other degrees of conference, short of the development of regulations that are involved here?

As I recall it, the staff people from this committee have sought an opportunity to be in on conferences in the Department, and have been invited. I think Mr. Feder and Mr. Mittelman have gone to these. These were short of developing regulations, weren't they? These were in the area of proposed regulations?

Mr. RUSSELL. Well, these were efforts to gain information and they were efforts to gain information from every direction that it might come from, so there were a number of different witnesses. However, this was not a regulation hearing.

Mr. Gershuny was in one meeting, I think, particularly that you make reference to, and if you would like to have him describe the different witnesses who were able to give some information that was used, he will do so.

Senator WILLIAMS. I gather this was evolved to the point where the Department has a policy now of opening up more of these hearings to broader participation than you started with?

Mr. MELICH. Well, our policy has always been to hold these open hearings, but in this situation I think this would be an exception because of the time factor on the publication of the regulations. Senator WILLIAMS. On the information gatherings, here I gather you hope to broaden your base, is that correct?

Mr. MELICH. We welcome that.

Senator WILLIAMS. We interrupted you, Senator Schweiker.
Senator SCHWEIKER. You go ahead.

Senator WILLIAMS. We have some staff technical questions here.
Senator SCHWEIKER. That is all right.

Senator WILLIAMS. There is one remaining point on this question of meetings, information, or development, where the Department is meeting with industry. There was protest that the meetings were secret and the working miners could not be represented there, or were not represented..

Do you see the advantage of not going into secret meetings with the Department and industry without others being there?

Mr. MELICH. Senator, I personally know of no secret meetings that we held. Now, maybe Secretary Dole, whose Department, of course, conducted most of the meetings, but I personally know of no secret meetings or anyone excluded that requested to be at the meetings. If there are those, I would like to know of them.

Maybe Secretary Dole can add more to it.

Mr. DOLE. Yes, Mr. Chairman, I would like to comment on that. We have a lot of people calling on us, and I will probably have a dozen people today. Now, are those meetings, or are those someone calling, or what are they?

We had many meetings with many people throughout industry. We had a meeting with Mr. Yablonski and his group. We have had meetings with representatives from the United Mine Workers, with the American Mining Conference.

I considered and construed those as the right of any citizen to call upon their Federal officials to talk with them, in the same way they write letters.

Now, when it comes to meetings, whenever we have a meeting in which there are going to be substantial things discussed or technical meetings, which we have, they are open to everyone.

Senator WILLIAMS. It is this degree, then, of importance, matters of substance, the meetings will be open, is that it?

Mr. DOLE. Yes. I think what we are dealing with here is strictly semantics.

Senator WILLIAMS. We have a little case history of one of these meetings, so we will have a little better idea. Mr. Feder was involved in one of them.

Mr. FEDER. AS I understand the question, it relates to the meetings held prior to July 10, concerning proposed amendments of the Department of Interior safety regulations. As I recall the history of documents and other communications, Assistant Secretary Dole directed a panel of the Department of Interior employees to hold meetings with the representative of the United Mine Workers and representatives of the Bituminous Coal Operators Association and National Independent Coal Operators Association on proposed amendments by these organizations, that the Friday before the scheduled Monday series of meetings was to begin, somehow one Member of Congress found out about these meetings and objected to them being held privately and requested an opportunity for congressional employees to attend.

That day-as a matter of fact that evening-in response to this, I know the subcommittee was called, inviting a staff member of the subcommittee to attend, and I understand the same call went out to Members on the House side. Those meetings at that point were opened up in that sense to include representation from Congress at the request of a Member of Congress.

I understand that on that day a member of the press was invited, but counsel for the Miners for Democracy was not invited, although he requested the opportunity to attend those meetings and was told to meet with you the following week.

There were no transcripts kept at these meetings, and yet these were meetings to discuss the proposed amendments to the regulations. This is the question to which the committee is directing itself, the question of can we be assured that this will not happen again?

Mr. DOLE. Mr. Chairman, may I speak to that? I am very glad you brought this up, and I think this speaks about the way in which we are going about this information on the Coal Safety Act.

We received many requests and comments on the various rules and regulations. There are people within the Coal Mine Operators Association, who said, "We send these letters in to you and nothing happens. It is like dropping mail into the bottom of the ocean."

We received inquiries from others, in the United Mine Workers, the same way, so I established a committee to review the technical application of these suggestions and comments. I established this, and the chairman was Mr. Gershuny, with Mr. Wheeler, and Mr. Julian Fiess from my office, from my immediate staff.

Dr. Fiess had worked on the nonmetallic coal mine rules and regulations, he is a man of wide experience in metal mining, but not in coal mining.

I instructed these people to meet with the technical representatives of the unions and of the coal mine operators, and with anyone else that wanted to attend to discuss these, but once again, I go back to this comment in my testimony in which I say we listen, and we talk, but decisions are made within our house.

Now, I think it might be helpful if Mr. Gershuny would care to comment on how these meetings were conducted, that they were strictly technical meetings to discuss technical subjects.

Mr. Gershuny?

Senator WILLIAMS. You said anybody else that wanted to attend. Mr. DOLE. Indeed.

Senator WILLIAMS. Our information was that somebody wanted to come and couldn't.

Mr. DOLE. We wanted the people who could contribute most from the technical standpoint, and I am talking about the real nitty-gritty of coal mining.

Mr. MELICH. Before Mr. Gershuny speaks, Mr. Chairman, addressing this to Senator Schweiker, I think it would be helpful for us to know what type of conferences we hold at Interior that you would like your staffs to be in, because we are constantly discussing many problems, legal and other problems, and I have never felt we should burden your staffs with having people brought down.

Senator WILLIAMS. I don't believe that is the point. We have shown an interest, and basically I think I can state that our interest was not in the technical conclusions that are arrived at, but who is invited to participate in arriving at technical conclusions.

Now, we understood that people who thought they could make a contribution on these amendments, and they all deal with safety in the coal mines, could have made a contribution, and they were not part of it, of the amendment meeting, the meeting or meetings for amendments.

Mr. DOLE. Incidentally, on page 18, I refer to that, and I also submitted a list of the meetings we have had for the record, and it is right. over there.

Senator WILLIAMS. Mr. Yablonski indicated to us that he or a representative of the men that he works with wanted to be at this meeting and was not permitted. Are you familiar with that?

Mr. DOLE. Yes, indeed I am. Mr. Yablonski was invited to meet with the same panel, but I don't believe it was on the same date of those meetings. Am I correct, Mr. Gershuny?

Mr. GERSHUNY. The following week.

Mr. WHEELER. The next week.

Mr. DOLE. The following week.

Senator WILLIAMS. That may be equal but separate meeting time. I think the point was that it would be more meaningful from these people's point of view to be at the same meeting.

Senator Schweiker?

Senator SCHWEIKER. I would like to ask a little bit about the training and recruitment of inspectors. I am a little bit concerned when I see in your testimony, Secretary Dole, that even taking a shortcut through

the Federal bureaucracy, which I commend you for, you still have 5 months from the time somebody says, "I do want to be a Government inspector" until he is starting his training.

I understand the necessity for training time and you can debate how much of this is given now or later, but it seems to me that 5 months, and I realize that compared to other Federal standards, that 5 months is probably a record. But we have an unusual situation here, wildcat strikes are going on, people have grievances about safety, and we see coal mining operations shut down.

Wouldn't that indicate that something better than 5 months is called for to get a fellow who says, "I can," and I am not talking training time. I am talking about until he starts as an employee of the Federal Government. There is a 5-month lapse.

Isn't there some way we can shorten that up? I know you are doing good by other standards, but it seems to me we have a real emergency in this country in our mines. We have bitter divisiveness over this issue. we have coal mine operations stop, we have power shortages.

Doesn't that merit something better than 5 months?

Mr. DOLE. Senator Schweiker, I have only been back here a little over a year and a half myself, and I asked these very same questions. and I think you might as well get the answers from the people who gave me the answers, so I will refer you to Mr. Wheeler and Mr. Westfield.

Mr. WHEELER. When you say 5 months, I assume you are talking about from the time that he takes the examination until he reports. to work, because that is the only time that would take anything like 5 months. It takes us about a month and a half to get him after we decide we want to hire him.

This means writing to him, taking a physical examination, giving his previous employers some amount of notice, and cleaning up his personal affairs. And normally that takes about a month and a half. from a month to a month and a half.

We have cut that down.

Now, at the suggestion of one of the committee staff, we have desig nated one of our top people in the Bureau of Mines personnel office to look over our shoulder, in effect-look over Jim Westfield's shoulder. and give me a weekly report on the progress that we are making toward getting these new inspectors on board. He works with the Civil Service Commission, and I can't understand the 5 months. I don't believe it takes 5 months even from the time that the examination is taken, although it may.

There is a grading process involved, and this is done by the Civil Service Commission. They have expedited the thing at our request. Senator SCHWEIKER. I would like to read from your press release again, if I may. It says here:

Five months are required from the time the person takes the coal mine inspec tor examination before he can be hired. This is to integrate the examination. rate the candidate, place him in his proper position on the register, run him through medical examinations, notice to current employers.

And so forth.

I am not criticizing that at all. Fellows, these are your statements. they are not mine.

Mr. WHEELER. I think the important thing to keep in mind is, and I think these figures that you cited here this morning indicate that we are accelerating all these things. It doesn't take as long as it did a few months ago to get these people hired. It does not take as long as it did a few months ago to get these people trained.

We are cutting corners all the time and reducing these things as fast as we can.

Senator SCHWEIKER. Is there anything we as a committee can do to help you do some of this? I recognize you do have problems, like Civil Service. Can we make a special plea in any way to make an exemption, or special priority, because I recognize you have problems there, and I may not be able to suggest something now. But I think if you follow, have some suggestions, this committee would be very receptive to going to the Civil Service people and waiving a few things so you fellows cannot have to go through all that rigermarole.

Mr. DOLE. I might comment that you are doing plenty to help us right now through this meeting.

Senator SCHWEIKER Along the same line of questioning, what basic requirements other than passing a test do you look for? Is the testing the primary criterion? Must he be a college graduate, must they have mine experience?

Mr. WESTFIELD. Basically, the present civil service examination for coal mine inspectors, they have to have a basic 5 years' experience in the coal mines. Other than that, there is no basic educational training. They are given credit for education, but this is not necessary that a man be a college man or whether he has anything besides being able to read and write, as long as he is able to pass this examination, and this examination is based on his knowledge of safety.

Senator SCHWEIKER. So you are saying there are really two criteria : 5 years in the mines, and he must pass a test.

Mr. WESTFIELD. He must pass a test. That is correct. Then he has to pass a physical examination to be hired. It is a very arduous job, and the physical requirements are very tough on this, although we have had, I would say-and I am getting the number now-somewhere around 15 percent of them turned down on the physical.

Senator SCHWEIKER. What advertising are you doing for these? In other words, what recruitment approaches are you using?

Mr. WHEELER. We use radio announcements in all the areas. We have used advertisements in all the papers in the areas in which the examinations are given, and as Mr. Dole indicated, we are considering TV spots with pleas being made to these people to take the examinations, including people who are not supervisors.

This is something that was spoken about here this morning. It is not a requirement for a man to be a foreman in order to be qualified as an inspector. We would like to get more mine safety committeemen, for example, to take the examination.

Senator SCHWEIKER. We are paying, I see, starting from $9,881 for GS-9 un to $14,192. Is that accurate?

Mr. WHEELER. That is right.

Senator SCHWEIKER. What does a coal miner who has 5 years of experience and has average ability, what is he earning today? Mr. WHEELER. Well, I will let Jim answer that for you.