Wage Case Processing: Phases III & IV INTRODUCTION The transition from Phase II to Phase III involved moving from from a broad system of direct wage and price controls to more reliance on self-administered standards. But from the outset, mandatory controls were retained on the food, health, and construction sectors; Executive Compensation also came under mandatory controls on August 29, 1973. Employee units under voluntary self-administered controls remained subject to monitoring, possible challenge, and roll back of wage increases which were determined to be inconsistent with the standards and goals of the Economic Stabilization Program. The changes in policy and the scope of controls required changes in methods of processing cases. The procedures established during Phase III for processing cases evolved and as reorganizations occurred were refined during Phase IV. COVERAGE OF REGULATIONS Wage cases in Phases III and IV fell into two categories: controlled industry cases and self-administered industry cases. The controlled industries were food, health and construction. Of the controlled industries, health and construction continued to operate under the Phase II reporting requirements. Category I employee units, those with 5,000 or more employees, had to prenotify and receive approval for all wage increases. (This requirement was dropped for the Food Industry in March 1973). Category II employee units had to report all wage increases and receive Council approval; however, increases of up to 5.5 percent could be implemented immediately. Category III employee units, those with under 1,000 employees, had to report and receive approval for only those wage increases which were in excess of 5.5 percent. In the food industry, tighter reporting requirements, requiring prenotification for all categories of employees, were instituted on March 29, 1973. Subsequent interim rules, however, delayed the effective dates of these regulations and they were abandoned in early 1974. In effect, all categories of employee units in the Food Industry had to request and receive approval for all wage increases. Increases of up to 5.5 percent for all categories could be implemented without prior approval or while a decision from the CLC was pending. Special regulations and reporting requirements covered Executive Compensation after August 29, 1973. All other industries (besides food, health, Executive Compensation and construction) were termed self-administered. With these industries, the only reporting requirement was for Category I employee units (which had to report all wage increases within ten days after implementation). The prenotifications and reports, required by the Council, were made using the PB-3 form from Phase II. In both the controlled and self-administered sectors, the Council had the authority to roll back any increase in violation of the regulations. ORGANIZATION The Office of Wage Stabilization (OWS) within the Cost of Living Council was organized in Phase III following the termination of the Pay Board. OWS was responsible for processing all wage cases. This office was staffed initially with people from the Pay Board's Office of Case Management and Analysis. Within OWS separate organizational components were organized to handle cases pertaining to food, health, construction and self-administered industries. An Executive Compensation Branch was established to work with incentive compensation plans with the controlled industries (See Appendix I and Appendix II). During Phase IV the divisions recruited additional personnel with the expertise to process cases within the particular industry. CASE PROCESSING The initial processing of forms (i.e., prenotifications and reports) received by OWS was the same for food, health and construction cases. The form first went to the Classification & Assignment Branch where it was screened, costed and routed to the appropriate industry division or branch. Forms were no longer microfilmed before processing as had been the procedure in Phase II. The functions of the screeners and costers were basically the same as in Phase II.1 The pre-screener received, dated and categorized the incoming mail. He then forwarded the incoming form to a screener. The screener first checked to see that all of the necessary information was on the form. If items were missing the form was returned to the submitter for completion indicating necessary information require For a detailed description of these functions see Phase II Wage Case Processing section of this paper. ments prior to appropriate processing or the screener contacted the parties to obtain the necessary information. Returning incomplete forms to the submitter was a major change from the Phase II procedure, when the staff accepted forms and then attempted to match the correspondence to existing files or to obtain the necessary information for an incomplete filing. After this initial review the screener assigned the case a number or, if it was an existent case, located the original number and assigned a designator number for the control year and submission. He then checked the form for completeness with respect to employee unit, control year, effective date of increase, base year, benefits, etc. The screener contacted the firm to obtain or clarify any of this information. In fact, a great deal of the screener's time was spent communicating with firms. He also prepared a file card showing the case number, case name, number of employees and type, union, if any, and date screened. This card served as a manual tracking system for wage cases. When the computerized system which contained the same information became more reliable later in the Program, the file cards became primarily the screeners' personal records. The screener, after completing this work, forwarded the form to a coster. The coster checked the form, concentrating on computational accuracy. He made sure that the figures given in the PB-3 were correct and that they could be reconciled with any supporting data supplied by the firm, such as a collective bargaining agreement. The coster routed the forms to a data processing group in the Systems and Procedures Division of the Office of Operations. This group entered the data from the forms on to the computer, and sent the form to a second coster. This coster reviewed the computer printout to verify that the data had been entered correctly and that computer computations were accurate. He forwarded any corrections to the data processing section. During Phase III the filing went directly from the coster to one of the industry divisions. In Phase IV, the filing could go from the coster to any one of the industry divisions; but food cases, which constituted 90 percent of the OWS caseload, went to the Active Case Room where the computer was updated to reflect the case's status and location. All food cases were retained with the Active Case Room until an adjudicator could process the cases. The establishment of the Active Case Room was a major change in procedure during Phase IV. This established a quality control for case information and processing through all aspects of case processing. A daily logging and status report was produced, thus enabling management to be aware of any and all cases as the need arose. The process was extremely ac curate and allowed control over all cases, not only the food cases, although the food division case load constituted the majority. The filing was routed to the food division for analysis and adjudication or retained in the Active Case Room until processing could be accomplished. CONTRAST BETWEEN PHASE II ORGANIZATION AND PHASES III AND IV This organizational concept, where cases moved from station to station, was similar to the original Pay Board operation. But it differed from the team concept used by the Pay Board toward the end of Phase II. At that time, each team was composed of a screener, a coster and an adjudicator working together as a unit. This method expanded each member's awareness of the overall case processing function. In this way it enabled the team members to see how their work was necessary in subsequent stages of the process. It reduced the amount of time spent communicating with firms since the questions of several team members could be answered with one call. Each team was headed by an adjudicator since he held the most responsible position. Adjudicators analyzed and presented cases to the Pay Board and its subcommittees. Adjudicators were also responsible for writing Decisions and Orders. Perhaps the biggest problem that arose with the team concept was that a good adjudicator was not always a good manager. For example, there were no controls requiring a screener or a coster to process a specific number of cases each day. If the adjudicator in charge of a team did not take the initiative in maintaining the output of each team member, the backlog continued to build. The functional organization, on the other hand, closely watched the number of cases which were screened, costed and completed per day and thus exercised somewhat tighter control. In a parallel vein, OWS organization was also better suited for generating management reports. With the team concept the only information that could be generated prior to the completion of a case was the fact that a case had been sent to a certain team. Although the costing information from the Pay Board forms was prepared after the form was received by a team, the adjudication process required the greatest amount of time, and the costing figures might not be available for computer entry for a month or more when the case was closed. Certain identifying data from the Form PB-3 (i.e., case number, case name, number of employees, and union if any, case type, and percentage requested) had been entered onto the computer after the screener had screened the form. These data however, merely aided in locating a particular case and any costing figures were only approximations. With the functional organization, adopted later, useful reports could be generated immediately after costing, before the adjudication process began. Reports were prepared pinpointing the exact age of a case, in order to ensure that cases were processed with. in a reasonable amount of time. Another of these reports, which became very important in Phases III and IV, was the expedite list of submissions, which indicated those applicants who had requested small : increases. One last advantage of the functional organization was that it facilitated case tracking. By the time a filing reached the Active Case Room, sufficient analysis had been performed to ensure that the case was being routed to the appropriate division and the computer had been updated to reflect the exact location of the case. This was in contrast to the team concept, where the team screener received filings (reports and prenotifications as well as other case related correspondence) directly from prescreening. As a result many forms were : initially routed to the wrong team. Rerouting led to delays and forms were frequently misplaced. Until a filing had been screened and the :data had been entered onto the computer, there was no way to locate tit. Even after the information had been entered onto the computer, teams frequently transferred a file to another team or division informally without logging the change on the computer. Thus, there was no record of the transfer and it became difficult to locate cases. One development in the Phase III and IV OWS organization, which reflected a positive aspect of the team experience, was the specialization of screeners and costers by industry. Through this method the screeners and costers, without working directly with the adjudicators, developed familiarity with the cases being processed by a particular division. Because his contact was restricted to cases in a specific industry, a screener generally realized, after examining a case, that it was not a new case but a duplicate submission of an old case. He then made sure that the submission was not duplicated on the computer system. EVALUATION It is difficult to judge whether the team approach or functional approach to wage case processing was more successful. The Phase IV functional organization was able to complete preliminary processing of routine cases in a space of five or six days by the end of the Program. Yet the workload at this time was only a fraction of what it |