ports on a supervisory line to that assistant regional director in the field.

However, on technical matters involving the program he reports to Mr. Davis.

Mr. HAWKINS. I gather that they report to Mr. Davis on some matters, but not all of them. Is that true?

Mr. DELURY. That would be right, depending on what the matter would be, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HAWKINS. Thank you.

Mr. Clay.

Mr. CLAY. I have no further questions.

Mr. HAWKINS. Mr. Buchanan.

Mr. BUCHANAN. Mr. Secretary, there are two things really. Is it or is it not the case that in the brief time you have been Secretary of Labor you have sought direct reports from the Director and included him in relevant discussions?

Secretary DUNLOP. Absolutely correct. Each of the times I have discussed problems with OFCC in order to learn about it or consider a matter, I have invited Mr. Davis and Mr. DeLury to join me.

The other day I went over and met with Mr. Davis, and as a matter of fact Mr. DeLury was not present, with the full professional staff of the OFCC office. I regard it as my practice that when I am holding discussions involving OFCC that I would deal with him and his staff. When I had all these procurement people in the other day I had Mr. Davis with me and I had all of Mr. Davis' professional staff with me at that time. I am sure that that sets forth the procedures which I have been following as a matter of what seemed to me an appropriate way of dealing with the problem.

Mr. BUCHANAN. I would commend you for that good beginning. I should. in all candor, indicate that I share some of my colleagues' feeling that a man's position within the hierarchical structure of a department does bear some relationship to the importance attached to his function in that department. I therefore would urge, given this good beginning, that you would consider the possibility of the assistant secretaryship position being restored.

Mr. KILBERG. Mr. Buchanan, the Director of OFCC has never held an assistant secretary position as such.

Mr. BUCHANAN. He has had that level in that he reported at first directly to the Secretary, is that correct?

Mr. KILBERG. That is right.

Mr. BUCHANAN. I stand corrected, but the request remains essentially the same. If he reports through someone else, he is no longer treated as if he were at the assistant secretary level on the totem pole. It appears to me that almost certainly in any hierarchy of which I have ever been a part that puts him a step down. I wish you would consider that rearrangement.

Mr. KILBERG. That is fair enough.

Mr. BUCHANAN. One other thing. Mr. Secretary, concerning the GAO report again. You have been there 3 months, so it could not by any means reflect any discredit on you, whatever they said. They recommended in the April 29, 1975, report pertaining to the compliance procedures and offices, a couple of things.

You indicated you have 17 agencies, 1,800 compliance officers. GAO recommended that: One, you provide adequate and timely guidance to compliance agencies, especially in areas where agencies request assistance to form more complete compliance reviews and, second, you establish training courses for compliance officers. Do you envision taking some action along this line?

Secretary DUNLOP. May I ask Mr. Davis, who has been considering that suggestion, to reply?

Mr. DAVIS. On the issue of training, my staff along with training officers of the Employment Standards Administration have conducted several meetings with various people representing compliance agencies at which time we discussed the development of a comprehensive and in-depth training program which will be undertaken within the next fiscal year. We have already started on that.

In addition to the meetings which have been conducted we have completed a manual which I have with me here today which will be distributed to the compliance agencies, as a matter of fact it will be distributed today, which will serve as a basis for their training over the next year. So we have certainly begun on the training aspect.

On the second point, there are really, at this point, only two outstanding issues which relate to guidance as far as we are concerned which presently have to be submitted to compliance agencies. However, we are certainly willing and do sit down with the compliance agencies to discuss these concerns of timely guidance and guidance in general. So this has been done.

Mr. HAWKINS. May the Chair ask the Secretary to supply the com mittee with three copies of the manual referred to in the colloquy between Mr. Davis and Mr. Buchanan?

Secretary DUNLOP. We will be happy to do it, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. HAWKINS. Thank you.

Mrs. Mink.

Mrs. MINK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The Congress in its wisdom established additional responsibility for the Department of Labor with regard to employment standards affecting handicapped persons, disabled individuals, veterans, and so forth as you enumerated in your statement. In the statute and committee reports that lend themselves to giving legislative intent was there any kind of intent or policy established by these statutes that the responsibility for the enforcement of these new provisions must necessarily be joined with the Office of Federal Contract Compliance?

Secretary DUNLOP. The answer is "No."

Mrs. MINK. By what decision or under what rationale was the decision then made to join together under an already severely handicapped, in my opinion, office of Federal Contract Compliance, all these additional responsibilities?

Secretary DUNLOP. Let me say a word or two about that and perhaps Mr. DeLury might comment on it. The problem and the considerations which led to it were that with separate programs one would have a number of regulations and one would have duplication in a number of planned visits to establishments. The decision was fairly well formulated, I may say, before I arrived.

One would have varying kinds of technical reports, and it was the conclusion of people who had dealt with these sources of labor stand

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ards over the years that there would be considerable economy and effort and considerable reduction in the multiplicity of Government efforts if those responsibilities were coordinated into one organizational form, recognizing that they were separate programs, with separate legislative bases, but that economy of effort and administration would be achieved by combining them.

Mrs. MINK. Mr. Secretary, how many additional personnel were hired to supplement the professional staff of the OFCC when it was decided to give it all these additional responsibilities?

Secretary DUNLOP. Perhaps Mr. DeLury can respond to that. I understand there are 75 additional people with respect to the handicapped program.

Mr. DELURY. That is correct. Congress gave us 75 people for the section 503 program. We have plans for approximately 20 to 25 positions in the national office and the rest will be in the field reporting to the Assistant Director for OFCC.

Mrs. MINK. Are all these 75 on board, and are they new employees since the enactment of the statute?

Mr. DELURY. They are new employees and they are in various stages of recruitment and selection.

Mrs. MINK. How many of the 75 have already been hired?

Mr. DELURY. I will report that one for the record but off the top of my head I would say

Mrs. MINK. I ask unanimous consent that that information be inserted in the record at this point.

Mr. HAWKINS. Without objection.

[The information referred to follows:]

In response to the committee's request concerning the number of persons hired in the handicapped worker's program, the following information was submitted:

Mrs. MINK. With respect to the other categories how much additional staff was authorized by the legislation and hired in fact for the age discrimination and the veterans?

Mr. DELURY. For the veterans, the section 2012 program, there is no personnel authorized. We are formulating our request now for what we think we are going to need to run the program for Vietnam veterans and for disabled veterans of all wars. We don't have anybody yet for that program.

The age discrimination in employment program is in the Wage and Hour Division. It is not in OFCC.

Mrs. MINK. With respect to problems of veterans, do I understand there is no program now in effect because you have no personnel? Mr. DELURY. Mrs. Mink, we have a task force presently in effect. We are in a position to receive complaints. We are formulating regulations. They are in the Solicitor's office now. We hope to get them out within the next couple of weeks.

Mrs. MINK. Who is doing the work in regard to the veterans?

Mr. DELURY. I have an individual by the name of Vincent Macalus who is heading up the task force for the veterans' program.

Mrs. MINK. This is not an assumption that this has been delegated to the OFCC. This is a separate authorization under your Office of Secretary?

Mr. DELURY. Yes, but it will be transferred to OFCCP. We do have facilities in our new organizational structure to maintain the mission for the veterans' program.

May I add this, too, Mrs. Mink? There is a good deal of overlap here when one talks about affirmative action for disabled veterans of all wars under section 2012 of one act and then talks about mentally and physically handicapped affirmative action programs under section 503 of another act. So, we do have people there who can aid disabled veterans under a different statute.

There is also some overlap, too, in the area of minority and female affirmative action although we do not have all the statistics yet. Some of the ones I have seen so far in the handicapped area do portray that there are quite a lot of handicapped, minorities and females in a population of the handicapped of about 11 million that are employable.

Mrs. MINK. Mr. Secretary, I was very much pleased with the comment in your statement, with which I happen to agree, that government must set an example in its own activities and its own operations if it is to expect that the private sector is to be well motivated to do the same. I am quite aware of the difficulties of overseeing the private sector to the extent that perhaps some of us would like.

Consequently it seems to me it is terribly important that the Federal Government and its agencies be the example setters in the area of job discrimination based upon sex, race, or whatever the issue might be. Because the Executive order has given the Department of Labor such a prime responsibility, it seems to me that it is equally important that the Department of Labor set up itself as a prime example of how all Government agencies should operate.

My concern is, as must be obvious, the question of sex discrimination and to what extent the Department of Labor in its own employment policies, in its own implementation of an affirmative action plan, is attempting to set this very example which you say is such a necessary ingredient in getting the private sector to comply.

My first question is: Have there been issued guidelines on sex discrimination since you took office?

Secretary DUNLOP. Yes; Mr. Clark can be more specific.

Mr. CLARK. Yes; we have. I will be very happy to provide for the record our action plan which incorporates the things that you are talking about which has just been published.

Mrs. MINK. What is the date of publication?

Mr. CLARK. It is for fiscal year 1975. I don't have the date on here unfortunately but it is a very comprehensive affirmative action plan within the Department of Labor.

Mrs. MINK. I am talking about the OFCC's guidelines on sex discrimination which my notes tell me were proposed in December 1973, but as of the date of this memo had not yet been finalized.

Mr. CLARK. I thought you were talking about our own internalMrs. MINK. No; I am talking about the guidelines with respect to OFCC.

Mr. CLARK. I defer to Mr. Davis.

Secretary DUNLOP. I interpreted, perhaps wrongly, the question to refer to our own internal policies on which the Department has had and continues to have strong affirmative action programs?

Mrs. MINK. Is it not the Department's responsibility to promulgate these guidelines in order to set that down as an example for all Government agencies, the 17 agencies to which you have delegated the responsibility to enforce the Executive order? It seems to me, if you are just delegating authority to all of these agencies, without yourself delineating what these guidelines are, you are not setting the kind of example which we feel is so necessary to get voluntary compliance on the part of the private sectors of our country.

Mr. KILBERG. Mrs. Mink, perhaps I can shed some light on that. We do have sex discrimination guidelines in effect. The guidelines you are talking about were revised guidelines which were put out for comment in December 1973. There were two basic issues that we were attempting to deal with.

One was the question of the degree to which pregnancy ought to be treated as a temporary disability. That question as you may be aware is now before the Supreme Court in the Liberty Mutual case.

There is also another question which is even a thornier one, because we had taken a position under both the OFCC and Equal Pay Act with regard to fringe benefits and whether the employer had an option of making his contributions equal or insuring that the benefits were equal.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has taken the position for some years now that only equal benefits, not equal contributions, would be the appropriate approach. That matter also arose in the context of title IX, the Education Amendments of 1972. We had rather extensive hearings on that matter.

That issue has been referred to the Equal Employment Opportunity Coordinating Council. We will be meeting with Council representatives to discuss the data which we have collected and we will see if we cannot formulate Government-wide positions.

There seems to be two or three positions extant in the Government. I would like for the record a bit of braggadocio perhaps but in line with your comments about equal employment within the Department, within Government, itself, to point out that the Office of the Solicitor has had a particularly good record in that regard. 34 percent of our attorneys are women. We have nine associate solicitors, four are women, four are white men, one is a black male. Our record with regard to hiring minority males is not as good as it is with regard to women although it has gone up 2 percentage points in the last year and is now better than 9 percent.

I think there have been some serious efforts in our office along with other agencies in the Department of Labor to have affirmative action programs and they are monitored rather closely.

Mrs. MINK. What is the total number of positions that are considered management positions in the Department of Labor and what percent of those positions are held by women?

Secretary DUNLOP. Mr. Clark is our Assistant Secretary for Administration and Management.

Mr. CLARK. I don't have the total numbers, but I can give you the percentage figures, if I may. For example, in the area of women we