Mr. FLOOD. We would like a further explanation of a number of things; let's begin with increases in your budget.

TRAVEL COSTS

For instance, you have a $262,000 increase for travel. Now that is up 11 percent.

Mr. MILLER. That is mainly due to, again, this case intake at the front end and the amount of travel our people have to spend in investigating the case. We had roughly on field travel an increase of from about $1.4 million to about $1.6 million. That is where the bulk of that increase comes in, at the front end of investigating cases. The more cases you get, unless they happen to be right in the same town where our office is, the more travel you get. That is where the bulk of it is.

As part of this rejuggling that I talked about to accommodate absorbing the pay increase, we cut down on some other kinds of travel. We projected some field conferences, projecting $147.000 on that. We cut that back to $125,000. We put money where we absolutely had to have it, and that was primarily in field travel.

Mr. FLOOD. Now you have a 16-percent increase for rent, communications and utilities; $280,000 increase. What does that have to do with your caseload increase?

Mr. MILLER. Communication of course is our telephone and telegraph bill by and large. The more cases you have, the more that goes up. There has also been a very substantial increase in our long-distance calls and we are participating in some studies in that connection to see whether some of that may be unnecessary and can be curtailed. We are just beginning to get into that now. Maybe we have notperhaps none of the agencies in Government have controlled that as well as they can; we are trying to do something about that.

RENTAL INCREASE

Mr. FLOOD. What about rent and utilities?

Mr. MILLER. I do not think there is that much increase in the rent figure.

Mr. FLOOD. There is 16 percent in that package.

Mr. MILLER. Is there?

I will have to turn to our Director of Administration for some explanation of that.

Mr. WRIGHT. There is an increase in the rental items covering the use of other equipment and other space.

Mr. FLOOD. You mean you are renting additional equipment?

Mr. WRIGHT. The use of, yes, sir. You remember last year we did speak about moving ahead with our program of control of caseload through the computer. We are investigating that. As Judge Goslee had indicated to you, he hopes to have his system in operation by July 1 to get a further control on that type of work.

Mr. FLOOD. Do you rent all of this?

Mr. WRIGHT. Yes, sir, we do not own any.

Mr. MILLER. I should have mentioned in that travel thing, there has been an increase in travel allowance from 10 cents to 12 cents a mile.

INCREASED REPORTING COSTS

Mr. FLOOD. All right, on page 7 of your justifications, you talk about an increased requirement of $1.8 million for your reporting costs. Mr. MILLER. Yes, sir.

Mr. FLOOD. That is resulting from Public Law 92-463?

Mr. MILLER. Right.

Mr. FLOOD. Where did you get that figure? Are you convinced that it is fully adequate?

Mr. MILLER. It may or may not be. We now understand that we will also have to cover with that the cost of expedited copy. That is to say, if we ask, or any one of the parties ask, for expedited copies, that costs a substantial additional amount to be paid to the reporter to provide that.

Now, if these individuals who can now secure Xerox kind of copies from us at cost avail themselves of asking for expedited copy, and insist on their relatively inexpensive copy, our total cost will go up enormously, their costs would not go up all that much. There will be a considerable additional expense in there. It could even amount to as much as double what we have set forth.

We are all guessing a little bit in this area; reporting contracts are just coming up, we have had no experience under this law. The $1.8 million was our best estimate.

We did not take into account the expedited copy phase of it. That may run us more.

If it happens, we will have to come back on a supplemental, I

suppose.

REGIONAL DIRECTORS

Mr. FLOOD. It appears from your justifications that your regional directors are very important to the operations of your board. Mr. MILLER. Yes, sir.

Mr. FLOOD. Briefly, what are the chief responsibilities of these people, and how much do you pay them?

Mr. MILLER. We have delegated with congressional sanction a good deal of work to the regional directors. They make our first-line decisions in all of our election cases.

Mr. FLOOD. What do you pay them?

Mr. MILLER. At the rate of a grade 16, which-I should know my Government pay tables better than I do, I guess I guess that comes to around $30,000 to $36,000. It is a very responsible position. We have asked some consideration by Civil Service for upgrading them to 17's. Mr. FLOOD. How many regions do you have?

Mr. MILLER. Thirty-one.

Mr. FLOOD. Tell us more about these people.

Mr. MILLER. They are really our first-line everything, so to speak. They really, I have said to you that all this case intake, when somebody knocks on the door, whose door do they knock on? The regional director's door and his staff office. That office does the investigating

of cases, it is those regions which are responsible for dealing, actually by themselves, with roughly 94 percent of our caseload, because they achieve settlements, withdrawals, or whatever on an informal or settled basis, cases that never go to one of our judges or come to us. The regions do that. They really do the gut work of the agency, as well as being delegated officially the authority to make the first-line decisions in representation cases. So they are the heart of the operation.

Mr. FLOOD. Suppose you develop that for the record in more detail. Mr. MILLER. Be happy to do so.

[The information follows:]

DESCRIPTION OF THE POSITION OF REGIONAL DIRECTOR

The Board has 31 regional offices through which it conducts its business. Each regional office is headed by a regional director appointed by the Board upon the recommendation of the General Counsel, and includes a regional attorney, field attorneys, field examiners, and a clerical staff. Certain of the regions have subregional offices or resident offices, in addition to the central regional office. Each subregional office is headed by an officer in charge appointed in the same manner as the regional directors. Each resident office is headed by a resident officer appointed by the General Counsel. The NLRB regional offices represent the operating arm of the Agency; they initially receive and consider all unfair labor practice and representation cases filed with the NLRB and handle to final disposition 85 to 90 percent of all cases filed.

The regional directors serve as the official representative of both the General Counsel and the Board within their respective geographic areas and have broad delegation of authority to administer the statutory powers of the General Counsel and the Board. Thus, under the general supervision of the Office of the General Counsel, the regional director in each office supervises a staff of attorneys and field examiners in the processing of representation, unfair labor practice, and jurisdictional dispute cases. He is empowered to issue notices of hearing in representation cases; issue complaints in unfair labor practice cases; conduct elections pursuant to agreement of the parties or direct election pursuant to the decisionmaking authority delegated by the Board to him under section 3(b) of the act, and issue certification of representatives or certify the results of elections where appropriate; obtain settlement of unfair labor practice charges; obtain compliance with administrative law judge, Board, and court decisions; investigate and report on, or decide, objections to elections and challenges to determinative ballots; and otherwise act in behalf of the General Counsel in discharge of his statutory and delegated functions.

In addition, the regional director may initiate and prosecute in the district courts injunctions under section 10(1) of the act. He also has authority to process petitions for unit clarification, for amendment of certification, and for rescission of a labor organization's authority to make an agreement pursuant to the proviso of section 8(a) (3).

The regional director is also responsible for the administrative management of the office and of any subregional and resident offices in his region.

Since 1961, when the regional director positions were approved at the GS-16 level, Agency case intake has risen by nearly 100 percent-from 23.000 in fiscal 1961 to over 41,000 in fiscal 1972. This volume, coupled with increased complexity in the nature of cases and cutbacks in the manpower ratio, has added enormously to the responsibilities of regional directors and the constant pressures under which they operate. The NLRB's traditional emphasis on voluntary settlement of cases in the interest of good labor-management relations is now also critically important in terms of coping with the record caseload. In fiscal 1972. some 23.954 unfair labor practice cases were closed by regional offices, rendering formal decisions unnecessary. In addition, the regional offices conduct about 9.300 representation elections a year in which more than half a million employees exercis their free choice by secret ballot.

ENFORCEMENT PROCEDURE

Mr. FLOOD. Of course we know that the orders of the board are not self-enforcing. Suppose you outline for us briefly the enforcement procedures?

Mr. MILLER. Neither the orders of our judges nor the Board have any legal teeth in them. If somebody decides to ignore them, we have to go into the circuit court of appeals to enforce them. That is the route to effective enforcement.

About 60 percent, I think that figure is still roughly right-
Mr. NASH. Fifty to sixty.

Mr. MILLER. Fifty to sixty percent of our cases go that route. We have made some, we are proud of, some better timetables that we have been able to achieve there. I turn it over to Pete, who is largely responsible for it.

Mr. NASH. Basically, after a Board decision, the case is referred back to the regional office for voluntary compliance. In roughly 40 to 50 percent of the cases the decision of the Board is complied in by the parties on a voluntary basis. Those which are not (and we have a rough time target of about 30 days for the region to obtain that kind of compliance) are referred back into our Enforcement Division in Washington, which comes under my responsibility.

Mr. FLOOD. Do you keep a calendar on those cases?

Mr. NASH. Yes, we keep a calendar on those cases. The regions attempt to obtain compliance; if they are unable to do so, they send the case to us. Within a few days those cases are assigned, a petition for enforcement is filed in the appellate court, and then we go through the normal appellate court schedule.

Mr. FLOOD. What is the appellate court?

Mr. NASH. The appellate court within the circuit in which the unfair labor practice was committed.

Mr. FLOOD. That would be the U.S. circuit court?

Mr. NASH. Circuit court, right.

We then go through the normal briefing schedule, argument, and, hopefully, an appellate court decision in which the Board

Mr. FLOOD. The decision of the circuit court can be appealed by petitioner to the Supreme Court?

Mr. NASH. That is correct, or by us on a certiorari basis.

Further, if there is not compliance with the circuit court order, we go back to the circuit court for a contempt adjudication.

"SAVINGS" BUDGETED

Mr. FLOOD. On page 16 of your justification, you state you have "budgeted the saving of $655,000 in addition to the $2.097 million expected to be saved by management improvement in 1973.”

What does that mean?

Mr. MILLER. We are talking about, I suppose, such an enormous number of things that it is very difficult to lay them all out to you. We have a fairly sophisticated set of management controls, I think, in this agency, in terms of timetables, when we expect things to be done, budgeting our own time, budgeting the time all throughout the