permanent residence is in Los Angeles, Calif., where I have been associated with the postal service over 25 years, with the exception of two leaves of absence due to military service with the U.S. Marines during World War II and Korea.

We are grateful, Mr. Chairman, to you and your associates for the opportunity to testify here today. We appreciate the action by you and other members of this committee in the introduction of bills to provide increased compensation for postal employees.

We come here to proclaim our complete endorsement of H.R. 9531, as written, to urge its approval by this committee and its subsequent enactment by the House. We believe the provisions of this measure are needed to restore purchasing power and a living standard appropriate to a position in the Federal service. We commend Hon. James H. Morrison (Democrat, of Louisiana), for his initial introduction of this measure which has now been endorsed by at least 70 of his colleagues in the Congress.

When we testified before the Senate Post Office and Civil Service Committee, on February 20, 1962, the administration had not yet introduced its pay reform proposal which subsequently made its appearance in H.R. 10480 as introduced by the distinguished chairman. of this committee. Consequently, we could not evaluate the specifics of the reform measure at that time. However, we did offer testimony in rebuttal to statements by spokesmen for the Bureau of the Budget and the Civil Service Commission, both of whom predicted with considerable accuracy the provisions of the White House pay formula.

HIGHER LEVELS THE MAIN CONCERN

In seeking to advance the administration's effort to provide salary schedules equivalent to those paid in private industry, all agency witnesses have emphasized the increased compensation essential for professional, scientific, and top managerial positions in Government. It has been properly and repeatedly stressed that various Federal bureaus and departments are compelled to compete with private industry for particular skills and are at a disadvantage. The arguments advanced were factual and impressive. We agree there is a disadvantage in competing for top skills with private industry because of the inadequate pay under current Federal programs. We are in complete agreement that the world situation requires the use of highly skilled professionals and scientists that this country may properly contend with the complexities of international relations and the space age. However, we are not in agreement with the manner in which the administration is attempting to secure legislation to correct this situation. It is our firm belief and conviction that separate legislation should be recommended and introduced to make adequate provision for Federal personnel in the professional, scientific, and technical levels.

We cannot agree with the type of thinking developed in overall projects, such as is presently incorporated in H.R. 10480, whereby top-paid executives (not scientific, not technical, and not engineers, physicists nor specialists) would be given salary adjustments of as much as from $4,500 per annum to $6,000 per annum while employees in the lower levels of the Federal service would be given increases totaling $120 to $345 per annum. Certainly, the proponents of this

formula must have had some awareness of the political and economic effects of such recommendations as well as the inevitable reaction of most Members of the Congress.

We strongly suggest, Mr. Chairman, that the House Post Office and Civil Service Committee give serious consideration to separating those proposals dealing with professional, scientific, and technical positions and placing them in a separate bill. We do not believe the cause of the top-level Federal personnel should be advanced at the expense of the lower paid postal employees.

POSTAL MANAGEMENT

Let us consider momentarily the managerial aspects of the Postal Establishment. Traditionally, the Postmaster General, the several Assistant Postmaster General and other top officials are political patronage appointees. We have yet to see, under any administration, any of these top managerial posts remain long vacant. Should the potential applicants in the political arena become exhausted, we are confident there are literally thousands of experienced and well-qualified postal personnel quite capable and willing to be assigned such positions. In fact, some of the more experienced and interested postal personnel might prove far more successful in these posts than those from the outside who have never had any experience in postal affairs. In the vast complex of the Department's regional operations, there has been no shortage of interested applicants for the various managerial assignments at existing pay levels. Here, again, we contend professional, technical, and scientific positions do not exist. Postmaster General J. Edward Day has, in his statement to this committee on May 9, 1962, expressed his inability to

provide a proper incentive to our employes to seek more responsible positions, nor can we recruit top people as engineers, statisticians, data processing programers, or researchers if we continue to pay a rate disproportionate to the duties and responsibilities assigned.

Certainly, the Postmaster General should know that the post offices of this Nation are loaded with applicants for supervisorial and managerial posts as received from employees with many years of service and experience. Among this vast group are certain to be found those with the necessary aptitude to become "statisticans, data processing programers, or researchers." In our opinion, it is not the top positions, for which there are many aspirants, that require augmented pay levels, but it is the assignments in the first six levels where the takehome pay has proven so inadequate.

THE ADMINISTRATION PROGRAM

The administration's program, now widely publicized and upon which you have already received voluminous testimony, is based on a report prepared by the Randall Committee acting upon suggestions received from the Bureau of the Budget, the Civil Service Commission, and various other agencies. Mr. Clarence B. Randall, the Chairman and a retired president of the Inland Steel Co., should have had considerable experience with employee pay schedules and should be eminently qualified to head up this project.

We have recently had an opportunity to examine a copy of an agreement between Inland Steel Co. and the United Steelworkers of America that became effective January 4, 1960. We note in this contract that the steelworkers of this corporation were to receive, by Ocotber 1, 1961, hourly wage rates from $2.10 to $4.24 per hour, with time and one-half for all work performed in excess of 8 hours per day, 40 hours per week, or any work on the sixth and seventh days of the week, Saturday and Sunday, and overtime at the rate of 214 times the regular rate for work performed on any one of seven recognized legal holidays.

The hourly wage rates at Inland Steel are keyed to positions developed by job evaluation performed by the corporation and submitted to the grievance committee of the union for approval. We are confident that the great majority of postal workers would be mighty happy to receive some of the benefits provided steelworkers in the contract approved by the Inland Steel Corp., especially those pertaining to time and one-half, and double time for holiday service.

The one phase of Inland Steel's wage contract that is pertinent to these hearings, in our estimation, has to do with the subject of job evaluation, for it is this procedure the Bureau of the Budget and the Civil Service Commission have pursued these past several years and now use as a basis for the "comparability" they seek in their "reformed“ pay structures. In fact, on page 19 of the statement to the Senate committee by Budget's Deputy Director Elmer Staats, he states:

Only the postal field service, which had been restructured in 1955, approximated a sound expression of the principle of pay distinctions in keeping with work and performance distinctions * * *. There are two manifestations of pay distinctions. One is made of the intergrade pay differentials, which should reflect distinctions in the levels of work. The other is made up of within-grade step increases which today largely reflect seniority in the work level, but which should primarily reflect distinctions in performance. The rules for the use of rates is another aspect of the within-grade provisions.

The Inland Steel contract provides that "job evaluations" and related salary levels must be submitted to the grievance committee of the union for approval, as mentioned previously, and referred on to arbitration in case of a dispute. The postal service has "job evaluation and position descriptions, with related pay levels, but the entire program has been worked out unilaterally by the Department and in such a way that seniority credits gained throughout the years have been largely eliminated since passage of Public Law 68 in 1955; the Postal Field Service Classification Act.

At hearings of the Senate committee on Thursday, February 15, 1962, Senator Frank Carlson, in questioning Civil Service Commission Chairman Macy, emphasized the favoritism and political preference that prevail when seniority gives way to arbitrary selection. We can cite numerous locations in the postal service where this has already happened and well-qualified senior employees have lost long waited opportunities for advancement as junior personnel were awarded higher paying managerial posts as well as the preferred assignments.

LINKAGE- -COMPARABILITY—INTERNAL ALINEMENT

In previous testimony by Mr. Staats and Mr. Macy, it has been emphasized that the administration's objective is "a reform," not an across-the-board pay increase. These officials then proceed to base their proposal on the joint foundation stones of "comparability," "linkage," and "internal alinement." We would like to comment briefly on these subjects.

Linkage: The Budget Bureau and the Civil Service Commission have come up with the new term "linkage," but we have the impression something is missing in their approach. The missing link, on our opinion, is the absence of any convincing criteria for accurately comparing postal field service positions with those in private industry or even with duties performed by some other Government agency. Budget's Deputy Director Staats, on page 17 of his statement to the Senate committee, agrees that it is

not possible to price in private enterprise the jobs in these three specialized services (postal field service, the Foreign Service, and doctors, dentists, and nurses in the Department of Medicine and Surgery) by the method used in pricing Classification Act work, since most of the jobs have few direct counterparts in private enterprise.

Budget then advocates the use of Classification Act equivalents of key work levels, in each of the specialized services just cited, in establishing comparability rates already determined for those Classification Act equivalents. The Bureau then goes on to emphasize consideration of such pay factors as "duties, responsibilities and qualifications required." Then, through the use of some magical semantics the Bureau determines that postal field service level 4 is the equivalent of GS-4, but since most postal employees happen to be "men and heads of families, almost all of whom will serve their entire Federal career in the PFS-4 level," they are thereby entitled to GS level 5.

In this rapid calculation we wonder what happened to Budget's previous contention that salary levels should be based upon "duties, responsibilities, and qualifications required." Their "linkage system" then takes on the appearance of an enticement for the postal clerk and carrier to support the administration proposal since it conveys the impression they will all be advanced to level 5; actually GS level 5 and a gain of only $30 over the top step of postal level 4. At the same time, we are also curious about what happened to Messrs. Staat's and Macy's plan for the "heads of families" in PFS levels 1, 2, and 3.

Comparability: Now with reference to "comparability," we believe the administration's proposal would take full advantage of the bilateral aspects of industrial labor-management relations minus the protective devices labor has fashioned for its welfare, through collective bargaining, strike action, and other similar activity denied postal and Federal employees. This becomes evident to us in Deputy Director Staat's obvious omission of labor's inherent collective bargaining strength in his testimony where he contends that:

The standard of the private enterprise "going rate" gives objective and proper weighting to all legitimate pay factors such as dollar purchasing power, standard of living, and productivity. All of those and many other factors are in free play over the bargaining tables in private enterprise and are resolved into the general economy's "going rate." In adopting the private enterprise "going

rate,” the Government adopts the national economy's resolution of all pertinent pay factors in the thousands of wage and salary decisions in the Nation's labor market.

Well, as mentioned above, the members of our union question any such theory on "comparability" when it reads the Inland Steel contract and observes how steelworkers are evaluated up to $4.24 per hour, whereas the average postal worker, in level 4 reaches a top salary of $2.69 only after 25 long years of service. The issue becomes further strained, by the report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics for December 1961, in which the average postal worker's gross pay of $96.25 per week is at the bottom of a long list of wage rates now prevalent in machinery, electronics, transportation, printing and publishing operations, as well as those relating to chemistry, petroleum, and rubber.

Representatives of various postal unions have, from time to time, endeavored to define and relate to you the unique and varied duties in the receipt, distribution, dispatch, and delivery of the Nation's mail. We are convinced there is no counterpart to postal occupations in any segment of private industry. Certainly, the postal service is unique in the area of Governmental operations.

Reference has already been made above to budget's proposal that postal clerks and carriers in PFS level 4, the largest segment of the postal family, could best be compared with Federal workers in GS level 5. A significant illustration, that in our opinion illustrates the fallacy in this comparison, comes to mind in considering the duties of clerks assigned to classification and inquiry sections of the various postal installations. We were recently involved in a lengthy controversy with the Department because it had downgraded some of these clerks, assigned to duty in the New York City office, from level 5 to level 4. After our efforts to reverse the downgrading had proven futile on the department level, we appealed to the Civil Service Commission. We ultimately regained the level 5 rating on the theory such personnel were actually interpreting postal laws and regulations.

Now consider a moment the GS salary level provided personnel in the Bureau of Internal Revenue that interpret Federal statutes dealing with income tax. They are generally rated in GS levels 9 to 11. The employee, in each of these situations, is actually interpreting a Federal law. Both are required to be fully conversant with the subject. If true "comparability" prevails, should not consideration be given all the job requirements of postal personnel, including complicated scheme examinations, a comprehensive knowledge of rates, regulations, and transportation schedules, as well as the intricate aspects of c.o.d.. postal savings, claims, second- and third-class mailing, and a host of other related functions?

All too frequently the positive approach implied in the above question is replaced by a negative policy similar to that we witnessed recently through the application of the Department's "post audit" maneuver. In this personnel transaction a mass downgrading occurred in Fresno and Riverside, Calif., Jersey City, N.J., and New York City. In the New York office, prior to July 1960, there were approximately 1,000 level 2 custodial employees with a relative handful of level 1 janitors (less than 100).

Now, following the downgrading, there are approximately 500 in each of the two levels with approximately 450 custodial positions having been absorbed by "attrition." The difference in the two salary