EFFECT OF APPROPRIATING AMOUNT REQUESTED IN SUPPLEMENTAL ON

STATE EMPLOYMENT

Mr. BUSBEY. Mr. Goodwin, if the entire $14,500,000 was allowed by the Congress, would that permit the States to employ all the people that they had laid off because of the cuts that were made by the Congress in the bill last year?

Mr. GOODWIN. No. What will happen there, Mr. Chairman, is that they will be controlled on expansion that they can make in the States by the formula which we use in connection with the contingency fund. In other words, they will have to justify, on specific workload, any expansions that are made in personnel and, as you know, before they can qualify for contingency money, they will have to absorb an amount of 10 percent of the increase.

Now, in some States they may end up with as large a work force, or maybe a larger one, because the workload has increased to the point where it would be justified. It is double, you see, in general, what it was a year ago. In other States, the increase in personnel will be proportionately smaller.

Mr. BUSBEY. I hope you will forgive me for again referring to my native State of Illinois. I have been under the impression that Mr. Bernstein, who is the director of this program in the State of Illinois, has run as good a shop out there, and in as efficient manner as is done in any State in the United States.

Mr. GOODWIN. He has done a very good job, I am sure.

Mr. BUSBEY. Notwithstanding that fact, I still say that there was a certain reduction in force that could be made without jeopardizing or crippling the program in any way, shape, manner, or form.

As

It may be that the cut last year was a little too drastic. If it is proven that way, I assure you I will be the first to admit any part of the mistake that I made and do what is necessary to correct it. strong principled as I am on certain things, I am not one to ever take the attitude that I am always right. I have been wrong on many occasions and I expect to be wrong on many more occasions, but whatever I do, I try to do in fairness to all according to what, at the time, is my best fair judgment.

I have had some talks with Mr. Bernstien, and I think he could have laid off some employees and, especially if we had not run into this situation of increased workload, could have carried forward an adequate program.

Mr. FERNANDEZ. Will the gentleman yield for a quotation from my old school copybook?

Mr. BUSBEY. I couldn't refuse to yield to my good friend from New Mexico under any circumstances.

Mr. FERNANDEZ. My copybook used to say, "Give me a man who never made a mistake, and I'll give you a man who never did anything."

Mr. BUSBEY. I come back at my critics in my district by telling them, "Show me the man who is never criticized, and I'll show you the man who never does anything."

Mr. GOODWIN. In connection with what you have just said, Mr. Chairman, I would like to say this, I felt at the time the cut was too drastic, and I still feel that it was. I think the situation we are up against is one where our problem, and the problem we are coming to

you with, today, and the one that needs emphasis, is the additional load that has grown out of the increased unemployment.

Mr. BUSBEY. I appreciate that, and it gives me a great deal of conUnfortunately we had no way of anticipating that, and had to go on the record. I don't think that your testimony before the committee last year anticipated this degree of unemployment that we are experiencing at the present time.

Mr. GOODWIN. That's right.

WEEKLY CLAIMS FILING

Mr. BUSBEY. Now, just one thing more. I notice the Bureau of the Budget's letter states:

This proposed supplemental appropriation is necessary to provide for increases in the claims workload and for the increased costs beginning April 1, for State salary increases and a return to weekly claims filing.

There is $1,272,300 for taking claims weekly from April 1 to June 30, 1954. Why is it necessary to take these claims weekly?

Mr. GOODWIN. There are two reasons why taking them weekly is better than biweekly. One is that it has some relationship to the incidence of fraud. If you have a man reporting to claim his benefits every week, it cuts down on the incidence of fraud.

Mr. BUSBEY. Before we leave that, how much has fraud increased because these claims filings have been on a weekly basis instead of biweekly?

Mr. GOODWIN. We have no objective measure of that, Mr. Busbey, at the moment. We have the informed judgment of the State administrators and they are almost 100 percent in agreement on this point.

Mr. BUSBEY. States like Minnesota and West Virginia have never been on a weekly basis; have they?

Mr. GOODWIN. There are a few States that have not been on a weekly basis. In that connection, the more populated States, the States where you have the high degree of urbanization, it seems to be more important in those areas than it is in the less populated States. Mr. BUSBEY. Has there been any more fraud in Minnesota and West Virginia, because they report biweekly instead of weekly?

Mr. GOODWIN. We do not have a controlled study on those States which would give us objective data on that. My feeling would be on the basis of the judgment of the State administrators, generally, that almost under any circumstances you will have less fraud with weekly reporting than you will with biweekly.

In some of the States, where fraud is not a major problem, the difference might be very slight, but my own judgment is that there are there would still be some difference.

Now, the other point is that biweekly reporting is objected to strenuously by the beneficiaries, themselves. They object to having to go 2 weeks until receipt of the check. That, of course, does not conform to the usual pattern of payment of industrial wages. Most of that is on a weekly basis, and a good deal of the objection is made to the biweekly reporting, on that basis. Those are the two principal reasons that the States generally do not like the biweekly reporting. There are a few exceptions.

Mr. BUSBEY. How much do you estimate it would cost, on an annual basis, to go to weekly claims taking?

Mr. GOODWIN. With the same workload it would be about 4 times this figure, which would be about $5 million.

Mr. BUSBEY. Are there any other questions?

Mr. FOGARTY. Under biweekly claims taking you are penalizing the unemployed worker who has a check coming to him, by making him wait 2 weeks. If he has it coming to him, he ought to get it every

week.

Mr. GOODWIN. That is on top of a regular waiting period, so once you have started the payments, then it is every 2 weeks, but the initial check would be from 3 to 4, and that would be good practice. Mr. FOGARTY. I have no further questions.

MEXICAN FARM LABOR PROGRAM

Mr. BUSBEY. I have just one thought before we adjourn: with this increase-in-unemployment problem, what is being done to get United States citizens to take the jobs for which you have been importing labor under the Mexican farm-labor program.

Mr. GOODWIN. We have issued instructions throughout the organization and have called on the States to make special efforts to fill all these jobs, these farm jobs, with our own domestic workers. Now, we are still going to have a large number of areas involving a large number of Mexicans, in my opinion, Mr. Congressman. We will have a number of places where Mexicans are needed. It is difficult, particularly in a short period of time, to get industrial workers to take these farm jobs.

For instance, take Detroit where we have considerable unemployment, now. We can go in there and offer those people farm jobs down in the Imperial Valley, for instance, where we have our biggest demand.

Mr. BUSBEY. I wouldn't think you would offer them jobs that far away when a lot of this Mexican labor comes up into Michigan. Mr. GOODWIN. Michigan a little later would be a good example. There is a big difference between farm employment and industrial employment. Take our experience back in 1949 and 1950, for instance, when unemployment was considerably more than it is right now. We didn't have very much success in filling the farm openings from the industrial, unemployed group, at that time.

I remember in the Los Angeles area we had at one time openings for several thousand workers in oranges, in that area. We had at the same time, my recollection_is, 50,000 or 60,000 unemployed in the Los Angeles area. We worked out with the State agency a special program or special drive to get those unemployed into the farm jobs. The wages for farmwork were good. They were not substandard. They were good wages for farmwork. The average was still below the average for nonfarm employment, however.

The State agency was able to recruit some 1,200, as I recall, for referral to the farm jobs. Less than half of them-I have forgotten the exact figures, now, but I think it was less than half of them actually

reported to work and out of those who reported to work, all but a very few did not stay with the job. They left the job within a matter of a week or 10 days. In some cases they were just not physically capable of doing it. The State agency tried to select people with a farm background, but many of them had been out of farmwork for a good many years and they just couldn't take it, or they petered out for one reason or another.

Mr. BUSBEY. I have no opinion one way or the other. I was just exploring the proposition.

Mr. GOODWIN. I want to assure you that we are going to insist that the jobs be offered to domestic workers this year, even in cases where we ourselves doubt that they will take them. After all, the only way you can find out for sure is to offer the jobs and we are going to insist on going through the process of having the jobs offered to industrial, unemployed workers, even though the indications in advance may be that they won't accept them. Then we will know.

Mr. BUSBEY. Well, it seems to me that an industrial worker taking a job on the farm is not preventing himself from coming back and taking employment in the factory if job openings develop.

Mr. GOODWIN. In many cases, I think that is true. In many cases they feel they are putting themselves in a position where they will lose out on the industrial job if it does open up. That is one of the problems you have. The fellow says the factory has indicated to him they are going to call him back as soon as they can and he hesitates to go out 100 miles, across the State of Michigan, we'll say, to take a farm job because he may not be available when the industrial job opens up. That is one of the specific problems we have.

Mr. BUSBEY. I would hate to think that the American industrial worker wouldn't be just as valuable if not more valuable on a farm than laborers imported from Mexico.

Mr. GOODWIN. In many cases they are, and in others they are not as well adapted. Take the stoop labor involved in some of the vegetable crops, for instance. We don't have too many domestic workers too well adapted to that kind of work and they don't do it very well.

MEXICAN CONTRACT LABORERS

Mr. FERNANDEZ. I received a telegram this morning from Mexico to the effect that the regional office in Denver had notified the farmers that they had to separate from the work Mexican contract laborers, by day after tomorrow.

Now, would those be added to the list of unemployed?

Mr. GOODWIN. No. They would be returned to Mexico. If that goes through, they will be returned to Mexico.

Mr. FERNANDEZ. I understand also all your men are being let out from that program at about the same time. Then you are going to have to rehire them? What is going to happen?

Mr. GOODWIN. Well, it depends on what the Congress does in relation to the joint resolution which would give us authority to operate on a unilateral basis for an interim period, and it will also depend on the appropriation.

44098-54-3

COST OF HIRING AND FIRING IN MEXICAN FARM LABOR PROGRAM

Mr. FERNANDEZ. I can't conceive of this Congress not passing that resolution or not providing for the continuation of the program in one way or another, but it seems to me that this delay is going to put you up against it in explaining to us next year why your expenses were so high in hiring and firing, and rehiring and refiring, and so forth.

Mr. GOODWIN. It is a very, very wasteful process in my opinion. Mr. FERNANDEZ. It is very wasteful and you are going to be up against it in explaining to the Congress how that happens. It gives the program a black eye.

Mr. GOODWIN. As I understand it, the Agriculture Committee has a request before the rules committee for a rule.

Mr. FERNANDEZ. And has had for several days and yet they haven't acted, on what seems to me a very simple matter.

Mr. GOODWIN. I don't know whether there were any developments on it today, or not.

Mr. BUSBEY. There hadn't been as of 1 o'clock today.

I believe it would be a good place to have the record show that I informed Mr. Goodwin as long as a month ago that there would be no delay in handling the appropriation request by this committee as far as I was concerned, and I am sure I spoke to the committee, and that as soon as the basic legislation was passed, we would expedite action on the appropriations.

Mr. FERNANDEZ. I would like the record to show that you so advised me, also, and I appreciate it very much, but still we haven't gotten anywhere.

Mr. GOODWIN. We want to say, Mr. Chairman, we certainly appreciated that cooperation and we just regret that other parts of the problem haven't moved along the same way.

Mr. BUSBEY. Thank you very much, gentlemen.

FEBRUARY 24, 1954.

UNEMPLOYMENT COMPENSATION FOR VETERANS

WITNESSES

SAMUEL C. BERSTEIN, REGIONAL VICE PRESIDENT, INTERSTATE
CONFERENCE OF EMPLOYMENT SECURITY AGENCIES
HAROLD A. CASH, CHAIRMAN, ADMINISTRATIVE GRANTS COM-
MITTEE, INTERSTATE CONFERENCE OF EMPLOYMENT SECURITY
AGENCIES

Mr. BUSBEY. The committee will come to order. We will receive additional testimony this morning regarding the supplemental appropriation request for "Grants to States for unemployment compensation and employment service administration." First we will hear from our State director of unemployment compensation for the State of Illinois, Mr. Samuel Bernstein. I would like to have the record show that I have known Mr. Bernstein, and his work, intimately for many years, and everybody that I have talked to in labor and industry have held him in the very highest esteem.