(The information requested is as follows:)

A typical example of the manner in which employees paid on regular Bureau rolls are occasionally employed on work chargeable to a particular working fund transferred from another agency, and this indebtedness subsequently equalized, is as follows:

During the past 2 years the Bureau has been requested by the Office of Price Administration to perform machine tabulation from annual and quarterly reports of approximately 20,000 corporations. It is impracticable to hire trained employees only for the intermittent peak loads occasioned by the periodic submission of these Office of Price Administration requests. Consequently a minimum average staff is maintained and paid from the working fund. During the off periods in the flow of Office of Price Administration work, these employees are utilized in processing work chargeable to regular Bureau appropriations. Similarly, during the peak periods when the work for Office of Price Administration requires temporarily a staff considerably greater than the average minimum previously referred to, that staff is supplemented by employees paid from regular funds. Actual time and cost records are maintained in each case and when necessary in order to insure proper expenditures, the staff paid from Office of Price Administration funds is appropriately increased or decreased.

I don't want to have an auditor and accountant to go through the situation-this is off the record.

(After discussion off the record:)

Mr. HINRICHS. It is precisely for this reason that I welcome the inclusion in the Bureau's work of the basic wage work that we are going to be doing during this next year. It is difficult to operate with a multiplicity of budgets.

Mr. KEEFE. Let me ask you this: In your general estimate you indicate an increase of $1,602,440 for salaries and expenses.

Mr. HARE. We will get to that just a little later, Mr. Keefe. Mr. KEEFE. This is merely preliminary to following this general line of questioning. We will come to that all right. This is leading up to what I have in mind.

Is there any portion of that sum which represents any part of these allocated funds?

Mr. HINRICHS. No; though I am not certain I understand your question precisely.

Mr. KEEFE. Do you anticipate that you will be called upon and will have the same amount, or as great an amount of allocated funds, to the Bureau of Labor Statistics next year? I understood that what you were intending to do in your general budget this year was to anticipate the needs that would be required for statistical information, and that might have some bearing upon this increase. I don't know whether I am right or not.

Mr. HINRICHS. In 1944 we received $1,175,000 from the War Labor Board. In 1945 the budget of the Bureau of Labor Statistics was increased under the supplemental appropriation. It had originally been expected that the transfers from the War Labor Board would be substantially larger in 1945 than they had been in 1944. Actually this year the transfers from the War Labor Board amounted to $1,113,000. The increase occurred in the Bureau's national defense appropriation. Next year it is anticipated that there may still be demands from the War Labor Board for special studies, the need for which cannot be anticipated, and which would not be part of the general program, but the amount which has been set up in the budget of the War Labor Board as available for quarterly transfer through the Bureau of the Budget to the B. L. S. has been reduced to $427,000. My expectation is that not all of that will be used. The decrease has been brought

about by virtue of the fact that all of the work in the wage field which can possibly be anticipated and planned is programed to be carried on by the Bureau of Labor Statistics with the appropriation we are now asking you to extend.

That doesn't mean an end of all special work for the War Labor Board. For example, if the War Labor Board finds itself in a situation in which they require the wages which are paid in every single drug store in Chicago, we are not going to have that kind of information in our files.

There has been need on the part of the War Labor Board for that kind of information in the past. If that kind of demand is made on us, we should still have to tell the War Labor Board "We are sorry. It is not provided for in our budget." And special studies of that sort which cannot be foreseen will have to be financed by transfers from the War Labor Board.

However, everything that can be foreseen as needed in the wage field is in the Bureau of Labor Statistics budget for this next year. As a result of that, the provision in the War Labor Board's budget for transfer of funds to the Bureau of Labor Statistics has been reduced by $600,000 below the actual level of transfer in 1945, and by nearly a million dollars below the level that was anticipated before this work was provided for in a supplemental appropriation.

SOURCE AND USE OF INFORMATION ON ACCIDENT FREQUENCY

Mr. KEEFE. How you have stated to us that you have been able, through the statistical information which you have gathered, to furnish reports to the War Production Board, the War Manpower Commission, the Army, the Navy and other agencies of the Government on the frequency of industrial accidents covering some 12,000 plants each month, and 50,000 plants at the end of the year, including special studies of longshore work and foundries, and women in shipyards, and so on. Where do you get the statistical information upon which to base your reports on accident frequency?

Mr. HINRICHS. Individual employers submit a report to us. Some of them report every month. Others report only once a year. Those reports show the total number of hours worked in the establishment. Mr. KEEFE. Well, you get those statistics from individual employers?

Mr. HINRICHS. That is correct.

Mr. KEEFE. Do you use statistical information from the various labor bodies in the various States to whom accidents are reported? Mr. HINRICHS. The accident information reported to the State does not lend itself to the development of a frequency accident rate for a variety of reasons. One is that most of the States do not require the submission of any other information than that an accident has occurred.

Mr. KEEFE. Now, then, you get the information from the individual employer and you get it on forms which you have prescribed, and the employer does it voluntarily?

Mr. HINRICHS. That is correct.

Mr. KEEFE. And those forms come in here from thousands of employers all over the country, and as the result of the study of those reports you determine the accident frequency of rate in either specific industries, individual industries, or in the industry as a whole? Is that right?

Mr. HINRICHS. That is correct.

Mr. KEEFE. You make those facts and figures available to the Division of Labor Standards?

Mr. HINRICHS. We have a very unique arrangement which has been worked out there. As you know, the reports submitted to the Bureau of Labor Statistics are confidential. We never give to any agency, even of the Government, the individual report or facts drawn from the individual report, except with the consent of the man who made the report. Now, the Division of Labor Standards, in its program of gathering together safety engineering consultants, has said to us:

It would be enormously helpful in our program if you would tell us who the employers are who have high frequency rates, because that is the pay dirt. That is where we can reduce accidents. We know we can.

We have therefore written to the people who are reporting to us and said:

We are not going to make your report available to anybody except with your permission, However, we think it would be helpful to you to allow us to advise the Division of Labor Standards of the frequency rate in your establishment. Then, if the rate is high, they will be able to offer you their services, which you do not have to take if you do not want them, but which are available to you on call.

We have had almost 100-percent cooperation from manufacturers who have said:

Under those circumstances please do make our report available to the Division of Labor Standards.

Mr. KEEFE. The reason I am asking you these questions is because you referred to a specific case, as I recall, where the Army or Navy award was denied on two grounds, one of which was the accident frequency in the class, and that the Navy, or Army, whichever it was, must have had knowledge of the accident frequency in that particular plant. Did they get that information from you?

Mr. HINRICHS. They have gotten that information from us in the same way that we have made the information available to the Division of Labor Standards, with the employer's consent. In other instances where the employer has not consented, the Army or the Navy have themselves collected the information, because a good accident record is a condition to getting an E. But the information has never been given to the Army or Navy by us, except with the employer's per

mission.

The thing that the Army and Navy has gotten from us is a standard of comparison. We do give them averages for the industry with which they can compare the rate of the individual employer. The latter figure they can get for themselves if they have to, but they cannot tell whether a frequency rate is high unless they know the standards for the industry. There are industries in which a frequency rate of 40 is an average rate, and therefore a man with a record of 33 would be entitled to an Army E.

Mr. KEEFE. I suppose the Army or the Navy would certainly be furnished the statistical summary showing the frequency rate for the industry, for example?

Mr. HINRICHS. That is what we do furnish to them regularly, so they use that as their own standard in each individual case.

Mr. KEEFE. With the consent of an individual employer, however, you would furnish his own specific accident frequency rate, and then make suggestions, or suggest to him the possibility of improvement through the installation of a proper safety or sanitary engineer, whichever it may be?

Mr. HINRICHS. That is correct. And we save them the trouble of being asked the same question by the Army and Navy.

Mr. KEEFE. I think, Mr. Chairman, that is all I want to say in general.

Mr. HARE. Do you think you can finish tomorrow morning?
Mr. KEEFE. I think so.

Mr. HARE. I think we will take a recess now, Doctor, and we will begin tomorrow morning on the specific appropriation.

SATURDAY, MARCH 17, 1945.

COMPARATIVE BREAK-DOWN OF ESTIMATES, 1946, AND APPROPRIATIONS,

1945

Mr. HARE. Before taking up the special items I want to ask one question, although I assume this will come out in the discussion of the estimates on page 89, the table on which will be inserted in the record at this point.

INCREASE OF PERSONAL SERVICES FOR 1946

Mr. HARE. I see in the summary of the committee print of the bill, on page 29, that for the departmental service you are asking for approximately 212 additional employees, and for personal services

in the field you are asking for approximately 500 increase, making a total of a little more than 715 for the Department.

I notice further, and I assume you will give us the justification for it when you take up the estimates on page 89, that on page 28 of the committee print, under the subject of "Salaries and expenses," you increase the amount expended for salaries and expenses for personal services in the District of Columbia from $1,160,000 to $1,415,000, or an increase of $255,000 allocated for the Commissioner and for personal services in the District of Columbia.

I assume, Dr. Hinrichs, you are going to address yourself first to the necessity of the increase of $255,000 for your office.

Mr. HINRICHS. Yes. The items that you have just been citing relate to the first line in the table on page 89.

Mr. HARE. The first line.

Mr. HINRICHS. For salaries and expenses, increase $1,602,440. Mr. HARE. The amount appropriated, the base for 1945, being $1,104,560.

Mr HINRICHS. That is correct; and the amount requested for 1946 is $2,707,000. You indicated the change in the amount of personal services in both the Department and the field, and you also indicated the increase in the amount of appropriation for the Department for travel, contingent, and so forth.

All of the increase of $1,602,440 is the result of setting up in the regular Budget all of the work on occupational wage rates and employment statistics which we think will have to be carried forward not only in this emergency period but during the transitional period following the war.

Mr. HARE. Do you happen to have a table, Dr. Hinrichs, showing the break-down of the number of employees in the different grades and salaries attached to each, for your office, as well as for the field personnel and departmental services?

Mr. HINRICHS. Yes. That will appear in the green sheets which I believe you have.

Mr. DODSON. That is also in the committee print.

Mr. HINRICHS. It is in the committee print on page 29.
Mr. HARE. Yes.

Mr. HINRICHS. The transfer of that work from the "National defense" appropriation to the "Salaries and expenses" appropriation would obviously result in the increase in the number of positions on "Salaries and expenses," and decrease the number of positions in the "National defense" appropriation.

If you take the sum total of salaries and expenses and of "National defense" items, there is no change in the total number of positions requested for the next year over the number of positions that are presently provided for in our "Salaries and expenses" and "National defense" appropriations, with three exceptions that I noted yesterday.

We now have 1,606 positions. The total positions requested for next year is 1,647, a difference of 41: 5 positions will be required for the Hawaiian study; 12 positions would be required for the handicapped workers' study; and 24 positions would be required for the cost of living study.

Those additional positions requested for next year are all charged to "National defense" in 1946. They would be in Washington. Those are the 41 positions that are involved.