to make adjustments in pay through bonus legislation.55 In the bonus legislation for the fiscal year 1919,56 Congress made some effort to distinguish between the old employees and the war workers. The bonus, which was then generally $120 a year, was not allowed "to employees paid from any lump sum appropriation in bureaus, divisions, commissions, or any other governmental agencies or employments created by law since January first, nineteen hundred and sixteen." In organizations in which the bonus was allowed, employees who had entered the service since June 30, 1917, or employees whose salaries had been increased by more than $200 since June 30, 1917, could be paid the bonus only if and when the head of the organization certified that the employees were entitled to it by reason of ability and qualifications "personal to such employees." In the legislation making appropriations for the fiscal year 1920 57 the amount of the bonus was raised to $240. Employees of the agencies created since January 1, 1916, were again excluded, except that employees of the Bureau of War Risk Insurance were granted a bonus of $120. Employees of the Tariff Commission were taken out from under the exception by the legislation for the fiscal year 1921.58 In the act for the fiscal year 1922 59 the employees 55 * In a footnote on page five of the Closing Report of the Wage and Personnel Survey conducted by the Personnel Classification Board, the following information is set forth: "It is interesting to observe that the same device had twice been employed as an emergency measure about 65 years earlier to compensate for the high cost of living in Washington. Sec. 2 of the act of Aug. 31, 1852 (10 Stat. 97), granted an increase of 20 per cent to clerks, messengers, watchmen, and laborers in the departmental service receiving not over $1,200, and 10 per cent to those receiving over $1,200 but less than $1,600, with the exception that no salary was to exceed $1,600. As to clerks, this measure was replaced by other provisions of the acts of March 3, 1853, and April 22, 1854. . . . The 20 per cent increase for messengers, laborers, and watchmen was, however, continued for a short time (sec. 2, act of April 22, 1854, 10 Stat. 276), until rates of compensation were specifically fixed for these classes of positions. See, for example, act of August 18, 1856 (11 Stat. 145), fixing rates for 'principal messengers' at $840, 'other messengers and assistant messengers' at $700, and 'laborers' at $600." 56 40 Stat. L., 757, 814. 57 40 Stat. L., 1213, 1267. of the Bureau of War Risk Insurance were granted the full bonus. The defects of this bonus legislation lay not in the intent of Congress but in the absence of an executive agency to gather the real facts and present them to Congress. When it became known that the basic salaries for routine clerical work among war workers in the War Department were higher than those for like workers in the Bureau of War Risk Insurance and that Congress was giving the more highly paid War Department employees a $240 bonus and the less highly paid employees of the Bureau of War Risk Insurance only $120, Congress was ready enough to remove that discrimination, as it had removed the discrimination against the Tariff Commission. The immediate trouble was that Congress did not have the facts at hand as a basis for enactment of the necessary legislation. The situation brought on by repeated congressional attempts to remedy salary inequalities is aptly described as follows: These measures (bonus) furnished purely emergency and temporary relief. They involved no method of curing inequalities of salaries for the same kinds of work and placed upon no one the responsibility of seeing that salaries paid were in accordance with duties performed and responsibilities borne. Basic salaries were fixed commonly according to one of two methods. One method was the legislative enactment of a "statutory roll" recommended to the houses of Congress through the respective appropriations committees, authorizing a specific number of positions of a particular designation (nowhere defined) at one specific rate of pay. The other method was purely administrative. Congress would appropriate a certain lump sum for a particular bureau or activity. The administrative official in charge of that bureau or activity could then create as many positions as he thought were necessary at the salaries he considered were necessary, the only restriction being, of course, the limits of the appropriation. The salaries of positions paid from a statutory roll could be changed only by further legislative action. The salaries of positions paid from a lump-sum appropriation could be changed at the will of the executive. The administrator operating exclusively under a statutory roll could not create a new or additional position or adjust the salaries within his activity without reference to Congress. He found it extremely difficult to reward faithful and efficient service except through legislation. On the other hand the administrator operating under a lump-sum appropriation could do all of these things according to his own discretion. In particular, for any given kinds of work he could fix the rates of pay he believed were proper, regardless of the fact that such rates might be considerably higher than those paid in other establishments of the Government for the same work. A state of competition grew up between bureaus operating largely under statutory rolls and those operating largely under lump-sum appropriations. This competition was so keen as to tend toward demoralization, and on October 6, 1917, Congress provided by legislation that an employee transferring from one establishment to another could not receive an increase in salary for one year if upon the transfer his salary was to be paid from a lump-sum appropriation. Since 1906 there had been in existence a statute preventing the transfer of an employee from one department to another until he had served three years; but even this restriction was insufficient to combat the war-time departmental competition among departments for qualified workers. For the same kind of work accordingly salaries might be fixed by Congress or by any one of a large number of administrative officers each without reference to the others. There was no central control over the relationship of salaries to duties and responsibilities.60 Congressional Joint Commission on Reclassification of Salaries, 1919. As no report under the act of March 3, 1917, had been submitted, Congress, by an act approved March 1, 1919 (40 Stat. L., 1213, 1269), provided for the establishment of the Congressional Joint Commission on Reclassification of Salaries, composed of three members of the Senate appointed by the President of the Senate and three members of the House, appointed by the Speaker. The duties of the Commission were "to investigate the rates of compensation paid to civilian employees by the municipal government and the various executive departments and other governmental establishments in the District of Columbia, except the navy yard and the Postal Service, and report by bill or otherwise, as soon as practicable, what reclassification and readjustment of compensation should be made so as to provide uniform and equitable pay for the same character of 60 Closing Report of Wage and Personnel Survey, pp. 6, 7. employment throughout the District of Columbia in the services enumerated." The Commission was given all necessary power to secure data, including the right to administer oaths and compel the attendance of witnesses. Heads of departments were directed to furnish all data required, to make investigations when requested, and to detail employees for the work of the Commission. The act carried an appropriation of $25,000 which was later supplemented by an additional appropriation of $50,000.61 These direct appropriations of $75,000 by no means represented the entire cost of the work of the Commission, for it had a considerable body of employees detailed from the departments and paid by the departments, and it called upon the departments for a considerable amount of work. The membership of the Commission and its organization were: Senator Andrieus A. Jones, Democrat, of New Mexico, chairman; Senator Charles B. Henderson, Democrat, of Nevada, vice chairman; Representative Edward Keating, Democrat, of Colorado, secretary; Senator Selden P. Spencer, Republican, of Missouri; Representative Henry Allen Cooper, Republican, of Wisconsin; and Representative Courtney W. Hamlin, Democrat, of Missouri. Organization and Work. The Commission at once selected a group of experts in the field of personnel to aid the Commission in carrying on the investigation.62 For its staff of classifiers, it resorted to the provision of the law that permitted it to call upon the various services to detail officers and employees. This resulted in the development of a classification staff composed of specialists in the fields of biology, chemistry, physics, physiology, engineering, mathematics, economics, statistics, library science, patent examining, pension examining, civil service examining, accounting, editing, printing, bank note engraving, and many of the branches of specialized clerical work. The composite knowledge 1 41 Stat. L., 163, 227; July 19, 1919. 62 * Including E. O. Griffenhagen, Herbert E. Fleming, R. O. Beckman, Robert E. Goodell, Fred G. Huechling, Lewis Meriam, W. E. Mosher, and Ad. Hoehne. which this group possessed of the organization and work of the departments at Washington probably exceeded that of any group previously gathered in any undertaking. Through the organization of committees within the Commission's staff and through conferences between these Committee members and their fellow specialists in the departments, this aspect of the work was effectively organized. The principal steps taken by the Commission between March 3, 1919, and March 12, 1920, which are indicative of the scope of work undertaken, were as follows: 63 (1) The Commission organized. (2) Consulted leaders among those experienced in classification. (3) Adopted the principle of classifying positions on the basis of the duties and the qualifications required and of applying the same compensation schedule to all positions in each class. (4) Retained a headquarters staff of specialists in classification and salary standardization, not connected with the Government service. (5) Sought and received the cooperation of Cabinet officers and other department heads, and organized cooperating departmental central committees of administrators and employees. (6) Secured a clerical force detailed from the departments. (7) Took a complete inventory of the positions in the Washington service, and kept this current, securing semimonthly reports from the departments as to additions, separations, and changes. (8) Distributed and collected questionnaires, filled out by employees and supervisory officials, and thus secured data on the duties, qualification requirements, compensation, hours, organization location, and other pertinent matters regarding each individual position and employee in the service. (9) Recruited a classification staff detailed from the various departments. (10) Charted in detail the organization of every department and independent establishment. (11) Defined services-the occupational or vocational groups and sorted questionnaire cards to services. 63 Listed roughly in chronological order, although many were taken contemporaneously. |