategorization forever and in principle. It is just that I feel at this juncture in history we need to do more work before we are able to do it, and we need to do it in a more flexible way. Mr. GAYDOS. Thank you, Mr. Radcliffe, and I again want to express our sincere appreciation for your appearance. It was nice having you, Secretary Cohen, and Director Freeman. Thank you very much. (Whereupon, at 12:15 p.m. the hearing adjourned to reconvene at 9 a.m., February 26, 1970.) MANPOWER ACT OF 1969 THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 1970 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SELECT SUBCOMMITTEE ON LABOR OF THE The subcommittee met at 9:20 a.m., pursuant to recess, in room 2175, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Dominick V. Daniels chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. Present: Representatives Daniels, Hawkins, Quie, Steiger, and Erlenborn. Staff members present: Loretta Bowen, clerk; Sue Nelson, research assistant; Cathy Romano, research assistant; Daniel H. Krivit, counsel; and Charles Radcliffe, minority counsel for education. Mr. DANIELS. The Select Subcommittee on Labor will come to order. We are continuing hearings this morning on the important subject of manpower, and our first witness is Dr. Leonard Lecht of the Center for Priority Analysis, National Planning Association, of Washington, D.C. Dr. Lecht, we extend to you a most cordial welcome. You may proceed with your testimony, sir. STATEMENT OF DR. LEONARD LECHT, DIRECTOR OF THE CENTER FOR PRIORITY ANALYSIS, NATIONAL PLANNING ASSOCIATION, WASHINGTON, D.C. Dr. LECHT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am Leonard Lecht, Director of the Center for Priority Analysis of the National Planning Association, and I am happy to be here to discuss the Manpower Training Act of 1969. While the bills before the committee would all make progress in expanding and improving the training systems, my remarks are mainly directed at the administration bill, H.R. 13472. For one consideration, manpower bottlenecks in the next 5 years could seriously frustrate the attainment of high priority national goals. If we go back to the 1960's, we were frequently alarmed about shortages of scientists and engineers, and then of doctors and nurses, and frequently about people like teachers or professors. In the 1970's, it may be just as true that shortages of blue collar workers will also serve as an obstacle to realizing many of our goals. To take one example that many of us have been hearing about, and that is the case of housing. We hear a great deal, and with good rea 44-425-70-pt. 1—24 |