Thus we have cut our administrative structure to the bone, particularly in view of the problems we had to face in the past year, though it has meant much overtime work on the part of the administrative and field operations staff. WORK PERFORMED FOR WAR AGENCIES At this point I should like to touch briefly upon the work which the Divisions have done for such war agencies as the War Labor Board and the War Production Board. As the fiscal year began last July, the War Production Board came to us and asked if the Divisions would not undertake the job of making audits under the production requirement plan on a reimbursable basis. As I indicated to the committee last year the Wage and Hour Division had already been requested to make-and had made a number of somewhat similar inspections for the Office of Price Administration as well as the War Production Board. These included inspection of 2,000 aluminum establishments, 35,000 tire establishments and dealers, as well as a survey of copper establishments. It has been my feeling, with which your committee seemed to concur, in view of the fact that no objections were raised, that the Divisions should take on such jobs in view of the fact that a considerable saving would be made by the Federal Government as a whole. I feel sure that you will agree with me that such inspections can be more efficiently and more economically done by a going organization than by the setting up of a new organization which would duplicate the services rendered by our own agency as well as other agencies in the Govern ment. I am a firm believer in utilizing existing personnel just as far as possible in meeting such problems that arise out of the war emergency, inasmuch as it cuts down on the number of Government inspectors in the field, since two or three inspections may be done at one time when entering a given establishment. As the committee knows, the President has directed the executive agencies to lend their assistance to the war agencies wherever possible. Our agency is particularly well suited to take on such spot jobs, since our field offices were set up in some 120 cities throughout the country in accordance with industrial concentrations; thus it is possible for us to get inspectors quickly into industrial establishments on a very efficient basis. PRODUCTION REQUIREMENT PLAN INSPECTIONS (See p. 157) Where the job has been a big and costly one, as was the case with the production requirement plan inspections, the divisions have received reimbursement from the War Production Board. IDLE METALS UNEARTHED IN FIELD I have here a chart which shows the total number of production requirement plan audits completed in the field up to March 31, 1943, inclusive, with figures from 7 of the 13 regions indicating the total amount of idle metals unearthed through these inspections and in the case of 6 regions the weights of the different kinds of metals uncovered up to March 15, 1943. The reason that these figures are incomplete is that the audits were done for the War Production Board and the information was provided directly to them. However, some of our regions took off the pertinent figures for their own information, which, though incomplete, is nevertheless very impressive. The seven regions which reported the total amount of metals unearthed reported a total of 296,610,045 pounds, or 148,305 tons of such strategic materials. From the six regions which reported kinds of metals discovered, the following figures are obtained: 106, 109, 109 | Lead.. Steel.... Iron.. Copper Aluminum. Brass.. Bronze.. Monel Chrome.. - pounds. 1, 215, 890 | Tin_. 1,019, 808 Zinc.. -pounds__ _do____ __do___. 536, 431 Other metals, such as nickel, tungsten, mag 7,093 3, 492, 574 114, 869 290, 187 do--- 242, 305 nesium, pipe, wire, sol- 1, 644, 307 7,757 Mr. HARE. Would it be proper for you to tell us where you found these metals? FAILURE OF INDUSTRIAL PLANTS TO REPORT METALS ON HAND Mr. WALLING. Yes; most of them were discovered in industrial establishments which had not reported them as they were required to do under the regulations of the War Production Board. That is, they were hidden and in most cases illegally held metals which were vitally necessary for the war effort, and which were uncovered as the result of our inspections and made available for distribution by the War Production Board to other centers where there are shortages, and where they were badly needed. Mr. HARE. All right. Mr. WALLING. These figures on weight of different kinds of metals do not represent the total count, even for the 6 regions represented. The reason for this is that region XII submitted figures which lumped together all nonferrous metals except copper. Up to date we have made a total of 22,743 Production Requirement Plan audits for the War Production Board. OTHER TYPES OF SERVICE RENDERED BY DIVISIONS The divisions also undertook for the War Production Board and the Office of Price Administration a number of other surveys of varying types which involved the making of 15,196 inspections. These surveys included surveys of used machinery, steel warehouses, canning establishments, electrical appliances, men's clothing, elastic fabrics, brass, mill and wire products, and a fairly large number of establishments which were operated under the so-called L, or limitation, orders of the War Production Board. I would like to emphasize that in all these inspections we have tried to make a concurrent wage-hour and public contracts inspection wherever possible so that whereas a year ago three inspectors might conceivably have been sent into one plant on three different types of inspections, today as a result of the merger and as a result of our taking on war agency work you will often find one inspector going into a plant on wage-hour, public contracts, and War Labor Board, War Production Board or other war agency work. This policy has been very popular with industry as letters and comments to our regional directors and other field officials have clearly indicated. ASSISTANCE RENDERED WAR LABOR BOARD The second major war job which the divisions have undertaken during the last 9 months was that of assisting the national War Labor Board with the administration-and now the enforcementof the wage stabilization program. I do not think I am exaggerating when I say that if our regional and field office had not been promptly put at the disposal of the War Labor Board many thousands of firms throughout the country would have had to operate without knowing whether or not they could make legitimate wage and salary increases. I have with me a letter from the Chairman of the War Labor Board, Mr. William H. Davis, which states in part that I think it is perhaps not too much to say that the whole program has been possible only through having the service of 100 offices, as contact points for the public to obtain information and file applications for wage changes, put at their disposal overnight when the program was initiated. The confusion which would have resulted from having no local offices to handle the hundreds of thousands of inquiries which have come in might well have swanped the entire program at the start. With your permission I should like to make this letter part of the record. Mr. HARE. What letter. Mr. WALLING. This letter from Mr. Davis that I have just quoted from in part. Mr. HARE. How long is it? Mr. WALLING. It is one page in length. Mr. ENGEL. Mr. Davis is head of the War Labor Board. Mr. HARE. Is there any objection to that? All right. Mr. WALLING. I have the letter here. (The letter referred to is as follows:) NATIONAL WAR LABOR BOARD, Mr. L. METCALFE WALLING, Administrator, Wage and Hour and Public Contracts Divisions, U. S. Department of Labor, Washington, D. C. DEAR MR. WALLING: I have been meaning to write you for sometime to express the warm thanks of the National War Labor Board for the prompt and efficient service which the Wage and Hour and Public Contracts Divisions have rendered in the administration of the President's Executive order of October 3, 1942. When the Board was given the added duties of administering the wage stabilization program it had no field offices which were set up and ready to answer the thousands of inquiries which were coming in regarding the operation of the program. Not only has the administration of the voluntary wage increase aspect of the wage stabilization program been enormously speeded up because of the Board's ability to use the facilities all over the country of the Wage and Hour and Public Contracts Divisions as a "going concern,' but I think it is perhaps not too much to say that the whole program has been possible only through having the services of over 100 offices, as contact points for the public to obtain information and file applications for wage changes, put at their disposal overnight when the program was initiated. The confusion which would have resulted from having no local offices to handle the hundreds of thousands of inquiries which have come in might well have swamped the entire program at the very start. From the larger governmental interest it has obviously been decidedly more efficient to integrate the wage stabilization activities into closely related activities already carried on by the Wage and Hour and Public Contracts Divisions than to set up duplicate facilities. We feel that the Wage and Hour and Public Contracts Divisions have been of real assistance in the war effort as well as to the War Labor Board and we are looking forward to continuing to utilize your Divisions even more in the future than in the past. Yours very truly, WILLIAM H. DAVIS, Chairman. May I make clear also at this point that the work for the War Labor Board is naturally being done on a reimbursable basis. Furthermore, it is interesting to note that though there has been considerable additional personnel needed to perform this work these people have been quickly absorbed into our organizational framework and closely integrated with our regular work. In so doing, I believe the Divisions have saved the Federal Government thousands of dollars by making it unnecessary for another agency to set up additional offices with their supervisory personnel and general overhead. As I see the picture, the Division's organization might be likened to the skeleton framework, or cadres, which are the basic components of an army, with its already operating offices located in strategic industrial centers and manned by experienced supervisory officials. The Divisions are ready at a monent's notice to absorb any enforcement or survey work relating to industrial establishments which any other Federal agency requires to be performed. Briefly, what our Divisions have been performing for the War Labor Board is, in the first place, to answer all the first inquiries regarding wage stabilization that are made by industrial firms, unions, and employees throughout the country. These inquiries are coming into our offices at the rate of 33,000 a week. At the same time our field offices are handling the requests for jurisdictional rulings, which are made on a very simple one-page form, as to whether a wage increase may be made immediately under one of the General Orders of the War Labor Board or whether it is necessary to make a formal application to the War Labor Board for the approval of such an increase. As of April 2 the divisions had received 80,000 requests for rulings. Where it has been necessary for the firms to make a formal application for a wage increase on what is known as form 10, the divisions receive these forms, check them for accuracy and completeness and then forward them to the appropriate War Labor Board regional office. As of April 2 the divisions' field offices had received over 46,000 of these applications. Finally, the divisions are now entering on a program of enforcement for the War Labor Board- a procedure which is very necessary if we are to "hold the line" as President Roosevelt has requested. It is expected that a large number of these enforcements and compliance inspections will be done on a concurrent basis with wage and hour and public contracts cases. PROGRESS OF WAGE AND HOUR PROGRAM Having digressed at some length on what the Divisions have been doing for the various war agencies, let me get back to what we have been doing on our own program during the last 9 months. In this period we have inspected 38,415 establishments with a total number of covered employees of 2,554,874. Of the covered establishments inspected, 76 percent were found in violation of the act in one way or another. Interestingly enough, 52 percent of these establishments were in violation of either the minimum wage or overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Mr. HARE. Isn't that information included in your justifications that you insert in the record? Mr. WALLING. No, sir; Mr. Chairman, I think not because those were prepared before these figures were made up. Those were prepared at the very beginning of the fiscal year, and these were prepared only recently. Mr. HARE. All right. Mr. WALLING. The figures cited there are for the preceding fiscal year. RESTITUTIONS EFFECTED FROM VIOLATIONS As a result of these violations among the establishments agreeing to pay restitution, there were 283,079 employees who were underpaid-103,869 being underpaid because they were not receiving the proper minimum wage and 179,210 employees being underpaid solely because they did not receive the proper amount of overtime. I am sorry that we were not able to inspect establishments at the rate of approximately 65,000 for the year or 5,400 a month, as we had hoped, which would have brought the total of inspections for 9 months to 48,600. There are two principal reasons for our falling behind this quota. In the first place, we have had a turn-over of inspection personnel which projected on an annual basis amounts to approximately 50 percent. I have already given you the reasons for this turn-over, but may I now give you a picture of what it has meant in terms of manpower qualified to perform inspections at the rate of six establishments a month, which is the rate used in figuring the number of establishments to be inspected during the past fiscal year. Experience has showed that it takes 6 weeks of training in the office before an inspector is qualified to make field inspections. He is then sent out into the field with an experienced inspector for several weeks before he is permitted to go into an establishment by himself. After that it is a good month or two before we can even hope that, if he is extremely well qualified, he will be able to cover as many as six establishments in a month. This means that for every inspector which we have lost we have at the same time fallen behind an inspector's output for at least 3 months; and in making this estimate I am not including the time which must be spent by the experienced inspectors in training these new inspectors. Through this cause alone we estimate that we have fallen behind approximately 15 percent in the number of establishments we might have inspected if we had had our full complement of inspectors for |