STAFF MORALE

Mr. BURGENER. In conclusion, do you believe that morale is high in your permanent people?

Mr. ROSER. I think the morale is very good, Mr. Burgener. As I said, there is no way you can go through the number of changs this program has gone through over the last decade and a half without having some effect on morale. It is difficult, but I honestly believe that the people who are in this business are dedicated to it because they believe in it, and it is pretty hard to shake their morale.

I have had some pretty hard things happen in the almost 40 years that I have been in the program, and I am still as excited about it as I ever was. I think most people are. Its national importance appeals to an individual who is dedicated to doing the best job he knows how for his country.

Mr. BURGENER. The national mind-set is obviously different than it was following Pearl Harbor. It is just different. So you are to be commended for your perseverence. You are convinced, obviously, you don't have a bunch of Dr. Strangeloves out there?

Mr. ROSER. No, sir. Good, solid people trying to do a businesslike job. It is a unique business. There isn't another like it anyplace that I know of, but we are all very proud of being a part of it and work very hard at it and are very dedicated to it. That is why I think morale is good. I think it would be better if we didn't have to go through so many changes, but it is good.

Mr. BURGENER. We wish you well for what you are doing for the country.

Mr. ROSER. Thank you, Mr. Burgener.

Mr. BEVILL. Mr. Secretary, I am going to have to leave in a moment to meet some constituents. I am going to turn the gavel over to Mr. Fazio. I just want to say I have been very impressed with your obvious knowledge of the programs you are supervising. How many months have you been in this position now?

Mr. ROSER. I came aboard in July, Mr. Bevill.

Mr. BEVILL. Yes. Well, it is commendable, what you have done. I feel good about it. Your programs do seem to stand out, it is obvi

ous.

Mr. ROSER. Thank you.

Mr. BEVILL. We appreciate the good work you are doing.

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

Mr. BEVILL. If you will take over, Mr. Fazio, I will recognize you.

FEDERAL PAY CAP

Mr. FAZIO. Mr. Secretary, welcome to you and your assistants and staff. I wanted to start out by asking you, perhaps pursuing some of the same line of questioning Mrs. Boggs did, as to what was the impact of the pay cap for people in your line of work.

I happen to have a personal interest in it. I am looking, in a sense, for a little defense, perhaps, for some of the critics who feel we are profligate in the way we compensate our top-level scientists and engineers.

Mr. ROSER. I will be candid with you, Mr. Fazio. I have been under a pay cap since 1969. It has been a very slow moving cap. It is very discouraging. Very candidly, I would have been financially

and perhaps emotionally and physically better off if I had stayed in Albuquerque as a senior executive service member than to come to Washington. I very candidly think that it is not good. I would not use any stronger language than that, but I think it is not good.

We are fortunate in our business, and I say that because I believe that, because we do most of our business with contractors. They are captive contractors, and in one sense, they are part of the family. We have an operating team. But we have to deal with them at arm's-length, and we do deal with them at arm's-length. But they have been in a position to better compensate their people.

I think that we are fortunate that we use the contractor system, because we have been able to let the contractors keep their salary scales pretty much abreast of what the salary scale is in the laboratories, pretty much with private R&D firms in the production complex with the comparable firms that are in the production market. The people who have really suffered, and I say it very straightforwardly and very candidly, are the government people.

I don't feel like I am adequately compensated, but I guess most of us don't. But, literally, I think the pay cap has been very hard. It is difficult to get people who are dedicated enough to be able to afford to stay with the program.

It is a question of how much you can afford your dedication. So there is a point I want to make to you, since you asked the question, and I feel strongly about it.

RETURN TO EXCEPTED SERVICE

During the course of the consideration for the reorganization, whatever it may be, whether it is Department of Commerce or whatever, I have made a very strong appeal for a return to the excepted service. This would not help the pay cap proposition, but it would help me to achieve balance in my organization and eliminate the necessity of putting people in very definite boxes that they should not be in, to have the flexibility to properly manage this program.

So, since you asked the question, I want to say that I think the excepted service in my organization would be extremely helpful.

We had the excepted service until we became a part of the Department of Energy. At that time, we were put under the classified competitive civil service. I will not find fault with the classified competitive civil service for what it was set up to do. I said this was a unique organization, and I very firmly believe that. I do not believe that the provisions of the classified competitive civil service were ever tailored to recruit and retain the people that are required for this program.

Mr. FAZIO. Under the Atomic Energy Commission you were in this excepted service?

Mr. ROSER. That is correct.

Mr. FAZIO. How does that differ? For my information, I understand there is more flexibility. There was no pay cap?

Mr. ROSER. There was a pay cap. It did not affect the pay cap. But it gave more flexibility in job descriptions, in the ability to move people within the organization without them having a given specialty. You could define the job to fit the individual rather than

fitting the individual by the procrustean bed method into a preconceived box. It just furnished more organizational flexibility.

I was in the field at the time. I was able to go out to colleges, recruit young graduate engineers at perhaps a higher level. Give them a little more challenging assignment to start out with. Just do a little better job, I believe, of managing of the resources that you very badly need to get this job done.

Mr. FAZIO. Do you think it is particularly needed when you are talking about scientific and technical personnel?

Mr. ROSER. Engineering; you bet. Yes, sir.

Mr. FAZIO. Where organization is maybe a secondary consideration?

Mr. ROSER. It is a little bit looser than it is where you are looking at such disciplines as accounting, and so forth. You have to play it a little easier and softer.

Mr. FAZIO. Do you have any feedback from the Administration as to how they are going to treat this recommendation?

Mr. ROSER. No, I have not, sir. I really don't know.

Mr. FAZIO. This could be implemented under the existing structure, or under any change that might be made in terms of new organization?

Mr. ROSER. Yes, sir.

Mr. FAZIO. Would it take an Act of Congress to bring it about? Mr. ROSER. It would.

MERIT PAY AWARDS

Mr. FAZIO. Do you think the method we have developed with the career executive service and merit pay proposals-I know you were a merit pay award recipient-do you think this has had a positive impact?

Mr. ROSER. I am sorry to say, sir, I don't think it has. As a matter of fact, I think it has had a negative impact. I will be very candid with you.

Mr. FAZIO. Could you tell me a little about why you feel that way?

Mr. ROSER. Yes. I think it is a good program. But I think that the preconceived and preimposed ceilings that were put on that program made it impossible to really recognize outstanding talent. I happen to believe, because I believe very firmly in my organization and in my people, that in my organization you can't reward 50 percent or 25 percent or 10 percent of the people and do an adequate job of compensating people for their dedication or for the job that they are doing.

There was a preconceived number of people that could be rewarded. I think that destroys the value of the system. I think it again tries to put every organization, regardless of its mission, into a preconceived box. I had a discussion the other day with some of my people over the fact that incentive awards in my program have run three times what they run as an average across the government. I said my people are not average. And it probably will, if I have anything to say about it, continue to run substantially above the government average, because I don't believe my people or my

program is average. And I resent being put in an average classification.

Mr. FAZIO. Yes. Well, you are a rather unique kind of governmenal entity. The reason I pursue this line of questioning is because I think we do need to be a lot more sensitive to the needs certain kinds of people and their skills bring to the government. Mr. ROSER. I agree wholeheartedly.

Mr. FAZIO. Perhaps we should do this for the record, because there are other people with questions, if you could give us some additional input as to what you think may have been the impact of this transformation that took place with the creation of the Department of Energy in terms of a potential, for want of a better term, brain drain that may have occurred to our various nuclear energy programs.

Mr. ROSER. I will be very happy to do that sir.

[The information follows:]

With respect to the question of the desirability of returning to the excepted service, the answer is a definite yes. I believe that in the interest of consistent and uniform personnel policy, we are innudated with procedures and regulations in the Civil Service. So much so that we can no longer fill critical vacancies with dispatch. In addition to the pay cap problem, we are asking an engineer or other technical candidate to wait an inordinate amount of time for the Civil Service process to be completed. This too often means that employment with the DOE becomes unattractive, given its uncertainties and the better alternatives available.

With the current system, we have a problem in our flexibility to reassign personnel already employed. There is less flexibility to move people who may have several talents into positions which they are not currently labeled as qualified for. As you know, the SES system is supposed to have greater flexibility to address this kind of problem, but there should be no difference in our ability to move capable non-SES personnel when we need to than there should be for SES personnel.

Finally, like the excepted agencies NRC, CIA, FBI, etc., ours is a critical mission requiring us to move quickly and expeditiously if we are to be most effective. Changing the name from AEC to ERDA to DOE did not alter our mission or its requirements, but moving from excepted service to Civil Service has affected us. I submit that a return to the excepted service status would improve our ability to perform to our high standards, and not at the expense of fairness to prospective or current employees.

MX PROGRAM

Mr. FAZIO. I would like to get into two areas that were also the subject of the committee staff investigative report, one of which relates to the MX. I think Senator Nunn, yesterday, referred to a confusion in the MX program. We have had several changes in terms of the basing mode.

We were going to go with the mobile system. Then we were going to go with existing silos and a hardening basis. We have rejected that, apparently, now.

The whole question of the basing of the MX seems to be totally up in the air. We are now casting around for reductions in the defense budget, and I hear people who have been long-term supporters questioning whether we should proceed at the present time.

Could you outline for us what the on-again/off-again basing mode debate has meant for the weapons development and production side of this issue, and where we are at the present time, and what these confusions or delays might mean for the future in this program?

Mr. ROSER. [Deleted.]

Mrs. SMITH. Would the gentleman yield for a question on that subject?

Mr. FAZIO. Sure.

Mrs. SMITH. When do you expect the decision on the basing mode to be made?

Mr. ROSER. The Department of Defense is expecting to reach a final basing decision by July 1, 1982, Mrs. Smith. The basing mode basically does not affect the warhead. A warhead choice has been made.

Mrs. SMITH. I see.

Mr. ROSER. We have been asked to design a warhead for the advanced ballistic re-entry vehicle. We can proceed with that design, notwithstanding whatever the basing mode may be.

Mrs. SMITH. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. FAZIO. Sure. Interrupt again if we hit a point that might relate here. I understand the decision was made just a month ago. Mr. ROSER. That is right, sir.

Mr. FAZIO. I am wondering if we can somehow quantify the costs to the taxpayer we incur when we defer or change some of the basic decisions. I am sure it had an impact. I know the racetrack mode would have produced certain stresses on the warhead that might not have occurred under the silo-hardening approach. These kinds of delays require, I would think, a reaction on your part that would probably tend to build in a certain amount of inefficiency. By attempting to make up for lost time, in effect, which is really what you are being asked to do by the Pentagon, I would assume that has some negative side effects.

Could you describe for us what perhaps the cost might be? Maybe the cost in dollars, but also in terms of capability and availability on an IOC timeframe?

Mr. ROSER. It would be hard for me to quantify in dollars. The M-X warhead engineering development is well underway. The design being pursued is not impacted by uncertainty in a final system basing decision.

Mr. ROSER. [Deleted.]

Mr. FAZIO. They haven't changed the window of vulnerability, so you are simply required to get through it faster.

Mr. ROSER. That is just about it. We are out there on the end of that whip. Whenever it cracks, we better run fast enough to keep from getting thrown off.

Mrs. SMITH. Mr. Chairman?

Mr. FAZIO. Yes.

Mrs. SMITH. Would you yield for one more question?

Mr. FAZIO. Sure.

Mrs. SMITH. This is not an academic issue with me because this morning I understood the decision is being made to put those first 40 MX missiles in my district. So I am much interested in when the final decision is going to be made. I know this is not quite in your line, but wouldn't the cost be much less, then, if the final missiles were deployed in the same district, the same area where these forty are placed?

Mr. ROSER. It would have nothing to do, Mrs. Smith, with the cost of our manufacturing the warhead.