EMPLOYMENT AND TRAINING LEGISLATION-1968 FRIDAY, APRIL 5, 1968 U.S. SENATE, SUBCOMMITTEE ON EMPLOYMENT, MANPOWER, AND POVERTY, Washington, D.C. The subcommittee met at 10 a.m., pursuant to recess, in room 4200, New Senate Office Building, Senator Joseph S. Clark (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. Present: Senators Clark (presiding) and Javits. Committee staff present: Michael W. Kirst, professional staff member: and Robert E. Patricelli, minority counsel of the subcommittee. Senator CLARK. The subcommittee will resume its session to take testimony on S. 3063, the Emergency Employment and Training Act of 1968. Our first witness this morning is Mr. George H. Esser, Jr., executive director, North Carolina Fund, and vice president of the National Association for Community Development. Mr. Esser, we are happy to have you with us. Do you have any colleagues you would like to have sit at the table with you? STATEMENT OF GEORGE H. ESSER, JR., VICE PRESIDENT, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT, AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, THE NORTH CAROLINA FUND; ACCOMPANIED BY RICHARD WENNER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT; AND WILLIAM PURCELL OF THE STAFF OF THE NORTH CAROLINA FUND Mr. ESSER. Yes, sir. Accompanying me are Richard Wenner, executive director of the National Association for Community Development, and a native of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and Mr. William Purcell, staff of the North Carolina Fund. Senator CLARK. I will ask to have Mr. Esser's statement printed in full in the record at this point and then Mr. Esser, you may either read it or ad lib on it and we will have a little colloquy as you go along. (The prepared statement of Mr. Esser follows:) (249) 94-753-68---17 PREPARED STATEMENT OF GEORGE H. ESSER, JR., VICE PRESIDENT, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, THE NORTH CAROLINA FUND My name is George Esser. I am Executive Director of The North Carolina Fund whose office is in Durham, North Carolina. I appear today as Vice President of the National Association for Community Development, an organization which numbers among its membership approximately 650 community action directors, staff, and others, including state associations of community action officials, interested in the success of the economic opportunity program. The National Association for Community Development was incorporated in 1965 to stimulate and assist the national effort to provide all citizens with the opportunities necessary for them to reach their full human and economic potential. NACD also helps to develop professional competence in the administration of state and local community development programs and works with all public and private agencies concerned with the development of human resources. On March 3, 1968, the report of the President's National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders was released. This report which directs the nation's attention to her internal problems and demands immediate remedial action to relieve those problems, stated that: "Pervasive unemployment and underemployment are the most persistent and serious grievances in minority areas. They are inextricably linked to the problem of civil disorder." [Summary, Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, p. 24] This committee, recognizing the seriousness of the crisis facing our nation, has before it two bills both containing essential and admirable ideas which speak directly to these basic problems of unemployment and underemployment. Before speaking directly to the employment bills before the committee, I must emphasize a particular concern, shared by NACD members throughout our nation. The focus of efforts to alleviate unemployment and underemployment in our nation have been almost wholly urban centered. We call attention to certain basic problems which we feel perpetuate our urban employment crisisthe manpower problems of rural America. Plagued by a serious lack of jobs, each year rural America sends thousands of unskilled, often illiterate, immigrants to the ghettos in our cities. Urban America, with its abundance of industry, provides an increasing number of skilled jobs which these immigrants cannot fill. NACD recognizes the need to extend massive effort at both the rural and urban levels. We strongly urge that the stated concern for effort at the rural level be translated into action coordinated with the problems in our urban areas. We are convinced that manpower efforts must go beyond the treatment of symptoms of our crisis the increasingly large concentrations of unskilled people. Manpower employment efforts must be designed to deal with basic and perpetuating causes. We believe that the effort to deal with our manpower problems must eventually result in regional schemes, in some parts of the country, schemes which are capable of helping coordinate rural and urban job creation, training, placement and supportive services. To accomplish such coordinated efforts within mixed urban and rural areas it will be necessary to respond to the initiative of state and regional public and private agencies which have the flexibility to administer such programs. We are aware of the complexity of such regional solutions. More importantly, we realize the complex, intertwined and overlapping employment problems in our nation; and we also realize that effective solutions will not come easily. Recognition of rural America's role in the perpetuation of our national employment crisis without some serious attempts to provide financing and ideas for coordinated solutions constitutes serious and dangerous neglect. NACD feels strongly that it is extremely important to utilize industrial and governmental resources to provide jobs for our hard-core poor. We have expressed a strong commitment to such an alliance from our beginning discussions of manpower efforts. 1 The North Carolina Fund was established in October, 1963, through a grant from the Ford Foundation, as a private, nonprofit corporation. Since April, 1964, it has attempted through financial assistance to eleven local community action agencies, through grants to state and private institutions, and through demonstration projects of its own to experiment with new ways of helping North Carolina low-income people break out of the cycle t poverty. Industry has the jobs and is best qualified to provide on-job skill training to enable individuals to fill those jobs. In every way possible, through tax incentives, on-job-training, and overhead reimbursements, industry must be encouraged to direct its efforts to the solution of manpower training and job shortages. Industry must be encouraged to coordinate its efforts with public and private agencies that know the poor. These public and private agencies must be provided the capability to encourage the hard-core poor to participate through vigorous outreach efforts. These agencies which have the specialized skills must be provided the capability to supply basic education, general skill training, and supportive services such as health and dental services, day care, job and family counseling to participants in the manpower programs. The added responsibility for encouraging industry to negotiate with agencies to provide essential services beyond a job and a skill again must fall on these agencies and concerned industrial leaders. NACD supports federal, state, and local governmental efforts to provide meaningful employment, as a last resort, for presently unemployable individuals. We view the purpose of governmental employment as a stop gap measure that will develop participants to a level from which they may later enter the competitive job market. We believe that only through eventual entrance into the competitive job market can individuals gain the experience and ability to function in this increasingly technological society. We must make clear our support for immediate action. Jobs and training now for urban and rural areas must be a priority to stave off the growing hopelessness and despair in our nation. But in the provision of employment now we must carefully build the concern and flexibility which will enable us to develop long-range plans for the future alleviation of manpower problems in our country. Without concern for the total manpower picture we can look forward to years of frenzied "crash" appropriations. We can expect continued frustration and pressures for immediate results, local results, that cannot come in in any significant degree as one crash program succeeds another, each ending in frustration and only glimmers of hope. One necessary ingredient for any form of effective long-range planning is longrange funding-authorizations for 3 to 4 year periods. If our experience tells us nothing else, it does make clear the need for time to operationalize and administer a program successfully. To plan for overall maximum effect with appropriations demands time. There must be also provision for flexibility in fund use and program administration to allow for maximum local initiative. It is only through such flexibility that manpower and other programs can be planned and implemented to meet specific area needs. Programs designed for urban areas do not necessarily work in rural areas. Flexibility which enables innovative use of program ideas and funds can better meet local needs, as well as local demands for meaningful participation. NACD has become increasingly aware of the rewards of local initiative, innovative programs, in community action programs across the nation. Though the incidences of true local initiative are few, the information gained through the experimentation is invaluable in determining long-range future solutions to our manpower problems. In an effort to implement long-range planning in the field of manpower, the establishment of an automated job vacancy and labor supply system could be extremely significant. In North Carolina, as in several other states, computerized job-matching programs are in the experimental stage, all of which, in addition to providing manpower information for job creation and skill-training curricula, are being coordinated with action programs to provide direct placement for the unemployed. The implementation of such a system at a national level presents some serious operational difficulties, but the information gained-if it can be kept updated-can be invaluable for use in long-range human resources and economic development planning. We commend the effort to include such an idea in job programs for the future. In manpower and employment planning, one fact must be reiterated. To implement either crash programs or long-range ones is going to require a coordinated, comprehensive effort. We cannot fully predict or control the social and economic factors affecting our lives. Our President noted recently that, increasingly, events rather than men are shaping our future. We fully agree, and urge that utmost priority be given to the development of a manpower system which will provide a comprehensive solution to our crisis. If we fail to respond to this priority, we may find ourselves in the near future viewing in dismay the chaos we indirectly fostered-and wishing we had acted otherwise. Urban and rural America need programs and financial support, but equally they need well-coordinated machinery for administering those programs and moneys. They need a structure which will move individuals through every step of a comprehensive manpower process. The manpower process we envision begins with contact with the poor initiated by industry or government and directed through persons who can communicate with the poor. And it moves to prevocational training and counseling and other supportive services which are needed to make the individual employable or trainable. Then, and perhaps only then, can we move successfully to placement of the poor in training or jobs. Finally, the process provides continuing supportive counseling and services until the individual is able to function effectively in a job situation. Throughout this process we recognize the utmost importance of the attitude of the poor. These people must have confidence and trust in the system. To the extent possible, neighborhood corporations and sub-professional workers should be used to implement the process. They can more effectively secure the trust and confidence of the poor. To produce results-people in jobs-every step of the manpower process must be considered important. Program efforts cannot leave gaps in the system. To be effective, manpower legislation for the hard-core unemployed must provide a structure for achieving each step in the process. Furthermore it is our firm belief that in order to implement the manpower process, professionals familiar with the problems of the poor must be trained to better administer a system of manpower services. Legislative concern backed by adequate training appropriations could increase our short supply of such professionals. Working within a coordinated administrative structure they could maximize our chances of success for all future manpower efforts. We believe that such a structure, and the individuals to implement that structure, could be created not only through new appropriations but also through changes in present manpower program administration. All changes should reflect new efforts aimed at reducing the proliferation of overlapping programs and agencies. Willard Wirtz, Secretary of the Department of Labor, in 1966 attested to the fact that in major metropolitan areas in these United States, there were 15 to 30 separate manpower programs, all federally financed, operating in isolation from each other. He cited the wasted overlap of effort and the degree to which those people most in need of help were overlooked. We do not have the time or the money to repeat our past mistakes. We heartily recommend that this legislation be designed so as to avoid the proliferation of such administrative havoc. We urge that the job programs be enacted to the greatest extent possible through existing program channels. But first these existing manpower and supportive services programs must be coordinated within and across agency lines at the federal level. Results of that coordination would then be more easily effected at the local level. The responsibility for manpower administration is a dual one. There are portions of programs that can be effectively administered best through local community corporations which maintain close contact with the poor; other portions must be implemented by public or private agencies, which offer specialized services. A willingness to accept this kind of dual responsibility for providing manpower solutions can be encouraged through the legislation before us. We have in this country, through the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, local community agencies and community organizations of the poor themselves which have as their ultimate aim the improvement of life for the hard-core poor. These instruments are available, and we strongly support the suggestions, in both bills, that we use them. Providing solutions to manpower problems for America's hard-core unemployed poor also demands a new attitude and new assessments. Private and public employers must re-evaluate their job tasks, their employee requirements. and their approaches to training. They must evaluate their past cautions and experiment with new employees-employees with black faces, less than eighth grade education, criminal or delinquency records, tattered clothes, and broken English. Individuals with a potential ability to function in working society must not be denied entrance on the basis of artificial barriers. More authority must be vested in public and private commissions to insure the elimination of such barriers through encouragement, and pressure-if need be— on employers. We must see the fulfillment for all individuals of their right to obtain employment at the highest level at which they are able to perform. Before this committee last year, I testified that we have seen the poor respond to opportunity. They will go back to school to learn to read and write and acquire a skill. They do want day care for their children and a decent house in which to raise those children. And they want to work for what they receive. This year we reiterate, with more confidence, our observations of the past. The bills before us today represent beginning steps in the realization of successful manpower programs and of the poor's potential role in manpower efforts. In particular the "local service company" concept, where groups of hard-core unemployed persons may establish their own companies to receive federal aid and eventually become profit-making, illustrates faith in the poor's potential. We strongly favor that concept and believe that our experiences with the poor in community action across the nation show that it can work. In one North Carolina city, where a group of domestic workers have formed and operated a "domestics' service" for apartment complexes, we have a perfect example of the type of success that can be achieved. Specifically, we encourage further steps for the maximum feasible participation of the poor through their involvement in state manpower plans and in the Economic Opportunity Corporation proposed here today. In conclusion, we once again express our congratulations to you for the two legislative drafts which have emerged from members of this subcommittee. We strongly recommend that this committee produce legislation which will incorporate the best ideas in both bills under consideration. Legislation which provides a workable system of employment must be based on the following prerequisites: First, solutions to rural as well as urban employment problems must be included. Second, the legislation must provide a specific but flexible structure for both coordination and the development of comprehensive plans in order to obtain maximum effect, from employment programs. Third, there must be provisions for the vigorous involvement of private industry in job creation and training-and realistic incentives for industry's participation. Fourth, consideration must be given to the incorporation of long-range funding and flexible administrative procedures. The purpose of these measures is to encourage more local initiative and meaningful involvement and to insure locally-tailored employment programs. Fifth, and perhaps, most importantly, legislation must reflect an increased commitment, in all manpower programs, to the maximum feasible participation of the poor. Senator CLARK. Before you proceed I have a statement I should like to make. Martin Luther King is dead, a victim of man's persistent inhumanity to man. With his tragic passing so sorrowfully reminiscent of the death of President Kennedy we have lost the sanest and most persuasive voice for moderation and nonviolence this Nation has ever had. Although Dr. King is dead we must all pray that moderation and nonviolence have not died with him. We can help to make that so but we must act now-swiftly-to build for him a lasting monument of law, justice, and equality of opportunity, which were always his goals. We in the Congress must now demonstrate our rededication to these same goals not only out of a sense of compassion for his loss but because honor and duty require it. Let us pass the open housing bill. Let us pass the emergency job bill. Let us provide the funds to carry on the war on poverty. Let us pass the equal employment opportunity bill. Let us appropriate whatever is needed to bring meaningful educational opportunity to the deprived children of the slum and let us, now, before we are visited by national tragedy yet again, pass the Federal gun control bill. |