The greatest number of man-years expended by the Department in supervising a union election was in the case of the same District 50, Allied and Technical Workers, during the period April 1 to September 1, 1971. During that period a total of 14.4 man-years were expended in supervising the election of delegates by 1,305 District 50 locals and the election by those delegates of 40 executive board members at convention.

Often the investigation of a complaint concerning an election of national union officers is more costly to us in manpower than the supervision of the election conducted to remedy the violations. Because of the timetable prescribed in the law, the investigation must be completed in time to file the case in court within 60 days after receipt of a complaint. One such investigation required 26 man-years and another required 21 man-years of staff time.

PENDING COMPLIANCE CASES

Mr. CONTE. What is your present backlog of compliance cases? Secretary HODGSON. If backlog is defined to mean the pending, uncompleted planned workload the figures shown below reflect the backlog. It must be borne in mind, however, that no delinquent reports investigations under the WPPDA have been planned and very few deficient reports investigations under that law have been planned because of the lack of resources.

In the administration of the reporting and disclosure Laws, as of March 31, 1972, there were pending 8,258 cases. These are broken down in the following way.

Under the LMRDA, 3,025 cases consisting of: 72 election investigations, 2,343 delinquent reports investigations, 105 deficient reports investigations, 152 field audits, and 353 basic investigations.

Under the WPPDA 244 cases consisting of: 152 deficient reports investigations and 92 basic investigations.

Under the standards of conduct provisions of Executive Order 11491, 377 cases consisting of: three election investigations, 357 delinquent reports investigations, 11 field audits, and six basic investigations.

Under the organized crime program 4,612 reports investigations.

RAILROAD WORK-RULES CHANGES

Mr. CONTE. What major productivity gains have been possible in the railroad industry because of work-rules changes?

Secretary HODGSON. The work-rule changes included in the 1971 agreement between the UTU and the Nation's railroads did not become effective until the pay board approved the contract on January 25, 1972. In addition, some of the work-rules changes, such as the interdivisional run, are subject to further negotiations on a local basis. The details of working out the interdivisional runs work-rule changes are, in some cases, still being discussed by the parties and are yet to be implemented. Thus, there has been at this time insufficient experience with the work-rule changes to accurately determine the full impact of the productivity gains. However, the union in its presentation to the pay board indicated that a savings of some $782 million will be real

ized by the carriers through these changes. Railroad industry officials, on the other hand, put the estimated savings closer to $400 million.

LABOR-MANAGEMENT RELATIONS WITHIN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

Mr. CONTE. What are some of the new tasks in Federal labor relations that you have undertaken recently?

Secretary HODGSON. The President has amended Executive Order 11491, which governs labor-management relations in the executive branch. Those changes in the amended order which are expected to have the most impart to: (1) the option given to the charging party to file an unfair labor practice complaint rather than proceeding with a grievance on a matter pertaining to the alleged unfair labor practice, and (2) the Assistant Secretary's authority to determine whether disputed grievance matters come within the negotiated grievance-arbitration procedure.

As aggrieved parties realize they now have the choice, I anticipate that the unfair practice route will be utilized and there will be a significant, but at present an undeterminable number, of additional unfair labor practice filings in fiscal year 1973.

Additionally, a number of requests for determination of disputed grievance-arbitration matters will affect both the field and the national

office.

"HOMETOWN PLANS"

Mr. CONTE. Why were you not able to achieve the major gains you hoped for in the "hometown solutions" area?

Secretary HODGSON. The major obstacle to achieving our goals with respect to the "hometown plans," has been getting the concerned parties to come to an agreement which they can all live with. Not only are such negotiations difficult in themselves but they are time-consuming as well, and as a result we don't have as many plans in effect as we would like. Through the recently completed reorganization of the Employment Standards Administration field staff, we expect to be able to make more progress in this area.

CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY STABILIZATION COMMITTEE

Mr. CONTE. What factors are involved in determining whether to finance the Construction Industry Stabilization Committee's activities under the Economic Stabilization Act?

Secretary HODGSON. Availability of funds, the administration's position with regard to allocation of funds, and the relationships of the committee's activities to the Cost of Living Council and the Department of Labor.

Mr. CONTE. How many construction strikes have there been thus far in 1972?

Secretary HODGSON. Only 10, as of the end of March 1972, according to the FMCS.

PENSION REFORM

Mr. CONTE. What are your major legislative goals in the area of pension reform?

Secretary HODGSON. We want the Congress to enact the Employee Benefits Protection Act, which would strengthen the present Welfare

and Pension Plans Disclosure Act in many ways. It would impose a Federal standard of fiduciary responsibility on fiduciaries of both pension and welfare plans.

We also want the Congress to amend the Internal Revenue code to: Establish a minimum vesting standard for tax qualified plans; allow tax deductions for amounts which individuals set aside for retirement purposes; and give self-employed persons who establish pension plans for themselves and their employees a more generous tax deduction than they now receive.

Mr. CONTE. That is all, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. FLOOD. We will adjourn until 2 this afternoon.

AFTERNOON SESSION

EMERGENCY EMPLOYMENT ASSISTANCE

Mr. MICHEL. Mr. Secretary, when we broke this morning I had not had an opportunity to inquire about several things in the course of your testimony. There is a $250 million increase in 1973 over 1972 for the Emergency Employment Assistance Act. As I recall Mr. Lovell's response this morning to a question of the chairman, the incidence of those who may have left public service employment, and then rehired with Federal money, was something like 12 percent.

Mr. LOVELL. Yes.

Mr. MICHEL. And you felt that was a pretty good record.

Mr. LOVELL. Yes.

Mr. MICHEL. You recall that when this thing was being debated, not so much legislatively as when we had the supplemental for the money, I raised the question any number of times about the prospect of this thing happening, and hoping that you would certainly have the kind of machinery that would guard against it.

UNEMPLOYMENT PERIOD REQUIRED IF REHIRED TO FORMER POSITION

You say that one has to be unemployed for a period of 30 days to qualify.

Mr. LOVELL. Not to qualify. If they are to be recalled from their former position, they have to be out of work for 30 days.

Mr. MICHEL. I say that is pretty lenient. The program is going to be increased in fiscal year 1973 over 1972. What would be wrong with changing your rules and regulations to require, say, 60 or 90 days? Would that tend to further inhibit an agency that might be tempted to dismiss employees and then hire them back with Federal funds? Secretary HODGSON. I would like to talk about that.

Mr. MICHEL. I know you have testified that the intent of the law is to not have that happen, but the chairman indicated, and I know, it has happened. We want to see that it is kept to a minimum.

Secretary HODGSON. I am just delighted to get this kind of support. I will go into the reasons why. Because we are convinced that the overall intent of the law was to create additional employment opportunities rather than to substitute Federal pay for State pay or municipality pay for existing employed people, we adopted this 30-day rule. We also adopted it because in Senate hearings there was mention made that no money should be paid to people who had been on the payroll

of the program agents during the preceding 30 days. We felt that that last provisions was such that it amounted to law, that we had to require 30 days.

Because of the complaints that have occurred regarding our holding tight to that 30-day restriction, the very Senators who were responsible for putting that in the legislation have now written me and told me that they no longer regard that as a requirement, and have asked that it be eased, that it is not a fair requirement, and it is inappropriate for us to continue to require it. In effect, by not changing our regulations, I have disagreed with them.

I feel that we do need some sort of regulation. It needs to be definite, and apply to everybody everywhere. I am not sure that we need exactly the kind of regulation that we have now. I am willing to con sider others, if they will accomplish the same purpose. I would not suggest that we extend the present one. I do not think the 12 percent figure really indicates what you may think it indicates. It doesn't indicate people have left job A and a number of days later returned to job A. It means those who have been on a payroll of some kind somewhere at sometime and then coming back. It doesn't represent a 12-percent penetration into our barrier. It is just an handful, I would say, of penetration.

The problems that this causes cities and States I have to give some sympathy to. An example is where a city has a contract with, say, a maintenance union to maintain the schools in the city, provide custodial services, and that sort of thing. They have, under the Emergency Employment Act, supplemented that force now with additional people, say 50 for the school system, to provide additional necessary and desirable custodial services, but ones they couldn't afford before. Then they run into a budget bind, and they find they can no longer support even their previously existing services, and so they have to cut back their custodial services. So what they find themselves doing is laying off custodians who have 5, 7, or 10 years of service from their own payroll, at the same time retaining over here on Federal payroll people who have 30, 60, 90 days doing the same kind of work. The fellow who is out of work has a collective bargaining agreement that says he shall work and be laid off in accordance with his seniority. These people over here doing the same kind of work are now going to, next week when he is not there, be doing his work. The whole tradition and history of the American labor movement is against that sort of thing.

They don't like it. I am sympathetic to it, and within the constraints that we have to operate, and that is a constraint that I consider a congressionally ordained purpose of the bill for additional employment, we want to help minimize that thing as much as possible.

I would ask that you reaffirm, as I think you have done, congressional intent that we maintain barriers to caprice on the part of local program agents in laying people off one day and bringing them back the next. But I would not want to further change the capacity that we have for minimizing the solving of the problems with the cities that are represented by my last illustration. I think there is a little to be said on both sides, and I want to try to help as much as I can with it. Mr. MICHEL. Yes. My own feeling is that if we don't have at least those 30 days, and as I indicated, I would just as soon see it 60 or 90,

then we end up really, in effect, encouraging the cities particularly to engage in this kind of thing, and then we find ourselves locked into a permanent program as against one that was supposed to be of an emergency, temporary nature.

There are those who, I think, very legitimately argued, when we were considering this for the first time on the floor, that here is reveune sharing in its purest form, $1 billion of it, but I don't think that is the way we want to do it.

BREAKDOWN OF EMERGENCY EMPLOYMENT FUNDS BY STATE

How many States are participating in this emergency employment program?

Secretary HODGSON. I believe it is all the States of the Union.

Mr. LOVELL. Yes. As a matter of fact, it is not only in every State, but every geographic area of this country is covered with some sort

of allocation.

Secretary HODGSON. Including the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.

Mr. MICHEL. Can we have some kind of display in the record of roughly how much each State is getting?

Secretary HODGSON. We will give it you by money and by people. (The information follows:)

COMPLAINTS CONCERNING ADMINISTRATION OF OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY ACT

Mr. MICHEL. Let me turn, if I might, to the Occupational Safety and Health Act, because this budget request is double that of 1972. I have got to reaffirm what the chairman said in his line of questioning, that we are getting more and more pieces of correspondence, communications, and firsthand complaints. As a matter of fact, I have had several calls from harried smaller businessmen who don't have the resources, don't have time to sit down, dictate a letter, and go through