(The document referred to is as follows:)

(No. 21)

REPORT OF FEDERAL SECURITY AGENCY ON H. R. 476. (MR. PETERSON)

Hon. FRED BRADLEY,

FEDERAL SECURITY AGENCY, Washington 25, March 21, 1947.

Chairman, Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries,

House of Representatives, Washington 25, D. C.

DEAR MR. CHAIRMAN: Reference is made to your letters of February 5, 1947, addressed to this Agency and to the Public Health Service, requesting an expression of your views on H. R. 476, a bill to provide aid for the readjustment in civilian life of those persons who rendered wartime service in the United States merchant marine, and to provide aid for their families.

This bill is the same as H. R. 2346, Seventy-ninth Congress, as it was reported with amendments by your committee on June 20 of last year. Previously this Agency reported on H. R. 2346, as it was introduced, and that report (Committee Doc. No. 62) may be found in the printed record of hearings beginning at page 210. The committee's amendments considerably modified the bill and to a large extent covered the suggestions made by us in our previous report.

As it now stands, H. R. 476 would provide wartime merchant seamen with educational benefits, slightly increased reemployment rights, treatment by the Public Health Service for disabilities incurred in or aggravated by wartime service, Vocational rehabilitation without regard to State residence, and the benefits of the Federal Employees' Compensation Act. The Federal Security Administrator has been substituted in the new bill for the Chairman of the Maritime Commission, with one exception-in the administration of the educational benefit provisions; the Public Health Service would not be obligated to perform as many nonmedical functions as under the old bill; and eligibility of disabled seamen under the Federal Employees' Compensation Act has been substituted for benefit payments which, under the old bill, were about the same as those for members of the armed forces.

Title I of H. R. 476 defines a "wartime service seaman" as one with respect to whom a certificate of maritime wartime service has been issued by the Chairman of the United States Maritime Commission. Certificates are to be issued generally to those seamen who served for at least 6 months in the period beginning December 8, 1941, and ending March 1, 1946, and substantially continuously from the beginning of their service until March 1, 1946, or until service was terminated by the Commission for reasons other than misconduct. Certificates would also be available, regardless of total length of service, to those whose service was terminated by incapacitating injury or disease incurred in or aggravated by such service, by death, or by detention by the enemy. Aliens who had not taken out their first naturalization papers prior to March 2, 1946, would not be eligible for certificates. "Maritime wartime service" would include, among other things, service on any vessel documented under the laws of the United States, except fishing vessels, vessels operated exclusively on the Great Lakes, or vessels operated principally in ports or inland waters. Service prior to December 7, 1941, may be included, but only if it (sic) was performed in a zone the hazards of which were commensurate with those of a war or danger zone after December 7, 1941.

The provisions relating to certificates are important because practically all the benefits provided for in the bill are made to depend on the possession of a certificate, endorsed in some cases as to disability or death.

Title II provides for educational benefits for holders of certificates, which' benefits are in most respects the same as those established by the Servicemen's Readjustment Act. One important difference between the two education benefit schemes lies in the time limits fixed for the beginning and completing of training. H. R. 476 is much less liberal in this respect than the other system. In the first place H. R. 476 fixes September 2, 1948, as the time prior to which courses must be initiated. There are almost no colleges and universities in session at that time and hence the school year beginning 1948 would be too late in which to start. Unless this date were changed to, say, November 1, 1948, it would have about the same practical effect as if it were November 1, 1947. In the second place we should view the school year of 1948 as too soon to require 61933-47

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the beginning of training. We should say that opportunities might be extended to a later year, perhaps 1950, because of the inconvenience some men might find in arranging to start their education before that time.

The date on which education must be completed is similarly too close to the present. The date for completion is exactly 4 years after the final date for inftiation of training; yet the total training period is 4 years. This would mean that a man entitled to 4 years of education who started at the latest available opportunity would have no possibility of interrupting his training without losing some time to which he is entitled. I would prefer to see the date for completion

of training extended at least to 1955.

On these two matters of dates of starting and ending training, I would prefer to give all the flexibility that is provided in the Servicemen's Readjustment Act, as amended. As you know, the 1945 amendments to this latter act extended the starting time from 2 years until at least 4 years after the end of war and the completion time from 7 to 9 years after the war.

In section 204 we would suggest that the educational program be placed in the statutory office of the Commissioner of Education to be administered "under the supervision and direction of" the Federal Security Administrator.

We also suggest that if the subsistence allowances were made the same for seamen as they are for servicemen-that is, $65 and $90 instead of $60 and $80 as in the bill-there would be fewer complications in the management of housing and boarding facilities by those institutions having both types of students.

Part I of title IV of the bill would provide hospitalization and medical treatment by the Public Health Service for wartime service seamen and certain veterans of the merchant marine service of World War I. The Public Health Service already has authority under the Public Health Service Act to provide such care for seamen "employed on" United States vessels and, in certain cases, for seamen "employed on" foreign-flag vessels, and for the cadets and others included in the bill's definition of "wartime service seaman." The term "employed on" has been construed to limit the class covered to those who can fairly be said to be following the sea at the time the need for care arises. Present regulations limit the class to those who are serving or who have, within the 90 days immediately preceding the application, served on board a vessel. Of course, the 90-day rule does not operate to terminate treatment begun within that period nor does it terminate the rights of those treated and discharged but determined to be temporarily unfit for further sea duty. The service does not, however, have authority under present law to treat those who have left the calling-even though the difficulty of establishing the service-connected nature of their disability might be overcome-and there is some question of its authority to treat for recurrence of illness those persons who have left the calling subsequent to their treatment and discharge with respect to those illnesses. Consequently, we favor amending the Public Health Service Act to make it clear that wartime service seamen may be treated at any time for serviceconnected disabilities, even though they may after such service have changed occupations.

It should be pointed out in this connection, however, that if all the disabled seamen (except those of World War I) who are made eligible for Public Health Service care under title IV are compensable cases under section 501 of title V (that is to say, are eligible for medical care or money payments or both under the Federal Employees' Compensation Act) there would be no good reason for the amendments of the Public Health Service Act proposed in section 401 of title IV. This is so because the Federal Employees' Compensation Act already grants all the authority necessary for all the care and treatment required by persons eligible under the act. (Sec. 503 of the bill authorizes the waiver of the time limitations provided in the act.) Such care and treatment can be authorized in Public Health Service facilities or any other facilities, and expenses of transportation, appliances, and supplies, and even loss of wages are provided for. Of course, selection 'of the facility for treatment would be in the discretion of the administration and the injured person could not select the Public Health Service as a matter of right. Whether all of the disabled seamen made eligible for Public Health Service care under title IV are to be considered compensable cases under the Compensation Act is a question hereinafter discussed in connection with section 501 of the bill.

We would suggest several amendments to this part of title IV.

Subsection (b) of the proposed new section 22A of the Public Health Service Act (22A probably being a typographical error for 322A) would direct the payment of transportation expenses "if such seaman is unable to defray the cost of such transportation." This quoted provision would require the Public

Health Service to determine the seaman's means and would thus impose on he Service a function of nonmedical character. The Service, under section 21 (b) of the Public Health Service Act, already has authority to pay the xpenses of transfer of patients between its hospitals and stations and from uch hospitals and stations to other hospitals or stations where such patients ay be received. If an extension of circumstances under which transportation ay be furnished is deemed desirable it would be preferable that the duty f determining the fact of need and of certifying the finding to the Service e imposed on the Federal Security Administrator with power to delegate that esponsibility to the agency best equipped by experience to handle it.

In subsection (b) of the proposed new section an incidental reference is made › domiciliary care, but such care is not mentioned in subsection (a) of the roposed amendment to the Public Health Service Act and is therefore not exressly authorized. By contrast, it will be noted that in section 402 of the bill, bsection (b), there is provision for domiciliary care for veterans of the erchant marine of World War I who are permanently and totally disabled, omiciliary care, as distinguished from medical care and curative hospitalizaon, is a function foreign to the present responsibilities of the Public Health ervice. The circumstances under which it is intended to require the Service furnish such care should, I believe, be clarified. Such clarification should so extend to the question arising under section 402 (c) as to which agency ould certify as to the eligibility of a World War I seaman for domiciliary re under section 402 (b).

Subsection (d) (2) of the proposed new section, regarding the furnishing of eing-eye or guide dogs and mechanical electronic equipment for aiding seamen overcoming the handicap of blindness, as well as the furnishing of necessary avel and other expenses incurred in connection therewith, is believed to go yond the general scope of medical care. This subsection seems to have a more rect relation to the provisions of part II of title IV concerning vocational habilitation.

The provision for clothing in subsection (e) appears to be unnecessary for e reason that there is ample authority in the Public Health Service Act to ovide hospital clothing to the patient while undergoing hospitalization in spitals of the Service and to those patients requiring special clothing in conction with the wearing of appliances. If it is intended that regular street thing be furnished to indigent seamen, it is believed that such a provision ould be placed elsewhere in the bill, as this obviously is not related to medical re and treatment.

The proposed new section of the Public Health Service Act does not include e provision found in section 402 (a) of the bill for treatment of seamen at blic or private facilities other than those of the Service. Section 322 (e) of e act contains such a provision, but it would not be applicable to the new A. This omission should be corrected. Also, although this provision of ction 402 of the bill is similar to secttion 322 (e) of the act, it contains no ference to regulations as does section 322 (e). We recommend redrafting ction 402 so that its provisions become amendments of the act. Part II of title IV of the bill, relating to vocational rehabilitation, contains provision which was not in the corresponding part of the earlier bill, H. R. 46, and which was suggested in our previous comments. This new provision ould permit the States which could not otherwise immediately comply fully th the Vocational Rehabilitation Act, as it would be amended by the other o provisions of part II, to secure the benefits of that act until their legislares have had an opportunity to make full compliance possible.

The other two provisions of part II are substantially the same as in H. R. 46. Our comments thereon in our report on that bill are still applicable df may be found in the printed record of the hearings at pages 213-214., The most important difference between H. R. 476 and H. R. 2346 (as introiced), from the standpoint of this Agency, is the substitution of a form of aployees' compensation for the benefit system proposed in the old bill. On ly 16, 1946, this Agency acquired the functions and responsibilities of the nited States Employees' Compensation Commission and would, therefore, adinister certain provisions of title V of the bill.

In general, this Agency shares the view of the former Commission, oftentimes the past few years expressed in its reports to your committee, that seamen ho are employees of the United States should have the same rights and benets in respect to workmen's compensation as other civil employees of the Govnment. During World War I, civilian seamen employed by the United States

Shipping Board Emergency Fleet Corporation, or by the general agents of the United States Shipping Board, were covered by the Federal Employees' Compensation Act to the same extent as other civil employees of the United States. Just prior to the present war the United States again began, through the War Shipping Administration, to operate merchant vessels, and the seamen employed on vessels so operated automatically acquired protection under the same act. That protection continued until March 24, 1943, the date of enactment of Public Law 17, Seventy-eighth Congress (50 U. S. C., App. 1291).

"Because of the temporary wartime character of their employment by the War Shipping Administration" Public Law 17 excluded seamen employees of the War Shipping Administration from the benefits of the Federal Employees' Compen sation Act as well as the Civil Service Retirement Act and certain other acts benefiting Federal employees or employees of contractors with the United States. It is the only instance in which any civil employees of the Government have been excluded from the protection against industrial hazards afforded by the Compensation Act.

Merchant seamen in Federal employ are not otherwise protected by laws comparable to State or Federal workmen's compensation acts and we therefore urge that the primary objective of title V, the reestablishment of workmen's compensation for civilian seamen employed by the United States, be accomplished by suitable legislation.

Title V is a commendable attempt at such legislation. It is the view of the agency, however, that the difference between the provisions of title V and the standard form of workmen's compensation embodied in the Federal Employees' Compensation Act are such that we regard it as important that the committee should have clearly presented to it what those differences are. It is particularly the lack of clarity in title V on the division of administrative responsibility which concerns us.

'The differences between the seamen's compensation apparently provided for in title V and standard compensation stem, we think, from some mixture of purposes underlying the bill. The bill generally seeks to reward those merchant seamen who assisted in the war effort. The conditions and limitations surrounding the issuance of certificates of wartime martime service are so designed as to make eligible only those whose connection with the war effort was more or less direct and substantial and to exclude those whose connection was temporary or remote. Some importance, has been attached to the heroic or sacrificial nature of the connection with the war effort. Thus practically all men who manned merchant vessels of United States registry or vessels operated at the direction or under the control of the Maritime Commission or the War Shipping Administration, whether they were Federal employees or not, have been included. The period of service included has been limited to correspond roughly to the period of hostilities, with an extension for hazardous work performed prior to our entry into the war. Successful completion of courses and absence of misconduct connected with the work are made conditions of eligibility not only for certificates but also, by reference, for Compensation Act benefits. There are a 6-month minimum period of employment, substantially continuous service in the merchant marine, and United States citizenship or nationality or eligibility for citizenship set up as conditions for certificates and for disability compensation. Finally, title V would apparently allow compensation for injuries and diseases not causally related to the employment or it seems to make disability incurred in the employment compensable.

All of such conditions are foreign to the spirit of the Compensation Act. The latter, in common with other workmen's compensation acts, is on the argument that industrial labor is dangerous, that accidental injuries and industrial diseases are not generally traceable to causes properly classifiable as negligence, and that the ordinary remedies for negligent action yield inadequate, uneven, and expensive results. The Federal Employees' Compensation Act covers "all civil employees of the United States"; it does not exclude aliens, temporary or parttime workers. The coverage of the act is uniform in that no regard for the hazards of the work is required, the theory being that the death of one killed in an automobile accident is the same in its results as the death of one killed by an enemy torpedo. Misconduct, under the act, will not bar benefits unless it i related to the injury. The Compensation Act works evenly in war and in peaceit is not a form of reward for specially meritorious service.

These differences would, if title V were to be wholly administered by the Bureau of Employees' Compensation of this Agency, require substantial changes in the organization of that Bureau. We should, therefore, prefer, if the seamen

are to be covered on the basis proposed in the bill, that the functions of this Agency be strictly limited to the determination of wage loss and of the existence of dependents and to the payment of benefits, all other eligibility determinations being made by the Maritime Commission.

We think such a division of authority may have been intended in this bill, but in our opinion section 501 leaves in doubt the question how much modiication of the Compensation Act has been made. If eligibility for compensation s to be based on entitlement to a certificate of maritime wartime service, enlorsed as to death or disability, title V should be revised. The revision should nake clear that, for the purpose of benefits, one with respect to whom an enlorsed certificate has been issued, will be deemed to be an employee of the Jnited States injured as a result of and in the course of his employment. We should think then that this Agency would have no concern with the preliminary onditions of eligibility and that, clearly, except for the relatively minor point bout changing endorsements hereinafter mentioned, the Agency's functions would e confined to determining wage loss or the existence of dependents and paying enefits. Ordinarily, in determining wage loss this Agency would start from the fact of n injury resulting from the performance of duty and then find whether there was total or partial disability resulting from that injury. The first sentence of ection 103 (b) providing for a disability endorsement on a certificate if the inury or disease was incurred in or aggravated by a maritime wartime service would not be inconsistent with the revision of section 501 which we have sugested and could serve as a substitute for the initial finding ordinarily made in Federal employee's case. The second sentence of section 103 (a), however, rovides for a statement of the "probable extent of the disability” and the second entence of section 103 (b) provides for changing the endorsement if "the disbility has increased or decreased in extent." Section 106 provides for witholding all "benefits * * * under this title" if the seaman refuses to submit › a medical examination. Under the Compensation Act wage loss for total disbility is measured by the injured employee's wage rate at the time of injury nd the wage loss for partial disability is measured by the difference between is wage rate at the time of injury and his wage-earning capacity after the beinning of partial disability. We think the portions of sections 103 and 106 uoted from imply that the Maritime Commission will make findings of disabily in terms of percentages of normal ability. Such findings, except possibly in he case of total disability, would not be related to wage-earning capacity and herefore could not be used by this agency in determining wage loss. Furtherore, the Compensation Act already provides for compulsory medical xaminations and in appropriate cases for the withholding of benefits. We iggest that provisions for determining the extent of disability by the Maritime ommission be deleted from the bill.

Even if the Maritime Commission is to make the major determinations of eligiility under the bill, as we have suggested, we should still strongly recommend at there be no exclusion of aliens from compensation benefits, regardless of hat may be deemed advisable concerning educational benefits. There is no 1ch exclusion in the Federal Employees' Compensation Act and we should think, specially in the case of seamen, that such an exclusion might prove embarrassing > our negotiation of international agreements. We would also recommend, for he purposes of compensation benefits, the inclusion of those other seamen now xcluded by the bill, for example, those performing service after March 1, 1946, hose employment status is or was that of Federal employees except insofar as ublic Law 17, Seventy-eighth Congress, applies to them.

Section 504 (a) of the bill, relating to subrogation and set-off, contains a proviso xcluding from the set-off provisions benefits payable "pursuant to the Social Seurity Act” and proceeds of contributary insurance. This proviso is similar to provision in section 540 of H. R. 2346, Seventy-ninth Congress, the wisdom of hich was questioned in our report on that earlier bill. We there pointed out hat almost all contributary programs call for substantial contributions from he public, and suggested that at least a portion of the benefits received under a ontributary program be set off against the amounts payable to seamen under the ill.

United States seamen (with certain exceptions such as those on foreign-flag essels bareboat chartered to the War Shipping Administration) are covered inder the old-age and survivors insurance provisions of the Social Security Act. Consequently, the survivors of those who died as a result of wartime maritime service have rights to benefits which would be duplicated under section 501 of this