Mr. CLARK, from the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare. submitted the following REPORT [To accompany H.R. 16715] The Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, to whom was referred the bill (H.R. 16715) to amend the Manpower Development and Training Act of 1962, having considered the same, reports favorably thereon and recommends that the bill do pass. BACKGROUND OF THE LEGISLATION When the Manpower Development and Training Act was passed in 1962 it was designed primarily to deal with the problems faced by the experienced worker who had been, or was about to be, displaced by technological or other economic change. The changes that have subsequently occurred in the Nation's economy, notably the substantial reduction in the unemployment rate, have required a corresponding evolution in the emphasis and direction of the training and research programs provided by the act. The 1966 amendments to MDTA do not alter the basic objectives of the act. But they do provide a needed flexibility to its programs and its administration which will permit a more effective effort in dealing with the manpower problems of the Nation in the last half of this decade problems of the disadvantaged and the hard-core unemployed and the growing problem of skill shortages in some areas and some occupations. HISTORY OF LEGISLATION H.R. 16715 passed the House by voice vote, under suspension of the rules on September 19, 1966. After brief hearings, the Subcommittee on Employment, Manpower, and Poverty of the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare on October 5, 1966, reported the bill to the full 65-010-66 committee. On October 11 the committee ordered this bill reported to the Senate. MAJOR PROVISIONS A. Selection of trainees.-The present act, in addition to calling for the Secretary of Labor to provide programs of testing, counseling, and referral to training for unemployed or underemployed persons generally, contains a specific direction that a special program be undertaken for training of young people whose educational background and work preparation have not adequately prepared them to enter the labor force. This bill amends the act by adding language directing the Secretary to formulate a program to meet the special employment needs of workers 45 years of age or more. The "older worker," the worker who is not yet old enough to retire, and yet too old to face unemployment with any real hope of finding a new job, is the victim, not so much of antagonistic prejudices, but of well-meaning, even sympathetic ignorance. On all sides, it is assumed that a worker of 45 or 50 cannot adjust to a new job, that he no longer has the physical strength to perform the same tasks he could undertake when he was 25 or 30, that his health is such that he cannot be depended upon to be a steady worker, and such ideas. There are other problems which prevent the older worker from finding a new job, and some of them may be less based on folklore and more on economic fact than those cited above. This amendment will not be a panacea for the employment problems of older workers. But it will certainly help demonstrate that the older worker is a valuable member of the labor force. In a period of growing demand for labor, the older worker, in many cases, needs but the opportunity to show that he can do a new job in order to have doors now closed begin to open for him. This amendment offers that opportunity. The act now provides not only for skills training, but also for training in basic education needs. A technically competent and bright prospective lathe operator may be unemployable or untrainable if he cannot read or write. This bill, therefore, provides for referral to training in communications and other employment skills. Excellent work is being done at Howard University and at other locations in showing that what may seem to be impenetrable ignorance and near illiteracy in a prospective worker may well be merely the result of having learned to communicate in a substantially different way than that of the prospective employer or the members of the public with whom the worker may have to deal. The term "employment skills" is intended to include skills and characteristics other than specific occupational skills which may affect an individual's employability; for example, work habits, conformity to expected standards of behavior as an employee, job finding skills, and attitudes conducive to satisfactory occupational adjustment. A new subsection is added to section 202 to provide physical examinations and minor medical treatment or prosthesis for trainees who cannot afford it and where it is not otherwise available in the community. This amendment is designed to reduce dropouts during training for reasons of health and provide minor correctional services for persons who could not otherwise pass appropriate and necessary company physical examinations after training has been completed. The committee intends that such medical services shall be furnished through agreements between the Secretary of Labor and the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, that first recourse will be to existing programs funded by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare and that, as a last resort, the Labor Department may procure such services directly where HEW is unable to provide them. Services and appliances under this provision are limited to an aggregate of $100 per trainee. B. Upgrading. One of the most useful roles MDTA can play in meeting skills shortages and in serving to combat hard-core unemployment is to make it possible for employed persons to be trained in skills beyond those utilized in their present jobs, thus enabling them to move to better jobs, and making their present jobs available for persons who have had special difficulty even entering the job market. The committee intends that an experimental program be undertaken which would include training techniques combined with personnel management practices which actively promote upgrading through delineation of skill levels and job relationships, job reengineering, and other methods of effective manpower development and utilization. The Secretary of Labor has full discretion to designate skill shortages and to formulate standards of eligibility for selection and referral to part-time training projects. The Secretary would also establish standards to assure that workers available for full-time training are not referred to part-time training with a concomitant lengthening of the training period. The bill contains two closely linked provisions which are intended to make this kind of training possible. The first authorizes an experimental program of part-time training, primarily intended for the employed in areas and occupations where there are critical skill shortages. The second provision authorizes payments not to exceed $10 per week, in lieu of any other payments under section 203, to persons selected for such training to meet the additional costs incurred in attending training. C. Training allowances.-Rigidity in the payment of training allowances has in many cases slowed down the selection of trainees, made training less desirable to those who could most profit from it, and in some areas has actually increased the cost of the program. Several amendments should make this part of the act easier to administer. First, the present act prevents the payment of training allowances to persons who have not had at least 2 years of gainful employment (with some exceptions which will be mentioned below). Since 1 year's work experience seems an adequate time for a man to learn the basic habits of work, and to find out if his previous training has in fact equipped him for an optimum role in the labor force, this bill reduces the requirement from 2 years to 1. The major exception to the "labor force attachment" mentioned above involves youths of 17 years or more who have finished or left high school. In the case of high school dropouts, the Secretary is presently required to ascertain that the local school authorities have availed themselves of all their resources, including guidance and counseling, and have concluded that the further presence of the young person in a regular school situation is simply not practicable. The Secretary is further required to wait until the young person has been out of school for an entire year. While the committee desires that the Secretary should continue to make every effort to find out if a young person cannot usefully be placed back into educational structure before referring him to MDTA training, it feels it is unnecessary and perhaps harmful to require a year's wait, in addition to this necessary screening process. There is no good reason to force a young person to wait a year and become habituated to the environment of the street corner or the back alley when he could be receiving skills training and be getting started in a trade. In addition, section 4(a)(3) of this bill provides that persons who have completed a program under the Neighborhood Youth Corps may be referred to MDTA training and paid a regular training allow ance. This bill also permits the Secretary to pay a training allowance to a person who is referred to a second course after having left or completed one, without waiting a full year, if he shall determine that there is good cause to do so. Where the trainee is precluded from using his training for reasons beyond his control, the Secretary should have this authority without being restricted by artificial waiting periods. In administering this exception, the Secretary shall take precautions to insure against the pyramiding of benefits by a trainee going from one course to another and absorbing training opportunities which should be spread among a greater number of individuals. The bill takes cognizance of cases in which an unemployed person may be so poverty-stricken that he cannot enter training at all or continue in it until he has received at least some funds to enable him, perhaps, to buy a pair of serviceable shoes, or to meet some other immediately pressing need. The bill provides, in such cases, for a limited advance payment of his training allowance, to be repaid either through deductions from subsequent allowances or through other arrangements. This provision should be construed to permit advances to be made to all persons entitled to payments as trainees regardless whether payments to such persons are technically denominated as training allowances, training incentive payments, sums necessary to defray expenses, or amounts payable to part-time trainees. This provision would remedy the problem of training personnel having to assist trainees by making small loans to meet the cost of such items as car fare, lunches, etc. Such requests have been a source of inconvenience to project personnel, and experience indicates the need of a petty cash fund to meet these small recurring needs. Procedures under this amendment should be devised to assure that funds are immediately and readily available for such expenses and that without sacrificing flexibility proper controls are instituted to protect the funds. Under present procedures, a person in receipt of an MDTA training allowance who is receiving, or whose family is receiving public assistance under the Social Security Act, will have such assistance reduced by the amount of the MDTA allowance. This has the disadvantage of removing any immediate financial incentive for entrance into training. In some instances, also, there have been situations in which communications at the local level have been faulty, and persos have been paid both MDTA allowances and public assistance benefits To meet these problems, the committee proposes that beneficiaries of Social Security Act programs be referred to training without a "training allowance" as such, but that they be given instead a modest $20 weekly incentive payment, plus expenses directly attributable to training, which shall not be considered as income for social security purposes. This would enable the welfare benefit to be continued uninterrupted, and at the same time serve the purpose of the training allowance provisions of MDTA by making it financially beneficial for persons to enter training and to start on the road to self-support. This provision does not contemplate incentive payments and expense allowances in an amount greater than any other allowances the individual would otherwise be entitled to if he were not a recipient of benefits under the Social Security Act. D. Correctional institutions.-Section 6 of this bill authorizes the Secretary of Labor to carry out, on an experimental and developmental basis, a program of training for the benefit of inmates of correctional institutions, to be carried out through agreements with Federal, State, and local penal officials, and after consultation with the appropriate area manpower training advisory committees. The committee is not yet prepared to recommend this as a permanent full-scale program, and feels that great care must be taken to insure that such training does not result in any increase in the production of goods in competition with free labor. Suggestions for special programs for parolees and probationers were not adopted since there is nothing in the act now which prevents the Secretary from referring a parolee or probationer to training. The bonding provisions of section 105 of the act which this bill extends for an additional year are designed, in part, to assist such persons. E. Administrative provisions. The present act permits the Secretary of HEW to carry out his responsibility for providing for the setting up of institutional training through agreements with appropriate education agencies, including through agreements with private educational or training institutions where such institutions can provide equipment or services not available in public institutions, "or where such institutions can, at comparable cost, (1) provide substantially equivalent training, or (2) make possible an expanded use of the individual referral method, or (3) aid in reducing more quickly unemployment or current and prospective manpower shortages." The bill, in section 5(a), eases the use of private institutions where such use can allow training to begin more quickly or be carried out more economically or more effectively. It is the intent that the Secretary of HEW make every available use of this provision to accelerate entrance into training of workers desiring training opportunities, as well as to reduce to the greatest extent possible instances of training being denied eligible applicants. Section 5(b) allows the training cost increment of research and development projects to be allocated without regard to the 10-percent matching requirement which has gone into effect at the beginning of fiscal 1967. The matching requirement, which previous amendments postponed until the beginning of this fiscal year, applied to all training costs. A very small part of the total program is carried on under title I authorizing experimental, research, and development projects. The training increment of these projects-a small part of this small part has been financed from the allotments to the several States under title II. In previous years, this has posed no problem, since the States were not contributing any portion of the direct costs. With the require |