Mr. BENJAMIN. That is for overtime for what period to get up to your $33,000 to $35,000?

Mr. BOYLE. Overtime for what period to get up to $33,000? Overtime at the night rate would be $11.38 an hour plus 15 percent plus 50 percent. I would say 400 hours of overtime will be $7,000 or $8,000 more at the night rate. Some people work overtime as much as 20 hours a week. They work 40 hours and get 20 hours overtime. The 20 hours overtime equals 30 hours of straight time, so it is possible to receive as much as 70 hours pay in one week.

Mr. BENJAMIN. You are talking about all these adding up to somewhere around $33,000 to $35,000. That is if you work overtime. Mr. BOYLE. If you work overtime on the night side. Some of our people don't work all of the overtime, so it isn't everybody. However, it is a great majority of the people, because there are times, particularly when Congress is in session and, in the rush to get all of the appropriation bills reported out by the deadline we get hit with a workload that is unbelievable.

Mr. BENJAMIN. What I am getting at is this is your highest pay working nights, when the Congress is in session, and working overtime.

WEEKLY WAGE OF EMPLOYEES

Mr. BOYLE. And working overtime, yes. To look at the wages in GPO fairly you have to look at them on the basis of what is the basic hourly rate, if you are going to compare it with private industry. In fact, you have to look at it more than that. You should look at what is the weekly wage, because our people work 40 hours a week when the prevailing number of hours in the commercial printing industry is now down to 30 to 35. Our people work longer hours to get that take-home pay.

RETRAINING OF EMPLOYEES

Mr. BENJAMIN. In your statement you mention that the "GPO is making every effort to deal with the human problems stemming from the impact of new technology. To insure that positions created by new technology are made available to the current workforce, we instituted a cross-training program and stopped hiring journeymen from the outside."

How many employees have you retrained under the program since January 1, 1978? What costs are involved in conducting the training program?

Mr. BOYLE. I would have to furnish the exact numbers for the record, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BENJAMIN. I would appreciate that, and I would also appreciate you advising us of any that have left after being retrained. Mr. BOYLE. Yes, sir.

[The information follows:]

COST OF RETRAINING EMPLOYEES DUE TO NEW KEYBOARDING TECHNOLOGY GPO has retrained a total of 83 out of the 104 who entered the retraining program. The remaining 21 employees were reassigned to their former positions. While there was no additional expense for this program, it is estimated the GPO lost approximately $300,000 in productive time while these employees were being trained. However, this training would have been required for any journeyman

because there is no available source of craftsmen competent on the type of equipment presently being used. In addition employees and unions have used their own resources for retraining purposes.

Mr. BENJAMIN. At this time I would like to yield to Mr. Rudd.

JUSTIFICATION FOR PROOFREADING

Mr. RUDD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Boyle, I know that you, along with everybody else, have a lot of problems in waste and what-have-you, but I have one example here that I would like to just discuss with you for a moment. It is a 55-page publication by the Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, entitled "Chartbook on Prices and Wages."

By the way, you mentioned proofreading a little earlier.

What do you proofread for, not for substance, but for just typos and that sort of thing?

Mr. BOYLE. Not for substance. We do not do any editorial proofreading. A proofreader reads to make sure that the printed product that we are going to print is exactly the same as the copy that was submitted. In the case of a lot of congressional work which is moving through the Hill here just as fast as it is moving through GPO, our people do attempt to correct obvious errors in spelling, obvious errors in capitalization, and make it conform to the GPO Style Manual, and at times will correct a Member's punctuation, if we know that it is wrong. However, it is possible that in correcting it we may change the meaning so we try to just correct the typographical errors and make the printed product conform with the proof.

REPRINT FOR BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS

Mr. RUDD. This example here is an error that could have been avoided. This is a 55-page booklet by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The correct copy shows it was a publication of December 1978. The original printing of it was December 1979, and when the error was discovered by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, they insisted that you reprint this entire 55-page booklet because of that one error, which could have been corrected by a paste-on to correct the date from 1979 to 1978. This would have saved you a lot of effort, a lot of time, and a lot of expense to the taxpayers.

I know there must be a number of other examples like this. But the reason I bring it up is because I think it is something that could be remedied, and maybe should be by the Congress. I raise the example because I think that you must encounter this frequently. Maybe you don't, and I know that you will tell me if you don't. It could have been very easily handled if the people who requested this work had been willing to pay a little more attention to proofreading.

I wonder how often this does occur.

Mr. BOYLE. There are several facets to that problem. I am not familiar with this particular publication. If it was camera copy, furnished by the agency, and I can't say whether it was, but I say, if it was camera copy furnished by the agency, it would have been shot and printed either in GPO or under contract with one of our commercial printers, which I believe it was. The question on the

date would never have been discovered by anybody in GPO or by the contractor, and it was just shot as it was furnished to us. Mr. RUDD. I am told by your people that this was the way it was submitted, and it was not your fault.

Mr. BOYLE. The agency gave us the copy and we shot it and that is how it was delivered.

Mr. RUDD. And they insisted on a reprint of the entire thing. Mr. BOYLE. At their expense.

Mr. RUDD. Regardless of the expense.

Mr. BOYLE. At the government's expense.

Now if this had been a contractor error and our contractor had made a mistake, we would have forced the contractor to print it at his expense. If the error had been made in the GPO, and the error was determined by the agency to be unacceptable, the decision of whether to print or not to print over at our expense is a decision of the Public Printer.

There are times we print publications that have errors, or the agency has submitted copy with errors, that I take a personal interest in. I have delegated responsibility to my people to determine whether we will reprint at government expense, and the agency appeal is to the Public Printer and then to the Joint Committee on Printing.

I don't think we need changes in the law. I think the law is strong enough now to say that unless-well, let me go back a minute. We say that the date could be fixed by some simple thing like pasting over it. When you have a long run job running on high speed presses, sometimes the labor involved in making a manual correction far exceeds the cost of printing it over, so we have to take all of the costs into consideration. We look at every single one, because every time an agency brings a job back and demands that it be printed over for some reason, if it is any sizable amount of money it comes to my attention and I make the decision as to whether it should be printed over or is a usable product.

Mr. RUDD. Regardless of whose expense.

Mr. BOYLE. Regardless of whose expense. But I don't have strong grounds to stand on when the agency demands and they say, look, it is our money we are spending and we want to get a better product.

Mr. RUDD. Let's take this example. You have printed a 55-page booklet with this cover. The only error is on the cover, a change from 1979 to 1978.

Now is there any way to change that without printing the entire 55-page booklet, basing the expense that you have in mind?

ALTERNATE CORRECTION METHODS

Mr. BOYLE. Well, there is a possibility. You could black out the 1978 and stamp 1979, but now you are back to a manual process of putting them through a slow printing process to overprint a new date.

Mr. RUDD. So it would be cheaper to print the entire 55 pages

over

Mr. BOYLE. It could be. Yes, sir.

Mr. RUDD [continuing]. Than it would be to just-

Mr. BOYLE. It could be. I am not saying it would be in this instance. I would have to get an estimate of one method against the estimate of the other and determine what was the least amount of cost to the government.

Mr. RUDD. Is that what would have happened in that case? Mr. BOYLE. I would hope that is what happened.

Mr. SAYLOR. Had this been brought to our attention, sir, and Mr. Boyle mentioned he delegated it, I would have handled it, I would have gotten the two estimates and made a determination on which was less expensive to the government. In this particular case I don't know all the circumstances. Normally I would have tried to prevail upon the agency to accept the error on the cover and do nothing.

Mr. RUDD. I am told by your people that the Bureau of Labor Statistics insisted on the entire reprinting. I am not sure.

Mr. BOYLE. Could we look further into this, Mr. Rudd?
Mr. RUDD. Sure, I would appreciate it if you would.

Mr. BOYLE. I would like to look at it.

Mr. RUDD. The point I am trying to make is this: This was really caused by a lack of attention by the people who made the request, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and a little more attention to proofreading doesn't take any greater effort, and could save a major error like this.

What I am really looking for is some way to insure tighter guidelines for the people who make the request.

Mr. DEVAUGHN. This would not have been proofread in the Government Printing Office.

Mr. BOYLE. Mr. Rudd knows that. The agency says it was their

error.

Mr. RUDD. I would like to find ways to tighten up controls, and maybe this committee could help do that.

Mr. BOYLE. All right.

EXTENT OF REPRINT PROBLEM

Mr. RUDD. So that there will not be all of this wasted effort, time, and expense on something as simple as that. It sounds like it is a little nitpicking, but when you add these things up it becomes a real problem. With that in mind, let me ask you to please provide for the record a complete report on the extent of this problem. I don't know how you are going to find that out, and if it is going to cost a lot of money to do that maybe we ought to take a look at that.

Mr. BOYLE. No, we keep track of every job that has to go back to the press.

Mr. RUDD. Please include specific facts of each agency's requirements that printing be redone-we are talking about redo's nowbecause of the mistakes that they make or improper proofing on their part, so that we can get a handle on the additional cost and work that this is imposing on the Government Printing Office, and the contractors who work for you.

Can we get that?

Mr. BOYLE. Yes, sir. We will supply it for the record.
Mr. RUDD. Thank you very much.

[The information follows:]

The subject Labor Department publication consisting of a cover and 56 pages of text was submitted to the GPO on Program 2333-S as camera ready copy to print a total of 3,970 copies. Prior to the contractor shipping the completed publication, the ordering agency discovered an error in the date on the cover and ordered delivery and distribution halted and requested that the job be reprinted with corrected cover copy submitted.

GPO personnel made estimates based on overprinting, removing and replacing cover, and complete reprinting. The contractor's estimate of $955 to reprint was the least expensive method to obtain an acceptable product that would be distributed to the depository library system and be sold to the general public and private industry. In regard to the extent of the problem of reprinting because of errors caused by personnel in the ordering agency, we have on record in this Office only 5 instances of reprinting because of department errors out of 97,750 orders received and processed in fiscal year 1978.

The five specific instances of reprinting because of department errors are as follows:

1. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare brochure titled, "1979-80 H.E.W. Fellows Program." GPO Jacket 270-784.

Department error in furnished camera copy, an improperly trimmed photograph, and faulty trimming of the brochure by the contractor resulted in a reprinting. H.E.W. paid half of the reprint cost amounting to $1,280.00.

2. Library of Congress special printed cards. GPO Jacket 258-992.

Department required 60,000 cataloging cards to be reprinted because of a type size error. The error was caused because the Department had not specified the size correctly. Cost to reprint was $568.00.

3 U.S. Postal Service's Report to Congress. GPO Jacket 231-204.

Department originally had requested a certain type size and after GPO submitted proof they insisted on a different type size. Although this job was still in the proof stage, the resetting of type caused an additional $3,400.00 cost to the Government. 4. Internal Revenue Service Form 5544. GPO Jacket 263-420.

Due to an error in furnished copy, 675,000 forms plus 50 sets of reproducible proofs were reprinted at a cost of $7,254.79.

5. Public Health Service/Department of Health, Education and Welfare booklet. GPO Jacket 284-109.

After the printing of the first signature the Department submitted a change in the "Foreword." This change resulted in reprinting a 48-page signature at a cost of $501.12.

It is possible that there are other instances of reprinting because of agency error that this Office would not have on record. We do not identify jobs by title and if an agency resubmitted a publication to reprint on a new requisition we would not know it was being reprinted unless it was called to our attention. In addition to work being produced in the main plant and 6 field printing plants, we procure work on contract from the Central Office and from 14 Regional Procurement offices. Much of the work of the agencies is procured on term contracts administered by the GPO whereby the agency deals directly with our contractor and we never see the actual work in GPO.

Before any publication is reprinted at government expense or contractor's expense, the Government Printing Office determines whether the reprint is necessary or whether the product in question is usable. The final decision of the Public Printer is usually accepted by the ordering agency who can appeal to the Joint Committee on Printing if there is not agreement. We have no record of the Joint Committee overruling the decision of the Public Printer in the past year.

The possibility of errors in printing is very high because of the very nature of the printed product and the printing production process. The percentage of jobs reprinted within the government at government expense because of error is very low. Mr. BENJAMIN. I am going to give you several questions to respond to in the record. I will give it to you by number and we will provide copies of the questions. Before proceeding with those, the Public Printer does not have control over "special sales." Describe the items covered under this program and the costs involved.