The Council suggested that permitting completion probably would result in significant benefits to the economy and to the mail user. CWPS urged the Commission to undertake a thorough review of several issues related to the merits of retaining the Private Express Statutes. The Commission chose not to pursue these issues.

On April 27 the Administration requested several amendments to the Council on Wage and Price Stability Act (PL 93-387 as amended by PL 94-78.) You very graciously incorporated these changes into S.1542 when you introduced it.

However, since that time it has become apparent that the Council would be best served if two of the proposed amendments -- one dealing with the deputy director and one dealing with the authorization level were altered. We would like the other sections retained as introduced. Following are our comments on each proposed change:

While we originally requested in Section 1 that section 2(c) of the Act be amended to eliminate the position of deputy director, we now believe that this position should be retained. When the director is not available, authority will be delegated to the deputy director for the Council's day-to-day operations. It may also be helpful to have a deputy when conducting the Council's business with labor, industry, and other government agencies. Since one of the Council's senior staff members will be designated as its deputy director, the President's reorganization plan to cut the administrative staff by 30 percent will not be affected. The bill reported out by the House Banking Committee does not delete the deputy director's position.

Section 2 of S.1542 clarifies the Council's authority to collect data relating to "inventories, shipments, orders, and other similiar aspects of business operations" along with data "relating to wages, costs, productivity, prices, sales, profits, imports and exports. While we have collected data on inventories, shipments and orders in the past, some organizations have questioned whether the absence of these words means we do not have this authority. Even though we believe we do have this power, we would like these words added to avoid any potential problems and/or Court challenges.

Section 2 also makes it clear that we can resort to the Courts for enforcement of our authority to require periodic reporting as well as our authority to subpoena data. Some people have argued that we now have

the authority only to enforce subpoenas and, while again we disagree with this interpretation, we would like to add this provision to eliminate any potential problems.

Section 3 of S.1542 amends sections 4(f)(1) and 4(f)(2) to make it clear that voluntarily submitted data has the same amount of protection and confidentiality as Council-subpoenaed data. Adding this provision will make the day-to-day operations of the Council much more efficient, since we rely so heavily on voluntarily submitted data..

Section 3 also amends section 4(f) of the Act by strengthening its language requiring the Council to maintain the confidentiality of trade secrets and other business information submitted to it. These changes would make it clear that where the Council determines information submitted to it is, in fact, confidential business information, that information cannot be disclosed to anyone outside the Council or Council staff. We feel this provision will allay the fears of some persons who have expressed concern about our ability to keep requested information confidential, and we urge that this amendment be adopted.

The Administration also requested that section 4 of the Act be amended to increase the Council's authorization to $2.5 million. In view of the President's reorganization proposals to keep our spending at its current level, we believe that the authorization figure should be reduced to $2,210,000, which is identical to the figure in the house bill.

Section 5 would extend the Council to September 30, 1979, and we support this extension.

Please let me know if I can provide further information or assistance.

Sincerely,.

Barry P. Bosworth
Director

The CHAIRMAN. Our next witness is Andrew J. Biemiller, Director of the Department of Legislation, AFL-CIO, and a distinguished former Congressman from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

STATEMENT OF ANDREW J. BIEMILLER, DIRECTOR, DEPARTMENT OF LEGISLATION, AFL-CIO; ACCOMPANIED BY RUDOLPH OSWALD, DIRECTOR, DEPARTMENT OF RESEARCH

Mr. BIEMILLER. I have a fairly short statement, Mr. Chairman. I am accompanied by Dr. Rudolph Oswald, who is the director of the Department of Research of the AFL-CIO, and who is also a Milwaukean, I might add.

The CHAIRMAN. That explains his good judgment and his good looks. Mr. Biemiller, you make a very strong and emphatic criticism of the Council on the grounds it has been antiunion, and probusiness, biased, it has hurt working people.

We now have a new administration, one supported by the AFL-CIO. They have just announced a new Director of the Council on Wage and Price Stability, we heard him this morning, Mr. Barry Bosworth. Does that make any difference?

Mr. BIEMILLER. Dr. Oswald.

Mr. OSWALD. Senator, the staff of the Council remains, it has been 7 months since the new administration has taken office, and we see no change in the direction during the 7 months of the Council's activities.

We feel that the operations would only be resolved in line with some of the earlier questioning by both you and Senator Sarbanes if the whole operation were integrated into the Council of Economic Advisers.

The CHAIRMAN. You say 7 months, but of course, as with any new administration, there are carryovers. Mr. Bosworth is just up for nomination this morning, he hasn't taken over yet. If he is acted on, it will be a few weeks before he can take over. So it is hard to blame him. It is hard to blame the administration. I notice you did refer to an action they took on June 14, on tax credits for home insulation, which you feel is a serious mistake. But you feel that the staff is the same, the directions are the same, and you are just against the existence of this kind of agency, even though they may have a somewhat more enlightened or less antiunion leadership. Is that correct? Dr. OSWALD. The attack on the OSHA standard on cotton dust took place

The CHAIRMAN. I agree with that. I am saying that took place under a carryover leadership.

Dr. OSWALD. And I did not see any rejection of that staff up to this point by the administration or any rejection of the staff's activities. I would hope that we would not see that type of activity. Some of the testimony of Mr. Bosworth is unclear in terms of where the Council is going to go. Some of his earlier testimony before this committee last December did cause us some problem, in that his testimony indicated that the major problem was one of reduction in wage rates.

In testifying, if I recall correctly, he said "An adjustment of wage increases for trend productivity implies that prices are rising faster than the standard union labor costs, 7 percent versus 5 percent, thus

we should be able to anticipate some improvement of 5 to 6 percent in inflation. The additional progress can only be achieved through a corresponding reduction in wage rates."

The CHAIRMAN. Wage rates did he say, or wage costs?

Mr. OSWALD. Wage rates. And we are concerned if that is the direction he feels that the Council has to go. We did not appear before this committee in opposition to Mr. Bosworth's appointment, but we are concerned with the actions that the Council has been taking, and we are concerned with its emphasis on only so-called wage-price policy and not on full employment.

The CHAIRMAN. I notice that you do propose that the functions of the Council be folded into the Council of Economic Advisers. You said that would coordinate and improve economic analysis.

President Carter has gone part way already with that view, as you know. His reorganization names the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors to be Chairman of the Council on Wage and Price Stability.

Given that new interrelationship between the Councils, do you still oppose extension of the Council?

Dr. OSWALD. Yes. We feel these functions could be undertaken within the purview of the Council of Economic Advisers in terms of meeting the goals of full employment, stable purchasing power, and increased production. And within that requirement the Council of Economic Advisers has considered inflationary aspects as well as employment aspects.

We feel that is properly within the purview of the Council of Economic Advisers and if anything, these functions should be expanded by a further planning operation, as proposed in the Humphrey-Hawkins full employment legislation.

The CHAIRMAN. I would like to hear some of your views on labormanagement cooperation, to help break the inflationary spiral.

Mr. Biemiller, you spoke with some feeling about how strongly your membership is concerned with inflation, it robs them of increases in their pay, and you pointed out inflation has eroded any real increase in weekly earnings over the last 9 years.

Can groups like the one that Mr. Meany and Mr. Jones cochair come up with agreed upon ways to moderate inflation in your view?

Dr. OSWALD. The committee has been meeting, it met yesterday, to review some of the issues. None of these are simple issues, and I think that what it indicates is the desire of the leadership in the private sector to try and bring its efforts to analyze the issues of inflation to the attention of leading members of the administration. And I think that these attempts indicate their desire to derive policies to try to attack the question of inflation.

The CHAIRMAN. Did this group discuss COWPS and its extension, the Meany-Jones group?

Dr. OSWALD. They have been addressing more the specific factors dealing with inflation, such as food price increases, medical care price increases.

The CHAIRMAN. Was there any discussion of COWPS?

Dr. OSWALD. To the best of my knowledge, no.

The CHAIRMAN. You expressed concern in your statement that the staff of the Council make their own decisions about what they are going to study without any real guidance or real direction.