In closing, Mr. Chairman, I again express the appreciation for the Department's 22 affiliated unions for the opportunity to set forth to this committee our views in respect to this very important and much needed legislation.

We urge this committee to report this bill, with the changes we have recommended, at an early date so that timely Senate consideration can be given by the Senate to the proposed legislation in case it is necessary to attempt to override a Presidential veto.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Ryan, for your testimony.

We will recess open end until we assemble an additional group of witnesses, and we intend to pursue this question relentlessly.

We will have some of the other unions testifying. We will have the Civil Service Commission testifying.

I suspect we will end up having some of the Pentagon here testifying as the question indicated this morning that were alluded to, but I want to guarantee one thing. This committee will get this out in sufficient time that there can never be a belated veto, or even a pocket veto to bypass the truth.

The hour of standing up and being counted has come, and we want the Congress to have a full control of the options to which judgment as to what ought to be done in the interest of equity and fairness in this field. [Applause.]

This first day of the hearing then is now adjourned until our resumption of it as quickly as we can assemble the witnesses.

(Whereupon, at 12:30 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.)

WAGE BOARD LEGISLATION

THURSDAY, APRIL 29, 1971

U.S. SENATE,

COMMITTEE ON POST OFFICE AND CIVIL SERVICE, Washington, D.U. The committee met at 10 a.m., pursuant to call, in room 6202, New Senate Office Building, Senator Gale W. McGee (chairman of the committee) presiding.

Present: Senators McGee, Burdick, Moss, and Fong.

Staff members present: David Minton, staff director and counsel ; Clyde DuPont, minority counsel; Richard G. Fuller, and Dan Doherty, professional staff members.

The CHAIRMAN. The Post Office and Civil Service Committee will come to order.

This hearing has been convened to take testimony on legislation. relating to wage board employees.

At the request of the administration last week, I introduced S. 1636, an official recommendation of the administration to establish a statutory wage board pay system.

There was a legislative effort by the Congress last Christmas to enact wage board legislation, an enactment that was subsequently vetoed by the President.

So against that backdrop, we will have our first witness this morning, Hon. Robert E. Hampton, Chairman of the U.S. Civil Service Commission.

I am sure that the Chairman will address himself primarily to the administration's recommendations, and his testimony will give us an opportunity to examine in some depth just perhaps what the President intends to do, other than veto the pay increase, since that is already a matter of record.

We can proceed from that point. We are not interested, incidentally, in legislation coming out of this committee just for making speeches. We are interested, at this time, in something that we can carry out into law.

With that thought in mind, we will proceed in any way you see fit, Bob.

STATEMENT OF HON. ROBERT E. HAMPTON, CHAIRMAN, U.S. CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSION; ACCOMPANIED BY RAYMOND JACOBSON, DIRECTOR, BUREAU OF POLICIES AND STANDARDS; AND RAYMOND C. WEISSENBORN, CHIEF, PAY POLICY DIVISION

Mr. HAMPTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I would like to say, before getting into my formal statement, that we share your objective in trying to get legislation this year. We certainly do not enter these hearings with anything in mind like a veto, and hopefully, we can work out something.,

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The CHAIRMAN. One of the reasons we are pushing this along as rapidly as we are is that with reasonable legislation, we suspect that the two Houses do have the sufficient mandate for followup actions, should there be another veto.

We didn't have that option at the end of the Christmas session. We would just as soon not go the override route. We hope we can arrive at a constructive solution to this in cooperation, but I think the feeling among the Members of Congress, and particularly among the members of the committee, is very strong now.

We felt that this was an unwise decision down at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue last Christmas time, and it probably will, whatever else, make it a more expensive decision. Things are changing, churning a little bit. I didn't mean to interrupt your own speech.

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Mr. HAMPTON. I appreciate that very much, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman and members of this committee, we welcome this portunity to present to you the administration's position on this very sensitive issue of blue-collar pay. We have always appreciated the willingness of this committee to listen to the other side of the coin; and on this issue, there are certainly two sides-maybe three.

I wish to express my appreciation to you, Mr. Chairman, for introducing S. 1636 in order that the proposal could receive the consideration of this committee.

I don't say this in an insincere way. I think it reflects the type of cooperation that you have between the executive and legislative, knowing full well that you didn't favor the legislation, at least you introduced it so we could get a hearing.

The CHAIRMAN. I might add, Bob, that we have had a refreshing measure of leadership in the Civil Service Commission, that hasn't always been matched at the White House level. We think that the Civil Service Commission ought to be higher than, and more farsighted than, and more enduring than any administration.

The kind of cooperation and leadership we have had at the Commission has been a kind of vindication of the system.

Mr. HAMPTON. Thank you very much.

The CHAIRMAN. If that incriminates you at the White House, I will withdraw that statement, but no comment is required.

Mr. HAMPTON. I don't think it is incriminating, I had the opportunity a few weeks ago of going before the House and making a presentation on what has happened in the last several years in the record of the 91st Congress, and the legislation that was passed involving Federal employees, I think is probably the most outstanding record in many a decade, and to say it was done in 2 years, particularly when you had postal reform up here, is really something.

The CHAIRMAN. I suspect we did better in this field than in the other that took so much of our time. We have a lot of headaches there yet.

Mr. HAMPTON. We are concerned about the issue of blue-collar pay because this issue today presents a problem, the solution for which, in the end, must reflect the interest of the employees, the executive branch, and the public—that is, the burden of cost borne by the taxpayer.

We recognize that the latter point is of grave concern to the Congress as well as to the administration. It must be considered very

seriously in deciding the answers to the very important pay questions now before us.

From a policy standpoint, we want to assure that our employees are paid a fair and equitable wage that is truly the prevailing wage. But we do not want to exceed that principle for it has been a sound one for over a hundred years.

One of our major legislative goals for 1971 is to establish under law a system governing blue-collar pay. It had been the general view that the Commission was opposed to pay legislation in this area, and that we preferred to work with a system that was established by executive action. That is not the case.

We have objected to certain features of proposed bills in the past because we felt they were contrary to proven practices in private industry.

When Mr. Jacobson appeared before the Civil Service Subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Post Office and Civil Service in June 1970, he indicated that the coordinated Federal wage system, then relatively new, was entitled to a "shake down" before it was replaced by law.

The CHAIRMAN. You left out the word "period." The phrase "shakedown" doesn't have a positive connotation. Let's not incriminate us before we get underway here.

Mr. HAMPTON. That is right. I should have said, "shakedown period."

He stated that a report on the operation of the system could probably be ready early in calendar year 1971 and that, if legislation then seemed necessary, it could be based on a full round of actual experience.

We have now logged two and a half years of valuable operating experience with the coordinated system, and we believe that the time is right for appropriate legislation.

Today we are honored to present the administration's views on bluecollar wage legislation, and to discuss the administration's proposal for a Federal Wage System.

In essence, the administration asks Congress to enact a system which is fair and equitable to the principal parties concerned-the Federal blue-collar wage earner, Federal management officials and the taxpayer they both serve.

We ask you to enact a system that is flexible and adaptable to change-not one that is inflexible and would require continual amendments to meet changing conditions of employment. What we seek is wage legislation that provides a broad general framework of sound policies and principles, but leaves operating details open to the people responsible for operating the system namely the executive branch and its employees through their duly selected representatives.

For a major law, the administration's proposal has few technical points spelled out, and this is intentional. We will discuss the elements of the proposal in turn, but first we would like to establish the magnitude and the scope of the issues at stake.

In human terms, we are talking about the livelihoods of more than a half-million American wage earners. There is no question that we are agreed in our mutual desire to see that they are fairly and adequately paid.

In fiscal terms, we are talking about an enormous public investment. By the latest data available to me, Federal blue-collar wages at present