SERVICES, EDUCATION, AND RELATED AGENCIES HEARINGS BEFORE A SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ONE HUNDRED FOURTH CONGRESS SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE DEPARTMENTS OF LABOR, HEALTH AND NOTE: Under Committee Rules, Mr. Livingston, as Chairman of the Full Committee, and Mr. Obey, as Ranking S. ANTHONY MCCANN, ROBERT L. KNISELY, SUSAN E. QUANTIUS, MICHAEL K. MYERS, PART 1 DEPARTMENT OF LABOR Page Secretary of Labor 1 Employment and Training Administration/Veterans' Enforcement Agencies/Bureau of Labor Statistics 121 217 Occupational Safety and Health Administration 445 525 25-051 O Printed for the use of the Committee on Appropriations U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE For sale by the U.S. Government Printing Office Superintendent of Documents, Congressional Sales Office, Washington, DC 20402 ISBN 0-16-052788-0 COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS BOB LIVINGSTON, Louisiana, Chairman JOSEPH M. McDADE, Pennsylvania C. W. BILL YOUNG, Florida JOHN EDWARD PORTER, Illinois JIM KOLBE, Arizona BARBARA F. VUCANOVICH, Nevada JIM LIGHTFOOT, Iowa RON PACKARD, California CHARLES H. TAYLOR, North Carolina ERNEST J. ISTOOK, JR., Oklahoma JOE KNOLLENBERG, Michigan JAY DICKEY, Arkansas JACK KINGSTON, Georgia FRANK RIGGS, California MIKE PARKER, Mississippi RODNEY P. FRELINGHUYSEN, New Jersey ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi GEORGE R. NETHERCUTT, JR., Washington MARK W. NEUMANN, Wisconsin DAVID R. OBEY, Wisconsin JOHN P. MURTHA, Pennsylvania NORMAN D. DICKS, Washington VIC FAZIO, California W. G. (BILL) HEFNER, North Carolina RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois ALAN B. MOLLOHAN, West Virginia MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio DAVID E. SKAGGS, Colorado NANCY PELOSI, California PETER J. VISCLOSKY, Indiana THOMAS M. FOGLIETTA, Pennsylvania ESTEBAN EDWARD TORRES, California JAMES W. DYER, Clerk and Staff Director YRL pt.l DEPARTMENTS OF LABOR, HEALTH AND FOR TUESDAY, MAY 7, 1996. SECRETARY OF LABOR WITNESS HON. ROBERT B. REICH, SECRETARY OF LABOR INTRODUCTION OF WITNESSES Mr. PORTER. The subcommittee will come to order. We continue our hearings today with the Department of Labor. Mr. Secretary, we welcome you back before the subcommittee to discuss your 1997 budget request. I believe this is the fourth time that you have appeared now before the subcommittee on behalf of your budget. Secretary Shalala appeared here a few weeks ago and Secretary Riley will be here on Thursday. The fiscal year 1996 budget process was very difficult and a trying one for all of us. The final bill that was produced probably didn't satisfy any one very much. But under the circumstances, it was probably the best we could do. We hope and expect that the 1997 process will be somewhat smoother and will hopefully conclude much faster. We will have serious disagreements over funding levels and some policy matters, but I believe that we can work together to resolve them for the good of the country. Mr. Secretary, I want to take a minute and thank your staff at the Department for its very hard and excellent work in producing the fiscal year 1997 budget justifications and other documents in a very expeditious manner after the enactment of the final 1996 appropriations bill just a couple of weeks ago. We asked your staff to withhold preparation of the documents until we had a final appropriations bill for 1996 so that we could have meaningful numbers and comparisons. They agreed to do that and now we have some very useful documents to help us in producing a 1997 appropriations bill. Their cooperation and yours is very much appreciated. Mr. Obey is not here with the many duties that he has, but when he does come here I will ask him if he would like to make an opening statement as well. Now, Mr. Secretary, we welcome you and ask you to proceed with your opening statement. OPENING STATEMENT Secretary REICH. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of the subcommittee. I am pleased to be here today to discuss the Department's accomplishments and our request for fiscal year 1997. I would first like to thank you Mr. Chairman and other members of the subcommittee, and when Mr. Obey arrives I would like to thank him. This was, as you said, an extraordinarily difficult year. You and I communicated a great deal. I found your knowledge and insight and help a kind and reassuring voice all the way along. And there were policy differences, and there will continue to be policy differences, but I think that because of the hard work of this subcommittee and your staff and all of us, we got through the budget debate and we did very well. This was a long and hard and grueling exercise. We can now get on with this year and hopefully we can get on with next year. The Department's fiscal year 1997 budget proposals support the President's goals by working in partnership with American business and also enhancing the skills of American workers. What I would like to do, with your permission, is submit my formal comments to the subcommittee and just highlight what I believe are some of the most interesting and important issues we have for the coming year. As you know, our budget is built on the foundation of accomplishments that resulted from several interrelated tasks and goals of the Department of Labor and I think the entire American society. One is a better prepared workforce. There is widespread agreement, I don't think there is anybody that disagrees. There maybe disagreements about method, that is how do you get the best preparation, but everybody agrees that we do need a better prepared workforce. And second, promoting workplace safety and health; third, ensuring pension security of America's working men and women; fourth, enforcing minimum wages and working conditions; and fifth, providing the best economic data we can to the United States, to the business community, to other members of the public. PAST YEAR ACCOMPLISHMENTS I would like to begin by mentioning just a few of our major accomplishments during this past year, and it was a difficult year. It was difficult to manage through the uncertainties, and I am sure it was difficult for all of you. To begin, we did manage under our School-to-Work program to award grants to 19 States. We also increased total School-to-Work States to 27. These grants make it possible to provide opportunities for hundreds of thousands of students to prepare for careers. Mr. Chairman, as I travel around the country I am impressed repeatedly by what I hear and what people tell me about School-to-Work, that it is working, that it's keeping kids in school, that it's having a big impact. We increased Job Corps placements in jobs paying over $6.00 per hour and that increase was 37 percent, a 37 percent increase in Job Corps placements over $6.00 an hour. The effectiveness of Job Corps is continuing to improve and there is a greater emphasis on performance standards. Some 73 percent of Job Corps graduates have been placed in jobs or further education overall. Mr. Chair man, I know how you and other members of the subcommittee are interested in knowing what works, actually having the data. I will try to give you as much as I can in my testimony and within the questions and answers back and forth because we have more evidence about what works and we are shifting more resources in the direction of what does work. Summer employment, provided opportunities to about half a million young people during the summer of 1995, with two out of three enrolled in education services. Again, we know this program helps youth stay in school and gets them back to the road toward better jobs. One-Stop Career Centers, we've talked about this for the past couple of years, implementation grants went out to 10 States which increases the total to 16 States. Now, 6 of these States have already opened the doors to 26 new One-Stop Centers, another 27 new One-Stop Centers in the next three months. These are taking off. Individually, I've had the opportunity to talk with many of you about One-Stop Centers. These centers are the building blocks for consolidation of the workforce development system. We're hoping that the new Careers Act legislation will facilitate this consolidation. But the key building block is the One-Stop Center and we are moving on that. Another key building block of the Careers Act and the One-Stop Center is information about what jobs are available, where they are, and who has the best placement rates. We are implementing America's Job Bank data base on the Internet. That is a 24 hour a day web site providing access to 400,000 job openings daily. In fact, I'm told that during the month of April just ending, there were 5,000,000 visits to that particular place on the Internet. This is one of the most popular places on the Internet. This is another example of how we are not only keeping up, but ahead of what people actually need and we're responding to those needs. Regarding worker protections, let me just highlight a couple of things. Our campaign against sweatshops in the United States is continuing. We recovered more than $1.1 million for 2,800 workers by conducting 550 investigations to eradicate sweatshops in the garment centers of this country, and I'll talk more about that in a little while. It is a very important part of the Government's policy to discourage undocumented aliens, among other things. Obviously, it's important on its own grounds to make sure that people are not working in sweatshops in the United States. With regard to 401(k) pensions, we have taken steps, as some of you know, to make sure that the system is working even better. It is a sound system. Every time I talk about it I emphasize the 401(k) system is a good system, but it is growing so fast that we have got to make sure that there are not a few apples in that barrel that are going to divert wittingly or unwittingly 401(k) contributions to purposes other than into 401(k) plans. We've recovered $3.3 million for 401(k) plan participants and $192 thousand for health care plan participants as part of our pension and health care enforcement actions. We've increased special mine inspections aimed at discrete hazards by 30 percent over the past year. With regard to OSHA reforms, and I know several of you are interested in this, based on |