86 percent of these employees were covered by negotiated agreements, an increase of 9 percent over the previous year. At the State and local levels a total of 4.3 million employees, or 50 percent, belong to employee organizations as reported by a recent Bureau of the Census publication. The report also stated that of the 78,268 recognized jurisdictions whose employees are eligible for union membership, 19,547 operate with collective bargaining agreements or memoranda of understanding with employee organizations. Public Law 93-360, effective August 25, 1974, included private nonprofit hospitals, nursing homes, and other health-care facilities under the jurisdiction of the National Labor Relations Act and the LaborManagement Relations Act. NEED FOR ADDITIONAL POSITIONS The budget estimate for fiscal year 1976 includes an additional 76 permanent positions which are urgently needed to support a substantial increase in the workload of the Service. In addition, we are requesting 50 part-time positions required for appointment to boards of inquiry to serve in specific health-care cases. The additional positions are needed by the Service due to the increased workload attributable to several factors: the current economic instability and its impact on labor-management relations; a new program of mandatory mediation in the health-care industry; the critical nature of negotiations in energy, food and construction industries; and the accelerated collective bargaining activity in the pubic sectors. A more detailed explanation of our staffing requirements is shown in the justification material beginning on page 15. The fiscal year 1976 estimate includes a total appropriation of $18,250,000, an increase of $2,305,000 over the amount available in fiscal year 1975. Of this increase, $1,363,000 is for personnel compensation and $942,000 is for supporting costs. Additional details of financial requirements are included in the justifications beginning on page 23. The decision to seek additional manpower and funds came, Mr. Chairman, only after a thorough review of our current activities and our future responsibilities, particularly in the area of fulfilling duties assigned us under Public Law 93-360. RESPONSIBILITIES UNDER PUBLIC LAW 93-360 Prior to the new law, just 730 private profitmaking hospitals with 100,000 employees were included under NLRA jurisdiction, and the FMCS was not required, as it is now, to take part in disputes involving those institutions and their unions. With the passage of Public Law 93-360, an additional 3,300 private nonprofit hospitals with a million and a half employees, as well as 18.000 nursing homes and 2,000 health-related facilities employing 700,000 persons, were placed under the jurisdiction of the NLRB and the Service. Under that unique legislation, the FMCS is mandated to work with the parties toward achieving a settlement through mediation. In addition, the Service has the obligation to determine whether a board of inquiry should be appointed if there is a likelihood of a strike, and if such a strike could substantially interrupt the delivery of health care. Little accurate data were available to calculate the additional burden that the Service would bear under Public Law 93-360. Initially, we estimated that some 750 contracts would be negotiated in the first year under the act. Our experience now shows that the number will be well above 1,500, or double the initial estimate. This figure is certain to increase rapidly in the immediate future because of the wave of successful organizing campaigns that have been instituted by a number of unions among health-care employees. ECONOMIC UNCERTAINTIES Economic uncertainties continue to cloud the collective bargaining scene. The ending of controls in 1974 brought a record-breaking wave of work stoppages as workers acted to catch up with income lost through inflation during the period of controls. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that we had 5,900 strikes during 1974, the largest number ever for a single year. The short duration of most of those strikes, coupled with the fact that many of them involved relatively small units of employees substantially lessened their impact. HIGHEST CASELOAD IN FMCS HISTORY The fiscal year 1974 caseload was the highest in FMCS history. This was expected to be such a year due to decontrols, inflation and other factors. Our present trends show that the fiscal year 1975 caseload will exceed the previous year. This indicates that the increased activity in labor-management relations is expected to continue in fiscal year 1976, particularly in view of the heavy schedule of negotiations that are on the agenda. MAJOR CONTRACT EXPIRATIONS Beginning with the expiration of the U.S. Postal Service contract on July 27, a steady stream of major labor-management agreements will require renegotiation through fiscal year 1976. To cite some primary examples: Contracts affecting union-represented workers in the transportation equipment industry, the master freight agreement covering 460,000 drivers who are members of the Teamsters union, and contracts in the electrical machinery industry including the pact between General Electric and unions representing its employees, will be renegotiated. Bargaining in fiscal year 1976 will also affect some 220,000 employees in the apparel industry, 200,000 in construction, 140,000 in the food industry, and nearly 100,000 in the rubber industry. Contracts will be renegotiated for more than 2 million workers just in those units involving 1,000 or more union-represented employees. And that figure does not include additional hundreds of thousands of public employees, primarily at the State and local level, whose current contracts will come due or who will be seeking initial agreements with management. CRITICAL INDUSTRIES Continuing inflation, coupled with rising unemployment and other tumultuous economic conditions, has made collective bargaining particularly tender and potentially volatile in certain critical industries. In recognition of this, the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service has devoted a great deal of its resources to assisting the parties in the energy, construction and food industries. Our agency is working closely with the recently established Collective Bargaining Committee in Construction, which is chaired by Secretary of Labor Dr. John Dunlop, and on which I am privileged to serve as a committee member. More than 3,000 agreements will be renegotiated in some 600 communities in this key industry this year alone. We have also worked in close harmony with the Joint Labor-Management Committee of the Retail Food Industry which recently adopted a 10-point program keyed to maintaining the best possible relations during contract negotiations. In the energy-related area of industrial relations, scores of contracts are due to expire in the electric utility industry, the nationwide contracts involving nearly a half million members of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters must be renegotiated in 1976, and restlessness continues to exist among more than 100,000 independent owneroperators of over-the-road trucks. ESTABLISHMENT OF REGION EIGHT In order to provide more efficient service to the labor-management community, the budget request before you contains a program to establish an eighth region for the FMCS. The original boundaries of the agency were drawn to provide a balance of the workload reflected in the number and size of labor-management contracts throughout the Nation. In 1947, FMCS started with 12 regions. The boundaries were realined during the 1950's, and five regional offices were closed. No regional office realinement has occurred during the past 18 years. An imbalance has developed with respect to region 7, creating a particular concern for the increased workload and the geographic area embraced by that western region. As now constituted, that region encompasses more than 50 percent of the Nation's land area, spreading from Hawaii and Alaska east and south to Colorado and New Mexico. The caseload of the region 7 mediators in the critical health-care, food, energy, and construction industries has multiplied greatly in the past few years, and is expected to continue its rise. The enormous geographic area, together with the large volume of cases, has hampered efforts to maintain efficient administration. I feel it is essential that the existing region 7 be divided and that a new region 8, with headquarters in Seattle, Wash., be established. APPROPRIATION REQUEST Mr. Chairman, the appropriation request of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service of 1976 represents the essential needs of an agency that is dedicated to promoting and maintaining labor-management peace in a vibrant free economy. The estimate for the transition quarter, July 1, 1976, through September 30, 1976, includes a total of 575 permanent and 70 part-time positions and an appropriation of $4,800,000. The number of positions and funds for this period will support the activities and workload at the same level as for fiscal year 1976. The distribution of positions and funds is included beginning on page 7 of the submission for the transition quarter. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the opportunity to appear here and discuss with you the workload and the needs of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service. [Biographical sketches follow:] BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF W. J. USERY, JR., NATIONAL DIRECTOR W. J. Usery, Jr., was nominated by President Nixon as Director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service on February 15, 1973. On March 14, 1973, the Senate unanimously eonfirmed the nomination, and Mr. Usery took office March 29, 1973. President Nixon, on January 5, 1974, named Mr. Usery to be Special Assistant to the President for labor relations matters. In this position, Mr. Usery was given the responsibility for all labor relations matters, specifically including those concerning the production, delivery, and dispersion of energy fuels and power. As Special Assistant to the President, he coordinates the Government's mediation and other labor-management relations activities involving the public and private sectors of the economy, including airlines and railroads, Federal, State, and local governments. He is also responsible for making recommendations for the systematic development of long-range governmental programs to promote labor-management peace. As Director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, he is in charge of the agency's activities in providing mediation assistance to labor and management in the resolution of disputes. He directs activities authorized under title II of the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947, which calls upon the FMCS to prevent or minimize interruptions of the free flow of commerce growing out of labor-management disputes and to assist the parties in the settlement of disputes through the use of mediation and conciliation. The FMCS is also responsible for carrying out portions of Executive Order 11491, as amended, relating to the resolution of collective bargaining disputes in the Federal service. Mr. Usery served as Assistant Secretary of Labor for Labor-Management Relations from February 1969 until he became Director of the FMCS in 1973. As Assistant Scretary, he was the Government's chief mediator in negotiations involving the Nation's railroads and airlines. He was active in mediating disputes arising from legislation affecting equal employment opportunity. Mr. Usery serves as a member of the National Commission for Industrial Peace. He is chairman of the Working Party on Industrial Relations under the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). From 1956 to 1969, Mr. Usery was grand lodge representative of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), AFL-CIO, and participated in most of the national labor-management negotiations in the aerospace industry, frequently serving as chairman of the union's negotiating committee. From 1961 to 1967, he was the industrial union representative on the President's Missile Sites Labor Committee at the Kennedy Space Center and at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. Born in Hardwick, Ga., on December 21, 1923, Mr. Usery attended Georgia Military College from 1938 to 1941, and Mercer University in 1948-49. He received the Distinguished Alumni Award from Georgia Military College in 1971 for his work in labor-management relations. He served in the U.S. Navy from 1943 to 1946. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF JAMES F. SCEARCE Mr. James F. Searce has had a long and varied career in labor-mangement relations, including work in dispute settlement. Before being appointed Deputy National Director, he was adviser on labor matters to the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Between 1969 and 1973, he was Special Assistant to the then Assistant Secretary of Labor for Labor-Management Relations, W. J. Usery, Jr., who is now Director of the FMCS. He was involved as a mediator in the great majority of railroad industry negotiations during that era, a number of airline industry disputes, special problems such as the great postal strike of 1970, and the resolution of dispute involving civil rights and labor relations such as the "hometown solutions" in the construction industry. His background includes work as a craftsman in the construction industry and in industrial relations management in the same industry; he was industrial and public relations manager for Douglas Aircraft in the Southeastern United States (before its merger with McDonnell) and was with NASA for 3 years as industrylabor relations adviser at Kennedy Space Center during the construction and activation of the Merritt Island launch area and the Apollo launch facility. He was a member of the President's Missile Sites Labor Relations Committee and has been involved in a variety of organizations intended to improve the quality of collective bargaining. A graduate of the University of North Carolina and later Florida State University, Mr. Scearce also is a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF HERBERT FISH GOLD Mr. Fishgold has been general counsel of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service since September 1973. In addition to being the chief legal officer of the Service in all matters of labor relations and collective bargaining, he is also the FMCS liaison for congressional and legislative affairs. Mr. Fishgold began his legal career in labor relations in October 1967 as an attorney in the Appellate Court Branch, Office of the General Counsel of the NLRB. He was responsible for preparing and conducting litigation in the U.S. courts of appeals involving the enforcement or review of Board orders. From November 1971, until being appointed general counsel of FMCS, Mr. Fishgold served as counsel for labor relations in the Office of the Solicitor, U.S. Department of Labor. In that capacity, he served primarily as legal counsel to the Assistant Secretary for Labor-Management Relations in the operation of the Executive Order 11491, Federal labor-management relations program. Mr. Fishgold was graduated magna cum laude in economics from the College of the City of New York, where he was a Phi Beta Kappa. He received his law degree at Yale University, specializing in labor law. Following law school, Mr. Fishgold was the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship, attending Sydney University Law School in Australia, where he received the master of laws degree with top honors, receiving the university medal for best thesis submitted. Mr. Fishgold resides with his wife and son in Alexandria, Va. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF S. P. LEJKO S. P. Lejko became Director of Administration, Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, in December 1972, after having served as Associate Director of Administrative Management since May 1971. In this position he is responsible for directing the administrative activities of the Service. His prior Federal career service includes about 10 years with NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C. He served in various administrative positions includ |