Mr. HAYS. Mr. Mears, there is one thing on page 3 of your statement. You say "who will be selected in." A very cursory examination of the proposed legislation would show that everybody will be selected in. Only after they are selected in do they become subject to the selectionout provisions of the present Foreign Service. If this bill becomes law, there isn't going to be any wholesale firing. They become subject to the selection-out procedures which would mean presumably that if they were in the lowest 10 percent of their class for 2 years running they would be up for selection-out. I thought maybe we ought to make that clear.

Mr. MEARS. I may be in error in my interpretation of the language, Mr. Chairman. I was looking at this language in section 22 which says "each officer or employee so transferred."

Mr. HAYS. He would have 3 years to decide whether he would make the decision, that is the way we propose to write it, whether he goes in or seeks another job in some other branch under civil service. There is one thing that you said that does concern me and I think we ought to do something about it when we start writing this up. I am concerned about the people in that age group of around, I don't like to pick an arbitrary figure, 50, but we will say in that area, 50 and over, and maybe a few years under. It is my thought that if we proceed with this legislation that we ought to write in there that if these people choose not to voluntarily go under the selection-out system, they can go on until they have a chance to retire. Would this take away some of your objections if we can work that out?

Mr. MEARS. Mr. Chairman, I can only say, that it would take away that objection. But I don't believe that would lead the American Legion to change its position basically on this. Frankly, the American Legion has gone along with a certain amount of supergrade employees and the Foreign Service, the people that work overseas, the people at the top and high-level range where you need to have people with personal rank who can be transferred from here to there to do a job, like a colonel in the Army. But I personally, frankly can't see why you need a personnel system which envisions an employee corps in which you will have a grade 7 accountant or a grade 5 stenographer who must be in this separate personnel system simply because the stenographer may be writing a letter that may concern foreign affairs instead of domestic affairs. I can't see why they need all these people, the average employee who is now in civil service, to be in this type of personnel system. What happens to a grade 9 economist who does his job well but there is no promotion, there is no place for him to go, what happens if he has personal rank?

Mr. HAYS. I would presume he has some place to go if he has personal rank. There are vacancies that occur through attrition, retirement, through death presumably, unless they are featherbedded to the extent that promotions are completely stymied, and this could possibly be the case. I am not convinced that if I were President I wouldn't order all departments not to fill any vacancies for about 2 years until they got the people they have got down there doing a day's work for a day's pay. I am not anti-civil service at all. I can tell you that I have walked through too many departments of Government, not only the State Department, and found too many people reading too many newspapers. You won't find that up here. As I said the

other day I can call any bureau downtown and take any one of their top stenographers away from them by offering a job up here. We have no civil service protection. I would think you people may have a considerable amount of influence with Congress but if you want to test your muscle sometime try to get them to put in a civil service system in their own office.

Mr. MEARS. I agree with you to a certain extent. In an organization as large as the Federal Government there are some employees who are overworked and others who don't have enough to do. I don't think we can take that situation, which is bound to happen, I think, in a large organization, and condemn the system for it. I think possibly it is more management's fault than the system. I don't think just enacting a sweeping new personnel system in an establishment as large as the Government will correct that situation.

Mr. HAYS. We are not talking about enacting this in the whole Government, and I don't think anybody can make a case for it. I think there can be a case made for the State Department. Let me say to you that you people who are so convinced that it is so easy to fire people under the civil service, I wish we could get you to have a seminar with some of these people who are in the personnel systems who are always telling me that it is impossible. Of course, I haven't had too much experience. I had a little bit back at the State level. On the State level if the civil service commission that is in being doesn't want you to fire anybody, you can't. If there is a change of administration they reappoint a new commission and they fire everybody.

Mr. MEARS. I agree it might be difficult. I believe the rules and regulations do make it somewhat difficult. I don't think it is impossible. I don't think

Mr. HAYS. They say it is impossible for just plain inefficiency. I don't know. I don't think it is impossible, on a morals charge or extreme absenteeism or drunkenness on the job or something like that. I would be the last one to say that. But the fellow who doesn't carry his weight, I think it is pretty difficult to prove that, and get him out. Mr. MEARS. I think it may take a little more time on a marginal employee to show, for the record, what he is deficient in; that is probably true.

Mr. HAYS. Thank you, Mr. Mears.

Mrs. Bolton.

Mrs. BOLTON. No questions.

Mr. HAYS. Mrs. Kelly.

Mrs. KELLY. I have one question, Mr. Chairman. Would you approve of increased hire of nationals in place of hiring civil service personnel for staff jobs abroad?

Mr. HAYS. You mean foreign nationals?

Mrs. KELLY. Yes.

Mr. MEARS. I would like to respond to that but I don't believe I have enough knowledge of the problems overseas to know whether or not it would be better. What type of jobs do you have in mind

Mrs. KELLY. We talked about grades 7 and 8, I believe. Suppose we need more of these abroad. Do you favor hiring an increased number of foreign nationals abroad in place of civil service personnel hired here in this country?

Mr. MEARS. Let me say in connection with that, as I understand this legislation most of these people who will be put into the new foreign affairs personnel system are people who will not go overseas. So they are not, whether they are in the civil service or the new personnel system, going to have a bearing upon the problem overseas because they are not going to be sent overseas. If you are talking about the average employee, office help, I would think possibly it would be better to hire foreign aliens if they were competent to do the job and there was no language barrier. I don't know how many types of employees like that they send overseas in the Foreign Service. Mr. HAYS. Governor Thomson.

Mr. THOMSON. No questions.
Mr. HAYS. Mr. Farbstein.
Mr. FARBSTEIN. No questions.
Mr. HAYS. Mr. Morse.

Mr. MORSE. Mr. Mears, earlier in the course of these hearings a former national commander of the American Legion testified. As I recollect, he and other national commanders who are constituted as an informal committee, not related to the American Legion, examined this entire problem and came to the conclusion that this was a proper step and endorsed the purport of H.R. 6277. Are you familiar with that testimony?

Mr. MEARS. Yes, I am.

Mr. MORSE. What is your comment on the testimony?

Mr. MEARS. First of all, as the former witness testified, he was speaking as an individual, and I informed the committee this morning that I was representing the American Legion. It is a rather lengthy report and I haven't read it and studied it in detail, but it does refer to the problems of the State Department overseas; that they are somewhat unique or somewhat different, from the problems of a department such as Labor with its domestic functions. It did mention improving the Foreign Service as we know it, but that report was written before this plan was made public as I understand it. Whether or not that committee had been given advance information of this proposal before it was introduced as legislation or made public I don't know. I would think that they could not have been talking about this because the report was originally written before this plan became general knowledge.

Mr. MORSE. Mr. Moore testified in support of this bill as I recall. Mr. MEARS. They may now, since they have written their report, have seen this plan and that group may feel that it is a good thing. I don't think when they wrote the report they were talking about it.

Mr. HAYS. You are perfectly right. The fact of the matter is this proposed legislation is an answer to that and other reports that call for something to be done. They certainly didn't have this particular legislation, but the legislation was tailored to try to meet some of their objectives.

Mr. MEARS. The American Legion also is somewhat departmentalized. When that report was written perhaps they were not aware of its relationship to veterans' preference. I think the former witness indicated they would not go along with abolishing veterans' preferOf course, it has to be abolished if you are going to use this new personnel system, unless there is somebody who would like to

ence.

make a study and see how the principle of veterans' preference could be accommodated with this new system.

Mr. HAYS. I think there is that disposition. I would be willing to contemplate any language that would protect veterans' preference. I don't think there is anyone trying to get rid of veterans' preference. Certainly I am not.

Mr. MEARS. In 1912, in the Lloyd-La Follette and earlier laws, veterans' preference was much stronger than as written in the 1944 act, which was an accommodation to personnel requirements. I believe under the Lloyd-La Follette Act, when there was a reduction in force, you couldn't fire a veteran. They have it worked out now so there is a building up of a list with veterans and nonveterans on it. Perhaps the principle of veterans' preference could be accommodated to this new personnel system. I think it would be difficult and I don't think anybody in the State Department would agree to it.

Mr. MORSE. You said that you haven't read the report on which the testimony of the former national commander was based. Do I infer that their recommendations were not taken into consideration in the formulation of the American Legion's position?

Mr. MEARS. No, sir. That report was first published several months ago and it has been recently released in printed form. It is 75 pages. While it has been released within the American Legion, neither a national convention nor the national executive committee of the American Legion has ever acted upon it, approving it, adopting it, or making it a statement of policy of the American Legion.

Mr. MORSE. Did the NEC consider it?

Mr. MEARS. I think they are going to. They haven't formally considered it but all the members are aware of it. I think at the fall meeting of the NEC there will be some action taken upon it. Mr. MORSE. Thank you.

Mr. HAYS. Mr. Selden.

Mr. SELDEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I assume then, Mr. Mears, that when you say in your statement that you urge the committee to reject the bill in its present form, you feel that with some amendments this bill would not be objectionable to the American Legion?

Mr. MEARS. It is possible but I don't think it is probable. When I say "in its present form" I am talking about repealing civil service and veterans' preference. While veterans' preference precedes the present civil service system it presently is woven into the fabric so they are the same cloth. It is difficult to separate them. We don't object to those provisions of the bill that will take better care of the people in the Foreign Service who are serving overseas, people serving in Vietnam. Our main objection is that we foresee the loss of veterans' preference in a large area, and we haven't been convinced that the people who are going to serve in the States, the people envisioned in the job corps, the employees at middle and lower levels-why their function is so unique that they have to be put in such a personnel system. We have agreed that you need people at the top, officers who are the real Foreign Service officers, and Foreign Service Reserve, employees who are appointed by the President, you need a certain amount of top level personnel who, if their superiors believe they should be dismissed, can be summarily dismissed. But when you go

down to employees below that level, I don't think you need such a system. The chairman has pointed out he possibly is only talking about State now, but the way this bill is written it says "all other employees of agencies whose functions involve foreign service." We understand there are 22 agencies of Government who have some employees whose functions relate to foreign affairs. The way this bill is written, at some time all of these people can be put into this system, every employee. We are not convinced there has been an argument made for the necessity of that type of another separate personnel system for everybody.

Mr. SELDEN. Thank you.

Mr. HAYS. One of the things that bothers me--I have been observing this for a long time is the fact that you have a Foreign Service officer out in the field and he makes a judgment there and sends it back to Washington and some civil service official down at the Department either rejects it or approves it. Or this could happen. The thing I would like to see is that all these people are under a system where, as you say, if their judgment is bad too often, they don't stick around.

Mr. MEARS. I don't wish to start a debate, sir, but I don't believe whether this particular individual is a GS-15 or a level 2 in the Foreign Service, if it is still his job to make a judgment on the report, I don't see that a different personnel system would have any effect on his judgment.

Mr. HAYS. It just seems to me that if a person is serving under a selection-out system where he knows he has to produce or he may be subject to this, that he might produce a little better. Maybe this won't cure it. The only thing I am interested in as an individual is trying to get a better Foreign Service. I think that we have a problem, a real problem as I have said over and over again in the kind of people that make the decisions about whether we will use this big military machine which creates veterans.

Mr. MEARS. We are not questioning your motives in the respect, Mr. Chairman. And I say I think you do need a certain amount of those people. I don't think you need them all the way down the line, every employee, because they are not going to make those types of decisions.

Mr. HAYS. I think we could agree that the stenographers, and so on, I really think that is not a very important matter one way or another, whether they are under-most of the stenographers are like the ones we have. They are pretty good until they get married and then they usually quit and go somewhere else. You have a big turnover. You would have a few inefficient ones that would stay on that you couldn't get rid of but I don't think that is an important problem.

Mr. MEARS. As we understand the bill, it is couched in terms to permit this.

Mr. HAYS. This legislation was sent up, like most legislation, from downtown and that is why we are having hearings, to find out what parts of it need to be rewritten and what parts need to be amended and maybe what parts need to be left out altogether. Nobody is wedded to this language. That is why we are inviting all of you