the programs for their attainment. The subcommittee recommends among such standards maximum unemployment of 3 percent by January 1, 1968. Annual and longer range economic goals should be established and programs and policies undertaken or proposed for their accomplishment (pp. 38-41). To accomplish these goals, a more flexible method of varying tax levels must be developed and the coordination between fiscal and monetary policies improved. Alternative methods of fulfilling these policy needs are discussed (pp. 45-47). MAKING EMPLOYMENT AND MANPOWER POLICY 2. Improvements in the mechanisms by which employment and manpower policies are formulated should be made by executive action. The subcommittee endorses the leadership role of the Secretary of Labor in manpower policy prescribed by title I of the Manpower Development and Training Act. Coordination of manpower efforts within and between departments should be improved. Executive machinery should be developed by the President for better coordinating the manpower activities of all Federal departments and agencies. The local Manpower advisory committee established under the Manpower Development and Training Act should be expanded to every major labor market and broadened to encompass representatives of each public and private agency in the community with substantial manpower interests. Similar committees should be established at the State level with representation from each local council as well as State and Federal manpower officials. Regional manpower councils should be established under the auspices of the Secretary of Labor with representation from Federal manpower agencies and State manpower councils. Employment policies designed to affect the level of employment and manpower policies concerned with manpower development and placement should be better integrated and coordinated. The mechanism for coordination is an administrative responsibility but possible alternatives are suggested (pp. 41-45). JOB CREATION 3. An aggressive expenditure policy should be adopted to marshal idle manpower and other resources in an attack on accumulating unmet public needs. The recent tax cut has given a substantial boost to the private sector of our economy. In addition, Federal expenditures must increase by at least an average of $5 billion a year to provide enough demand to keep pace with labor force growth and productivity improvements (p. 40). Present and potential cuts in defense spending will also release additional funds which can be reallocated to needed public investments. The confluence of idle resources and unmet needs is a rare opportunity for the exercise of imaginative public policies. The public investment programs recommended have high priorities. Manpower and other resources are readily available for their accomplishment without depriving other priority goals, either public or private, and are well within the scope of expenditures needed in order to maintain adequate demand (pp. 47-49). 4. The accelerated public works program should be extended, expanded, and made permanent to alleviate chronic deficiencies in the economic base of distressed areas while increasing employment op portunities everywhere (pp. 49-50). A special program of direct employment should be undertaken in poverty-stricken rural and urban areas which will permit the hard-core unemployed to work on projects which will alleviate the physical deficiencies of their own environments (pp. 58-60). Other expenditure programs should include education, urban renewal, public housing, an improved transportation system, resource conservation, continuing highway construction, elimination of air and water pollution, and similar pressing public needs (pp. 54-58). 5. A consistent philosophy of what area redevelopment is and should accomplish is needed. Rigid adherence to labor market areas and single counties should be modified so that assistance will be more in accord with economic realities in each redevelopment area. DEFENSE EXPENDITURES 6. Impending reductions in the levels of defense expenditures require: (a) Early warning from the Defense Department of impending contract cancellations and base closures. (b) Increased community and industrial planning for conversion from defense to civilian enterprise. (c) Special Federal adjustment assistance to help workers, communities, and industries adjust to abrupt shifts in military contracts. (d) Dispersion of defense and space research and technology to civilian industry in order to stimulate the creation of new civilian enterprise and employment. (e) Adequate planning for programs to ease the economic impact of partial or complete disarmament. In addition, studies should be undertaken of the manpower implications of the defense and space effort. These should include studies of the social and economic impact of selective service, the interrelationships of manpower utilizing Federal programs and the role of armed services skill training as a training resource (pp. 60–66). UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE 7. The unemployment insurance system should be strengthened on a national basis to make it more effective as an automatic stabilizer and to provide greater income protection for the unemployed (pp. 66-67). SPECIAL GROUP PROBLEMS 8. The youth provisions of the Economic Opportunity Act should be adopted as a substantial attack on the youth unemployment problem. In addition, Federal grants should be available to local governments and private groups for development of work-study programs to aid the school-to-work transition of the high school dropout (pp. 67 69). 9. A special older worker allowance program is recommended to provide early retirement as a last resort for the displaced worker of long labor market attachment who is unable to find a new role in the economy (pp. 69–70). 10. Federal fair employment practices legislation is necessary to remove discrimination from among the many other employment disadvantages of minority groups (pp. 70-72). 11. Programs to rehabilitate the handicapped and public welfare recipients should be expanded (pp. 73-75). EDUCATION 12. A Federal grant program should be undertaken to aid school districts in the most deprived neighborhoods in providing not only equal educational opportunity but superior schools capable of compensating for environmental deficiencies (pp. 79-81). 13. Free public education should be extended to include vocational and technical schools, junior colleges, and the first 2 years of college so that up to 14 years of free public education is universally available. Scholarship and loan programs should be expanded to eliminate financial standing as an obstacle to higher education (pp. 77-79, 81-82). 14. Adult education opportunities should be available in every community to allow adults to make up for past educational deficiencies as well as to guard against future displacement by continual upgrading of their skills and education (pp. 86-87). 15. The Manpower Development and Training Program should be encouraged and its funds augmented to better meet its responsibilities Particular stress should be given to encouragement of on-the-job training. The Appropriations Committees are urged not to further delay appropriating supplemental Manpower Development and Training Act funds promised for this fiscal year, the lack of which is presently restraining this important program. 16. Workers whose skills are inadequate or threatened by obsolescence due to technological change should be retrained prior to unemployment wherever possible. The U.S. Employment Service should be given funds to make tuition grants for vocational and technical education to encourage part-time skill training for those employed but in danger of unemployment. Similar assistance should be available to unemployment insurance recipients. The latter should be encouraged to use periods of temporary idleness to improve their skills and prepare for reemployment. A training incentive should be available as a supplement to unemployment insurance payments to compensate for the added out-of-pocket costs of training and to encourage recipients to use periods of temporary idleness to improve their skills and prepare for reemployment. States should amend any unemployment insurance regulations which impede the retraining of recipients. The Employment Service should also be empowered to require retraining as a condition of receiving unemployment compensation for those whose jobs have permanently disappeared or whose skills are inadequate or obsolete (pp. 91-92). 17. Federal agencies employing the types of skills which can be developed through apprenticeship and on-the-job training should undertake such training. Government contractors employing such skills should be encouraged and, if necessary, required to undertake on-the-job training and, for the crafts, apprentice training to the full extent of the apprentice-journeyman ratios established by labormanagement agreement or other appropriate levels established by industry studies. Research efforts in the apprenticeship and on-the job training fields should be augmented. Alternative methods of providing incentives to employers to increase their on-the-job training efforts should be carefully explored (pp. 84-86). U.S. EMPLOYMENT SERVICE 18. The U.S. Employment Service should be strengthened and furnished with adequate funds to employ well-trained employment counselors who can concentrate on individual problems of the unemployed and guide and motivate them to useful employment (pp. 92-97). 19. The experience rating provisions of unemployment insurance should be adjusted to reward employers who agree to list all job openings with the public employment service. Listing should be compulsory for Government contractors (pp. 92-97). 20. As soon as the $4 million relocation allowance research and demonstration projects authorized under the 1963 Manpower Development and Training Act amendment produce sufficient experience, the Secretary of Labor should report to Congress with recommendations for an effective permanent program to aid labor mobility (pp. 97-98). 21. A nationwide job information exchange network should be established using the most up-to-date data storage and retrieval methods. The Department of Labor should study the use of such data retrieval systems for the processing and analysis of manpower data as well (pp. 97-99). COMMISSION ON TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE 22. A special commission should be appointed to study past, present, and future impacts of technological change upon the economy and upon employment. The precise structure and authority of this commission is now under consideration by the subcommittee and its recommendations will be issued in a separate report. 23. A number of research and statistical needs are listed which should receive the attention of governments and academic manpower researchers (pp. 98-99). LABOR-MANAGEMENT RELATIONS AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE 24. Management and labor should increase their efforts to work out equitable measures for adjustment to technological and economic change. Seniority systems should be carefully studied to assure that their impact is equitable and that those least able to adjust do not bear the burden of displacement. Manpower profile studies should be undertaken by management and labor in every major industry to project future labor requrements, determine likely attrition rates, and work out adjustments over time rather than under crisis conditions. Pension fund records offer an untapped data resource for this purpose. Technical assistance could be made available from the Department of Labor but these studies should be made by the parties directly concerned (pp. 101–102). The body of this report briefly traces the development of manpower policy in the United States, explores in detail the dimensions of the Manpower Revolution, appraises the adequacy of existing programs, and describes in greater detail the subcommittee's recommendations for a comprehensive employment and manpower policy. II. THE DEVELOPMENT OF EMPLOYMENT AND MAN POWER POLICY IN THE UNITED STATES A. DEFINITIONS OF EMPLOYMENT AND MANPOWER POLICY Employment policy, as the term is used in this report, refers to those policies designed to influence the overall level of employment in the economy. Manpower policy relates to the development of manpower resources and the matching of available manpower with the available jobs. Policy implies more than the existence of programs and practices which have some impact on the problem at hand. A policy requires the explicit recognition of goals and the formulation of a coherent program for realization of those goals. The Employment Act of 1946 established the basis for an employment policy in the United States, but little has been done subsequently to give meaning to the act. At no time prior to 1961 can the United States be said to have had a real manpower policy. B. HISTORY OF EMPLOYMENT AND MANPOWER POLICY IN THE UNITED STATES Until the First World War, immigration brought to our shores a continuing flood of raw manpower, some of it equipped with skills important to the development of the country. Other workers acquired skills in a hit-or-miss fashion on the job. Always, however, the United States depended heavily upon Europe for its nucleus of highly skilled manpower. Universal free public education was provided by the States, but primarily because of our belief in the need for an enlightened electorate in a democracy. Education was not looked upon as a means for developing the Nation's manpower resources. Just as manpower development was left to chance, so was the level of employment. Unemployment, like the weather, was considered transitory and self-correcting in the market process. But the 1930's destroyed forever the sanguine expectation that full employment was normal and unemployment only a periodic phenomenon. The depression of the thirties dramatized the tragic social costs of mass unemployment. The Nation was compelled to embark upon policies and programs designed to put those able and willing back to work. The administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first to address itself to unemployment as a national problem and to its alleviation as a Federal responsibility. Yet, in retrospect, the New Deal measures which seemed so revolutionary at the time were inadequate considering the magnitude of the problem. The unemployment rate was gradually retrieved from the depths of 25 percent of the labor force to which it had plunged between 1929 and 1933, but not until 1941 did unemployment fall below 10 percent. 7 |