Mr. FULTON. I agree completely with the quotation from the statement of February 19, 1962, of the AFL-CIO Executive Council on support for Federal employees postal pay bills which states as follows:

The average take-home pay of a letter carrier or postal clerk today is $78.18. This is simply not enough pay for an intelligent, responsible, and hardworking Federal employee who has every right to expect to be able to provide decent shelter for his family and to bring up his children with a proper degree of security and self-respect.

The remarks of this statement express my views completely. (The full statement of the AFL-CIO Executive Council appears at p. 622.)

Mr. FULTON. Thank you again for the time the Post Office and Civil Service Committee has given me this morning, and your fine reception. As a former member of the Civil Service Committee of Congress, I have continued my deep interest in our good postal workers, and Government employees, and their families. I firmly believe our postal workers and Government employees should have every right to progress, for them and their families, equally with every other group of our U.S. economy, which should be aimed at security, comfort, enjoyment, and abundance for everybody not just the chosen few in Government or in the private economy.

Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Fulton.

The next witness is Hon. William F. Ryan, of New York.

STATEMENT OF HON. WILLIAM F. RYAN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW YORK

Mr. RYAN. Mr. Chairman, I am happy to appear this morning in support of H.R. 10488, which is identical to H.R. 9531, the Morrison bill. In 1961 Congress approved by an overwhelming vote longevity pay increases for postal workers. Unfortunately, those pay increases were not made law, having been vetoed by the President. It again behooves us to review the plight of the postal workers.

To begin, let us recall that, unlike the worker in private industry, who regularly protects his interests through collective bargaining— especially whenever his fair remuneration is in question-the postal employee has no right to strike and is entirely dependent upon the discretion of Congress to protect his interests and provide him with a fair return for his services. It is with this responsibility to the 580,000 postal workers that we should ask ourselves whether they are being paid a fair wage.

In 1947-49, the postal employee was 16 percent behind the cost of living index of that time, compared to his 1939 standard. From 1949 to 1962, the cost of living index rose from 101.4 to 128.2, as shown by the Bureau of Labor's consumer index figures. This increase of 27 points added to the 16-percent lag at the start of this period totals 43 percent. The postal employees received approximately 20 percent in salary increases in this same period. Thus they are still lagging 23 percent behind the consumers index or cost of living.

It is practically impossible for a family to meet expenses and maintain a moderate standard of living on $300 a month or less take-home

pay. Yet postal clerks and letter carriers throughout the Nation are expected to support their families on just that level of income. As a result, they are forced, in many cases, to seek second jobs which require that they work in excess of 40 hours per week without the benefit of an overtime rate. As an alternative to this, many wives of postal employees must resort to night-shift employment and leave their husbands to care for the children after his day's work.

Not only are the pay schedules of postal workers 2 to 4 years behind those of their counterparts in private industry, they also compare unfavorably to those of other Federal employees. Whereas postal workers receive longevity increases after 13, 18, and 25 years of service, Federal employees subject to the Classification Act receive longevity increases after 10, 13, and 16 years. In addition to this, each longevity pay increase under the Classification Act is equal to the regular within-step increase of the grade and varies from $105 for grade 1 to $260 for the top grades. Postal employees, on the other hand, receive longevity pay increases in the fixed amount of $100.

This discrepancy arose in 1949 when separate laws were passed with provisions for longevity step increases for classified Federal employees and postal workers. It is generally agreed that the intention of Congress then was to make longevity step increases equal to automatic step increases. An inconsistency in the wording of the laws failed to preserve this intention in the case of the postal employees. The law pertaining to postal employees specifies that each longevity increase be set at $100, which was the same as the automatic pay increase at that time. In contrast to this, the law pertaining to classified Federal employees specifies that each longevity increase should be at the same rate as automatic yearly increases. Thus, in effect, the law states that postal workers must wait longer for lower longevity pay than employees under the Classification Act.

In practice, postal employees, with few exceptions, receive longevity payments earlier than Classification Act employees because all postal service is counted toward longevity rather than just time in grade as stipulated in the Classification Act. However, a classified worker who starts as a GS-2 will probably reach GS-4 within a couple of years and will reach GS-6 within 3 or 4 years. But the only hope of a man who starts his service as a letter carrier-and 90 percent of those who start as letter carriers leave the service as letter carriers-is to receive in-step increases solely in grade 4, and then only for 6 years. Except for longevity pay increases-which at that point are far below in-step increases he has nothing more to look forward to as an incentive. In other words, at this point in his career, he must wait 13 years for a $100 longevity pay increase after realizing his last pay increase of $160 in a small fraction of the time. Longevity pay is intended as an incentive and a reward for long and faithful service, yet the longevity pay increase of $100 amounts to less than $2 per week increase in pay after 13, 18, and 25 years service. Such a meager sum can hardly be expected to provide an adequate incentive.

In considering pay increases for employees it is customary for employers to evaluate the performance and productivity of their employees. Let us consider then the performance of our postal employees. The U.S. postal service handles more than 64 billion pieces of mail annually which constitutes two-thirds of the mail volume of

the world. In fiscal 1961, 183 million Americans sent mail at a rate of 356 pieces each. The workload for city carriers increased at a greater rate than the mail volume. Because of continued suburban growth, the square miles of city delivery areas increased 5.2 percent and the number of letter delivery and parcel post routes increased 2.7 percent. This workload was handled with an increase of 2.6 percent in man-years of city delivery employment. Man-years of employment for other than city carriers increased 1.7 percent over 1960 or slightly less than the rate of increase in the mail volume. In all 112,438 pieces of mail were handled per man-year in fiscal 1961. This is an increase of 14.1 percent over the corresponding figure 10 years ago of 98,522 pieces per man-year of employment.

This is a fine and praiseworthy record of performance. The U.S. mailman has lived up to the post office motto with increased efficiency in the face of an increased workload for wages below his counterparts in private industry. He has lived up to his position of trust and responsibility with unimpeachable integrity. At the same time he has tolerated an inequitable pay relationship with other Federal employees.

In his message to the Congress of February 20, 1962, relating to salary systems of the Federal Government, President Kennedy pointed out that the success of the Federal Government in solving the problems of unprecedented importance and complexity that now face the Nation depends finally upon the quality of our career men and women in the Federal service. This success depends upon their sense of dedication and responsibility as well as their energy and competence because it is they who must implement the legislation enacted by Congress and the decisions made by the President and the heads of departments and agencies.

Because Federal employees are entrusted with this responsibility, we require them to pass difficult examinations, require of them high standards of conduct and, of course, demand consistently high performance on the job. The President further remarked that the salaries of Federal employees should be fixed according to well-defined and objective standards, should be sufficiently flexible to provide incentive for initiative and incentive to assume increased responsibilities, and should be comparable to salaries in industry.

I can only agree with the President's statement: "To pay more than this is unfair to the taxpayers-to pay less is to degrade the public service and to endanger national security." Whereas the gap between private industry salaries and Government salaries is generally widest at the upper levels, attrition in the postal service is most serious at the lower echelons because of the inadequate incentives to be found there. As has been previously mentioned, 90 percent of men who enter the postal service as letter carriers remain letter carriers for the duration of their careers. For these reasons increases in pay at the lower levels are critical.

H.R. 9531 and H.R. 10488 will provide the upward pay adjustments indicated to be justified and necessary both in regular postal pay schedules and in longevity pay provisions. The increases of slightly over $1,000 each in the lowest grades decreases gradually to around $700 in the upper grades. Also under this bill the postal employee's longevity pay increases will be equal to the within-step increases for

that grade at the end of 10, 13, and 16 years in exactly the same manner as those of the other Federal classified employees.

Because these inequities have already been stoically endured for too long a time by the postal workers, it is only just that Congress take immediate action to correct them. For this reason, the bill I introduced will be effective as of January 1, 1962. It will have the additional advantage of putting added purchasing power into needy hands at a time when the economy as a whole needs stimulation. By paying the postal workers an adequate wage, it would make available many of their second part-time jobs at a time of continued high levels of unemployment.

Therefore, to raise the living standards of our postal employees to that of their fellow citizens, to correct the inequities they have endured through no fault of their own, to recognize faithful and competent service, to retain experienced workers and recruit capable ones, I ask unanimous support for the speedy enactment of H.R. 9531 or H.R. 10488.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Ryan.

The next witness is Hon. George P. Miller of California.

STATEMENT OF HON. GEORGE P. MILLER, OF CALIFORNIA, CHAIRMAN OF THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND ASTRONAUTICS

Mr. MILLER. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I am very appreciative of your courtesy in permitting me to make these few remarks concerning the salary reform bill which you are here considering.

Our Committee on Science and Astronautics has just completed the quite detailed hearings on the national space program for fiscal year 1963. We had some 11 weeks of continuous hearings and took 2,298 printed pages of testimony. As I pointed out on the floor of the House, in all my years in the Congress no legislative measure with which I have been associated has received so much study and attention. During the course of these hearings we heard and we questioned the top officials of the NASA and its program managers. We were, again, impressed with the very great scale of national commitment involved, the extreme complexity of the technical problems we must solve, and the quality of the technical and managerial leadership that this major national enterprise requires.

We were equally impressed with the need to press on in this enterprise. Our national posture as a leading member of the world community has become identified with this effort in aeronautics and space technology. We dare not fall behind. Vast segments of our Nation's industry, its scientific talent, and its resources are committed to the successful achievements in this national program.

Our concern was, of course, to explore and consider the merit of the different technical programs and program alternatives. We were concerned, also, with the pacing of these program efforts and their costs. To the extent that we were able to do so, we checked on matters of basic policy and management practices. To assure a fully comprehensive picture of the status of this program, we inquired as to the problems which are impeding, or might impede, NASA in the conduct of its program.

Frankly, gentlemen, the Congress has been quite responsive to the authorizations and funding requirements proposed by NASA, both under President Eisenhower as the Agency's programs were formu lated, and President Kennedy, as the programs were expanded in scope and accelerated last year.

We are, however, concerned with the critical importance of adequate personnel for the successful prosecution of this program. This is probably the largest scale and most complex engineering and technological effort in our Nation's history. In terms of public policy, the Congress stated, in the National Aeronautics and Space Act, that this effort should be planned, directed, and effectively managed by the NASA, as a public enterprise.

It is essential, therefore, that this governmental enterprise be able to secure and to hold men of exceptional, demonstrated ability and talent. for their technical and managerial positions. Our exploration of the personnel requirements and program of NASA has underlined the critical importance of the two major principles in H.R. 10480 you are considering.

First, if we are to engage in complex and broad-range technical programs costing many billions of dollars and fraught with critical importance to our security and status as a nation, it is essential that we secure and maintain adequate quality and competence in the technical and managerial personnel required to plan and conduct the research and to plan and direct the vast industrial programs involved.

Second, to secure and maintain staffs of people with demonstrated, superior competence, we must have a pay policy and structure that will be as nearly comparable as possible with that prevailing in private enterprise.

Anything less than this invites serious risks for these major enterprises: The experienced and the most skilled will leave, often at the peak of their contribution. It is practically impossible to ask the experienced and most capable individuals from industry to come to Government at severely limited salary opportunities.

In this regard I should like to read into the record a letter sent to me by the NASA Personnel Director at my request for an illustration of this problem: NASA had established an excepted position for one of its key posts in the Lewis Research Center, at $16,500, a fair rate in terms of the salaries of other positions within the context of the Lewis Center's top-level structure. The offer was rejected, and the candidate wrote his friend and technical associate at the Lewis Center as follows:

Mr. J. HOWARD CHILDS,

Assistant Chief, Office of Project Management,
NASA-Lewis Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio.

DEAR HOWARD: Confirming our phone conversation of May 16, I greatly regret not seeing my way clear to accepting your offer to come to NASA-Lewis as Chief of the Auxiliary Power Generating Office. Certainly this position would be most acceptable from the viewpoints of technical interest and challenge, and of the caliber of the men I would be working with. My sole reason for declining is on the grounds of remuneration.

It is true that the salary you are able to offer--namely $16,500—would be acceptable as a minimum, seeing that it is the figure you had indicated right, along. However, I have received several firm offers from industry at about $20,000, namely around the same amount that I had received in my two most recent positions in industry. The latter of these was in general considered to be a