CONGRESSIONAL RECORD -- SENATE

June 1, 1969.

Page 14436

THE EFFORTS TO END POVERTY

Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, jobs for all who need them must be a number one objective in our continuing efforts to end poverty. The U.S. Employment Service, administered through the States, has a major responsibility in matching jobs and people, particularly in the semiskilled and unskilled categories. But State employment services face a serious administrative problem in metropolitan areas that include parts of two or more States. Some 32 such areas now exist, containing over 23 percent of the Nation's population.

A metropolitan area is essentially a single labor market, even though it may be an interstate area.

Both the jobseeker and the employer range throughout the area: they are not bound by State lines.

Yet the fact that employment services are administered on a State basis can raise real obstacles to a free flow of job information and job services when the area embraces parts of two or more States. These difficulties can have their most serious impact with respect to nonwhites, particularly where nonwhite unemployed are concentrated in the central city, part or all of the suburbs are in another State or States, and job opportunities are in the suburbs.

In 1965 the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations in a report on "Metropolitan Social and Economic Disparities: Implications for Intergovernmental Relations in Central Cities and Suburbs," called attention to this problem and recommended that Governors and the Secretary of Labor take steps to assure that employment services are provided to all job applicants and employees within metropolitan area labor markets regardless of State lines. They recommended that these steps include interstate agreements and action by the Secretary to assure himself that such arrangements are being effectively carried out as a condition to Federal grants for employment security administration.

The Committee on State-Local Relations of the National Governors' Conference endorsed the Commission's recommendations in July 1965 and urged that Governors maintain close followup to assure that State employment service agencies take necessary action to carry out the interstate agreements.

I am happy to report now, Mr. President, recent action by the Federal Government in response to the Commission's recommendations. The Administrator of the Bureau of Employment Security in the Department of Labor has amended Federal regulations to require State employment service agencies in interstate labor areas to establish and maintain adequate arrangements and procedures to assure that workers and employers have full access to job opportunities and the available labor supply within the area, without regard to State boundaries. By these regulations we will be getting machinery and procedures to remove one more of the invisible, but nonetheless real, barriers to better use of public employment services in our metropolitan areas, and thereby help provide the more effective matching of job-seekers and jobs that is so urgently needed.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amended regulations be printed in the RECORD.

There being no objection, the regulations were ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:

[From Employment Security Manual, Part I, Organization and General Administration, 0204-0206]

OBJECTIVES, REGULATIONS, STANDARDS, AND POLICIES

D. Section602.2 (d)Multi-state labor areas. With respect to any single labor area covering parts of two or more States, the State agencies involved shall establish and maintain adequate arrangements and procedures to assure that workers and employers have full access to job opportunities and the available labor supply within the area, without regard to State boundaries.

These arrangements are to include written agreements between the State agencies involved setting forth procedures to be followed by local employment service offices in the area in serving applicants and employers. Each written agreement should provide for one office in the area to be designated as the order-holding office responsible for control and distribution of job openings.

This designation should be based on such factors as staff resources, physical facilities, geographical location, and density of applicant supply and employer location. Each agreement should also provide for periodic (at least monthly) meetings of appropriate State agency staff (including area and local office managers and appropriate local office staff) to review the effectiveness of procedures and to recommend necessary changes. USES regional directors are responsible for certifying the adequacy of such agreements to the Director of the United States Employment Service. Copies of these agreements are to be furnished to the Governors of the States involved and to the Secretary of Labor as part of the material to be submitted with the plans of operations.