Senator DIRKSEN. I am not seeking to be punitive, Mr. Alexander, I assure you. I am seeking to give everybody a break under the law that we wrote, mostly in my office, in 1964. And if that is going to take modification of the law, whether it applies to you or not, I am going to work at it to get it done. And if I think the abolition of the Contract Compliance Board is going to stop some of this harassment that goes on-why, there are people walking into Washington every day who are being harassed one way or another under this operation. And I am advised by one large corporation that they have spent a million dollars just to go to hearings, answer questions, have investigators around the place, until they do not precisely know what to do.

Well, we ought to know what to do, and we ought to do it. And we are going to do it if I have anything to say about it. So what I am getting at is this harassment business, like your carnival hearing out in Los Angeles. As I went through all those notes-I am not going to put them in the record-but it certainly looked like a carnival to me. People were disorderly, they were excited-you were there, Mr. Steiner, weren't you?

Mr. STEINER. Yes, I was, sir.

Senator DIRKSEN. You are in these notes, too. But I am not going to question you about it until we get something on the floor of the Senate, and then maybe I will pay my respects to you, if I have to. There will be no point in doing it here. But I just wanted to lay a little foundation and to tell you why, because we have gotten to the point now where either this punitive harassment is going to stop, or somebody is going to lose his authority, or I am going to the highest authority in this Government and get somebody fired.

Now, it is this simple.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Senator, I think that the harassment has to stop. But also the complaints of the complainants that we see all the time have to stop. The people that this Commission is concerned with and OFCC is concerned with are those who are discriminated against in employment. I must say, though, that they might not be able to come to Washington to voice their complaints they do this in our own regional office-where they find segregated housing, segregated locker rooms, and segregated fountains in 1969, and also discrimination so that they do not move up in jobs and do not get equal pay to whites. And to me that is quite relevant in a country that says equal opportunity to all. All I would just like to differ with you in your characterization of our hearings.

Senator DIRKSEN. Well, day after day these people come to this town and come to my office. I know who they are. I know what kind of shops they run. And they have given employment, not to thousands, but to hundreds of thousands. And they try to do their job. And they try to comply with the law. But I am afraid that your shop and the Compliance Board is giving them such a hard time that you are not serving the cause of nondiscrimination in the best possible way, if you want a personal opinion about it. And that is reasonable.

I am as much interested in this law and in solving this problem in the country as you, for if I were not I would not have devoted all that attention to the 1964 law and got to my knees to beg those on my side

in order to kill the filibuster, so we could get a vote to it. And when you do that, of course, you take your political skin in your hands. But I did not mind that. I wanted to get it done. And I got it. Now, I think that is a manifestation of my abiding interest in this law and the spirit of the law. But we did not intend for 1 minute that the people of this country, and of course particularly the work givers, industry and business, should be harassed. This is not an overnight job by any means. And if there is harassment, maybe we are going to have some new person in it. That is pretty plain talk.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I think it is, Senator. And as you talk of new legislation, we think there is new legislation needed. I think with the earlier discussions that you participated in and brought together there was consideration given to giving the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission teeth so that it can do the job, so that this law is respected as other laws. We live hopefully in an orderly society, and I think people look to these kind of laws just as they look to laws against petty larceny. And it is exactly the same thing as robbing someone of their wallet as it is to keep a man from a job or not give someone a job.

Senator DIRKSEN. You do not have subpena powers today?

Mr. ALEXANDER. No, we do not- -we do for records.

Senator DIRKSEN. You came and asked for it?

Mr. ALEXANDER. For records we have, we have subpena power for records, sir.

Senator DIRKSEN. No, I mean subpena power other than subpenas duces tecum.

Ask your lawyer if he can tell you.

Mr. ALEXANDER. We can subpena people and records in connection with an investigation, that is right, sir.

Senator DIRKSEN Now, what about cease and desist?

Mr. ALEXANDER. Cease-and-desist authority is what we feel would be appropriate, and would be useful for the Commission to have. We do not have that authority.

Senator DIRKSEN. Last year you asked for it, did you not?

Mr. ALEXANDER. That is correct.

Senator DIRKSEN. In fact, somebody came to my office and asked me whether I could go for it, and I said no. And that is still my answer. And you are dealing with emotional matters. That is a dangerous power.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Well, I think all matters of law enforcement can or cannot be emotional. But it is important that the law be authorized and enforced, and though there may be some emotions present in the problems of equal employment opportunity, the right to earn a living and the right, after one earns it, to be able to move ahead, is a very vital one, I think. The opportunity certainly is not necessary.

Senator KENNEDY. Mr. Alexander, I just want to say that I hope that no one has been threatened in here this morning because they have been trying to do the job that they are expected to do, not only under title VII, but under the Constitution of the United States. And when we have suggestions that there are scores of people that come to the Nation's capital and talk about harassment, I just wonder how many blacks and how many Mexican-Americans and how many

Indians can take the time to come to Washington to talk about their discrimination and their harassment. I think there are many of us who have seen the kind of job that you have been attempting to do in the Commission. It is a tough job, and it is a difficult job. But the facts show quite clearly, and it is the purpose of this hearing to bring them out, that there are major companies in this country who have not complied. And they are spending millions of dollars of taxpayers' profits today, and they are not complying.

I think we certainly have that responsibility, and you have that responsibility, and others in the Government have that responsibility, to see that it does not happen, and to see that there are no changes in procedures which will permit it to happen. And I think that those who threaten you because you are doing the job do a great disservice to you and the American people. And they will find that they will have just as much trouble getting rid of you for doing your job as they will anybody else for doing theirs.

So I appreciate the fact that you are here. And I want to commend you for your testimony. I think what you have shown really, Mr. Alexander, is the kind of demeanor this morning which is the clearest indication to me and to those who are here from the press that you did conduct a judicious hearing, and that you are a reasonable man, and that there was not any carnival out in Los Angeles.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Thank you, sir.

Senator DIRKSEN. Well, Mr. Alexander, I listened with interest to the sermonizing of my colleague. I am about as humble a person as ever set foot in shoe leather. I would not hurt a fly. I would not even

hurt him.

Senator KENNEDY. Is this the carnival?

Senator DIRKSEN. This is the carnival.

But I want to be sure you fully understand it. There is a growing interest in title VII and in what is called for and how it is adminis

tered, and there is no place where it is growing faster than up here on Capitol Hill. And if there is a note of warning or caution in what I have to say, I think it can be very well and truthfully accepted, because I am just one, but there are a hundred members of that Senate, and they have been doing some thinking about it on their own. Moreover, the judges, the newspapers, magazines, trade organs, are getting into this thing day after day, in a larger dimension. And I just want to be sure that it is on the right track, and that it stays on the right track, and that it does not become punitive to this enterprise system of ours to which we owe so much.

That is all from me, Mr. Alexander, for the moment. I would like, however, to suggest to the chairman that I have the privilege of keeping this record open, because I think I want to send you a series of questions to which I would like to have some responsive answers. Mr. ALEXANDER. Of course.

Senator DIRKSEN. And they will deal entirely with the act, with the administration of the act, and somewhat with the Compliance Board. Because I want to get this whole story in the record.

So with that understanding we will leave the record open, and I will send these questions.

Senator KENNEDY. Thank you very much.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Senator KENNEDY. Our next witness is Mr. Edward Sylvester, formerly the Director of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance. I want to welcome you, Mr. Sylvester.

TESTIMONY OF EDWARD C. SYLVESTER, JR., FORMER DIRECTOR OF THE OFFICE OF FEDERAL CONTRACT COMPLIANCE

Mr. SYLVESTER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and members of the committee. I was Director of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance from its inception in October of 1965 until I left to assume another position in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1968. And I am now a private citizen and have been out of the Government since late January.

I have, however, maintained a continuing interest in the program, and it is for that reason that I am here and hopeful of being of some assistance in whatever review might take place.

Before Secretary Wirtz left the Department of Labor, in one of his final interviews, he indicated that the greatest contribution of the Department had been in the field of equal employment opportunity.

Though the Secretary spoke broadly, I take some pride in the fact that the Office of Federal Contract Compliance made some contribution to that determination. I will try to avoid repeating some of the history as contained in the chairman's opening statement and in the statement of Mr. Alexander.

After the initial Executive Order No. 10925 which introduced affirmative action and the possibility of sanctions, the Government spent the period from early 1961 to late 1965 in a broadly based program of voluntary compliance and education regarding equal employment opportunity. It was during this period that the plans for progress program was initiated and developed under which employers were asked to sign voluntary affirmative action programs. And that was the basic thrust of Federal activities involving its contracts during that period. Studies by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission indicate in spite of the voluntary effort of the plans for progress companies, that there was no significant difference in the employment patterns of those companies during that period, and that it was impossible to tell a plans for progress company from a non-plans for progress company when it came down to an analysis of employment statistics. There was no meaningful change or improvement. And in fact white-collar employment hearings held by the Commission in New York disclosed that those companies which were in plans for progress had worse employment statistics insofar as race is concerned than other white-collar employers.

In October of 1965, President Johnson issued Executive Order 11246, in which he combined the previous Executive orders, and assigned the responsibility for implementation to the Secretary of Labor. At that time I was named Director of the newly created Office of Federal Contract Compliance.

We then shifted the program from an educational voluntary one to one of contract enforcement. And during the next 2 years we had three main objectives in the program. One was to really spell out and

define the true nature of discrimination as a structural thing and not merely a matter of happenstance or refusal at the hiring gate. There are structural barriers to employment upgrading and improvement such as seniority systems which maintain the discriminatory patterns of the past; tests that are unrelated to job performance and effectively filter out a lot of people who are in fact capable of performing; and personnel systems that continue to assign people on a discriminatory basis.

Another area of emphasis was getting the contracting agencies who under the Executive order have the primary responsibility for contract enforcement to respond to their responsibilities under the order and to develop the necessary capability to carry out that responsibility. And the third was creating enough models of successful resolution of difficult discrimination problems to serve as guidelines for Government contractors and the Federal agencies.

The Office had initiated a number of industry programs including steel and paper. And of course the textile program was just another that was in keeping with the policies of the Office.

Mr. Alexander has accurately given the background of how that program was developed. I might say that the relationship that existed between the Office of Federal Contract Compliance, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Department of Defense was almost ideal. The textile program was a major coordinated Federal effort.

At the time of the development of the textile program, statistics revealed that in the State of North Carolina 22 percent of all people who were employed were Negroes, and 39 percent of all employed in South Carolina were Negro, yet only 4 and 5 percent respectively were employed in the textile industry. In addition, 50 percent of all textile employment was female, of which 2.7 percent were Negro.

This does not suggest that statistics alone determine that there was discrimination, but there certainly was reason for a good hard and careful look, and it has subsequently been demonstrated that there was in fact discrimination.

I have already mentioned the close cooperation and coordination between the three agencies in developing the textile program.

We met with the officers of the 10 major firms, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights and Labor Management Relations in the Department of Defense, and one of the Commissioners of the Equal Employment Commission. We went over in detail with them just exactly what the program was all about and what they could expect of it and what were the requirements of industry at that time. The meeting went along amicably. We were assured that we would have cooperation from the textile manufacturers.

The actual compliance reviews began first at Dan River in January of 1968, and have proceeded on through.

During the same period-and I cite this to point out the level of activity in the Office of Federal Contract Compliance, and the direction and nature of the program-notification of opportunity for formal hearing which could lead to a debarment or cancellation of Government contracts was served on five major contractors. They were the Bethlehem Steel Co., the Allan-Bradley Co., the Timken Roller Bearing Co., Pullman Co., Inc., and B & P Motor Express.