Mr. KHEEL. The backlog is actually only about 1,000 cases less than last year.

Mr. TABER. You mean, the stabilization cases or the disputes? Mr. KHEEL. The stabilization cases; yes. They were about 16,000 last year, and the rate of inflow has increased 19 percent from 3,137 weekly to 3,746, and the rate of outflow has increased 20 percent from 3,160 weekly to approximately 3,800.

Mr. TABER. How about the Disputes Division?

Mr. KHEEL. That has come down by approximately 200.
Mr. TABER. It has been reduced from about 3,000?

Mr. KHEEL. From about 3,100, I should say.

RELATION TO OTHER AGENCIES DEALING WITH LABOR MATTERS

Mr. TABER. You have given this picture of the labor situation. Maybe I have it mixed up somehow, but this is the way I get it. There is your organization which operates insofar as disputes are concerned as a sort of conciliation set-up, primarily. Then there is the Labor Department's Conciliation Service. Then there is the Conciliation Service and the labor set-up in the War Production Board, and then there is another set-up of the same kind in the War Manpower Commission. Then there is still another set-up of a somewhat similar character in the National Labor Relations Board.

In what respect is that set-up different from these other four or five organizations, and in what respect do they do more or less the same thing? On top of all those things that I have listed there have been created both by the War Department and the Navy Department, Conciliation Services that do more or less the same thing that these other organizations do. I am wondering what you can tell me about that picture. I would like to get a statement on that, because it seems to me that insofar as it is possible for the Congress to do so, this situation should be coordinated and all of its operations and activities should be concentrated in one place where there would not be any conflict or any duplication of effort.

I would like to hear from you on that.

Mr. TAYLOR. I would like to speak to that. As you have noticed as you have looked over these reports, the great bulk of our work is in these voluntary submissions. That represents by far the greatest amount of work we have to do.

Mr. TABER. That is nothing that would conflict with these other things?

Dr. TAYLOR. They would not conflict at all.

Mr. TABER. With anybody?

Dr. TAYLOR. That is right. I just wanted to state that the great bulk of the work would not be a part of this problem that you mention.

Then there are the 8,000 dispute cases which were received last year, and in every instance the Board has not taken those cases up on a conciliation basis. We have not taken them up until the Conciliation Service has made an effort to secure an agreement of the parties and they say that that cannot be done. I do not want to imply that agreements never come out of those cases where they come to the Board, because sometimes when they sit down before our officials they seem to see that there is an area of agreement that they did not know existed.

Our responsibility is to weigh the issues and decide the case; and the Board does decide the issues which are brought before it very frequently as result of suggestions which are made by the Board in the course of hearing disputes, and the parties say, "We will withdraw that issue. We think that is good," and they come to an agreement. But the Board does not have any conciliation section whatsoever.

As respects our relationship to these other agencies, one is with the Conciliation Division of the Department of Labor. We are aware, of course, of the fact that whereas all these other organizations have developed labor sections to meet their own particular necessities, that has to do, I would think, with the conciliation is the work of the Department of Labor.

When we get a case certified to us our responsibility is to hear the parties and decide the issues in the dispute finally and in accordance with the War Labor Disputes Act, which states that we should determine the conditions under which those issues should be worked out. So that it would seem to me that this problem does not cover the work of the Board in both of its functions-wage stabilization and disputes.

We have a board which handles these voluntary applications, which are handled by no other agency, nor is there any other agency of Government that finally resolves labor disputes, with the possible exception of the National Labor Relations Board which deals, however, with disputes growing out of alleged unfair labor practices.

So I do not think that our work really overlaps that of these other agencies. I know of no other board, with the exception of those which you have mentioned, that has the responsibility for issuing an order finally determining a labor dispute.

Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. What specific steps have you taken during the past 12 months toward the end that Mr. Taber has in mind? Dr. TAYLOR. With reference to conflict between agencies? Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. Yes.

Dr. TAYLOR. The only steps that we have taken are these. We have said we would not take a case that has not been conciliated by the Department of Labor. We have made that a very firm rule of organization with us. Our contacts with these other agencies are informal. Very frequently one of the other agencies, the Manpower Commission, the Army, or the Navy, we will say, will tell us that "We are very much concerned about a labor dispute in this area. is really interfering with our procurement necessities." That is simply an informal matter.

It

Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. I asked that because a year or so ago, as you probably will recall, we heard the testimony of Mr. Robert Watt, who has been with your organization and for some time represented the American Federation of Labor, and he characterized the picture as just filled with duplication and scattered authority and confusion. And he said we ought to have one labor agency working under one set of rules administered by one policy-making board.

He stated that 1 year ago. He certainly should be a good authority in that field. I am wondering what, if anything, you have done since that time to improve the picture that he painted.

Dr. TAYLOR. The Board itself has not done anything in that particular. I rather question whether the Board should undertake to determine how these other agencies should operate. As I recall,

in the statement to which you refer Mr. Watt referred primarily to our relations with the Director of Economic Stabilization.

Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. He mentioned six or eight steps that the labor organization had to go through many times before it could hope to get a judgment on the matter.

Dr. TAYLOR. I think that what he had in mind was the fact that our awards when we issue a wage adjustment which would furnish the basis for a price increase, can become effective only upon approval of the Director of Economic Stabilization, which is a matter of procedure which has been prescribed for us and which we accept. I think it is on that score primarily that Mr. Watt, as well as some of the other labor members, was complaining about the duplication and matters of that sort.

Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. You do not know of any real change that had been made in the over-all picture since that time?

Dr. TAYLOR. You mean, in our relations with the Director?
Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. With all these other agencies.

Dr. TAYLOR. No; I do not know of any particular change that has been made in that system.

Mr. KHEEL. I think that in working with other agencies our relations have tended to become clarified during the course of the year, and we have not any serious difficulty with other agencies of government at the present time.

Dr. TAYLOR. That is right. If you mean, do we find that our work is impeded by the activities of these other organizations, it is not impeded in its effectiveness at all.

Mr. TABER. But Mr. Steelman got out of the Conciliation Service in the Labor Department because the activities of the other agencies he felt, as I understood it, were so hampering his work that he was unable to make headway. As I remember it-I may be wrongyour agency was one of the agencies that he referred to at that time in his testimony.

Dr. TAYLOR. Mr. Steelman, you mean?

Mr. TABER. Yes.

Dr. TAYLOR. I do not believe this is correct. I would like to say this. I think there is a great deal of collective bargaining going on around the country, and I think the Conciliation Service is really doing a great work. The fact that we have 8,000 cases indicates a pretty heavy load, but there are many more than that arising in this country in the course of a year. So that there is a great deal of collective bargaining going on and a great number of those disputes are being settled by the Conciliation Service. We simply would not be able to carry on were it not doing a job of that sort.

Mr. GARRISON. My recollection is that they handled something over 100,000 disputes, of which we got eight or nine thousand.

Dr. TAYLOR. We got eight or nine thousand of the difficult ones, and the others were handled very effectively before the Conciliation Service.

BASIS OF AUTHORITY OF NATIONAL WAR LABOR BOARD

Mr. TABER. Your authority is based largely on the Smith-Connally Act, is it not?

Dr. TAYLOR. In dispute cases, yes; that is correct.

Mr. TABER. The other items of authority flow from what?

Dr. TAYLOR. From the so-called Economic Stabilization Act of October 2, 1942, which embodied the wage stabilization provisions. It was under that act that Executive Order 9250 and Executive Order 9328 were issued which specified the Board's authority pursuant to the October 2, 1942, act. There have been other Executive orders, but those are the two main ones.

Mr. TABER. Under what authority were you authorized to set up regional offices?

Dr. TAYLOR. As I recall it, when the Board got this tremendous job of acting upon voluntary and dispute cases on October 2, 1942, we had, as I recall it, 189 employees at that time, and it obviously became necessary for the Board to increase its staff to meet this added load. We felt that it ought to be handled in the regions to the fullest possible extent, and we felt that the local folks could more expeditiously handle the matter.

Mr. KHEEL. I believe that at that time the additional personnel was authorized under the President's emergency budget; and then in the spring of 1943 specific appropriation to cover our regional boards was authorized by Congress.

NUMBER OF CASES DISPOSED OF

Mr. TABER. I would like to have you tell me how many of these stabilization cases you got rid of in the first 9 months of last year. Dr. TAYLOR. I have the figure here for just the last fiscal year. Mr. KHEEL. It runs from April to April.

Dr. TAYLOR. We disposed of 197,150 cases.

Mr. TABER. And they are the same type of cases which you have pending, 15,429 of them?

Dr. TAYLOR. Yes; that is correct.

Mr. TABER. In the Disputes Division you disposed of how many? Dr. TAYLOR. We disposed in the 12-month period referred to of 7,925.

Mr. TABER. So that the average time ought to be approximately 1 month for the noncontroversial items?

Dr. TAYLOR. The trend is downward. We have it down to about 31⁄2 weeks now.

Mr. TABER. And as to your dispute items perhaps an average of 4 or 5 months?

Dr. TAYLOR. Twelve weeks it is now. It was 4 or 5 months the last time we appeared before you. It is now down to about 12 weeks.

INCREASE OF PERSONNEL IN DISPUTES DIVISION

Mr. TABER. You have built up your Disputes Division some, I suspect, in that time?

Dr. TAYLOR. Fourteen positions has been the increase in that period.

Mr. TABER. How about your stabilization set-up? I do not know whether that has increased or not; I cannot make it out from this. Dr. TAYLOR. There are 13 man-years less, requested as a matter of fact.

Mr. TABER. That is man-years; but you have 30 positions more, according to the way this is set up.

Dr. TAYLOR. In the 1945 appropriation column for positions there were authorized 853. In the 1946 base position column we indicate we are using only 840 positions currently. This is less by 13 positions and 2.6 man-years, than we expected to need.

In the 1946 estimate we are requesting 30 more positions, although we estimated we will actually use 13.1 man-years less in 1946 than we expect to use this year as shown in the 1946 base column.

INCREASE FOR DIVISION OF ADMINISTRATIVE MANAGEMENT

Mr. TABER. There is another thing that I would like to have you discuss some. Here is your Division of Administrative Management, 509 in 1945, and in the base for 1946 you have 675. That means an increase of 170 in positions, and in man-years there is an increase of 113. Why do you have such a whale of an increase as that? You have better than 25 percent of your help in the overhead. It seems like that is crowding us up a little bit too much.

Mr. KHEEL. Of course the increase has to do primarily with the discontinuance of the C. A. S.

Mr. TABER. That did not do much anyhow, except to take up time. Mr. DESMOND. The transfer there involves the shift over of the C. A. S. personnel to our offices throughout the country to carry on what they formerly did in the fields of finance, procurement, duplicating, and other services. We had 509 in 1945, and we have 675 positions provided for in the bese, but it is anticipated that we will use 647 positions. There is a reduction proposed there from what we are presently using.

Mr. TABER. Even so, that is an awfully big figure in comparison with the total number of employees, and an awfully big percentage for overhead.

Mr. DESMOND. That is true if it is considered as just relating to timekeeping and pay-roll personnel.

Mr. TABER. And operating telephones, and such like?

Mr. DESMOND. Yes, sir. In addition to that, our administrative offices also are the central file section and the statistical reporting offices for the entire Board, and we feel that that is a more efficient way of using our personnel for the substantive phases of the Board program.

Mr. KHEEL. It elso includes stenographers in our stenographic pool. Mr. TABER. How many of them?

Mr. KHEEL. They are distributed throughout the country. I think here in Washington we have approximately 25.

Mr. TABER. Twenty-five all together?

Mr. KHEEL. In the pool, from which people draw.

Mr. TABER. They are given regular assignments?

Mr. KHEEL. Yes. And in each of our regional offices we have a pool, a smaller number, of course, which are again assigned to the Administrative Division. That, together with the work which in reality is of substantive nature, such as case controls for disputes, wage stabilization, and legal divisions accounts for a substantial number of personnel in the Division of Administrative Management.

Mr. TABER. Do you have anything more to say about why you should have such an enormous percentage of this group on the administrative roll?