AGE DISTRIBUTION OF UNCOMPLETED CHARGES OVER 12 MO. OLD (DISTRICT OFFICES SUMMED
(BY REGION)-Continued

Mr. HAWKINS. Without prejudicing the circumstances, I appreciate the possibility that legislative and/or administrative weaknesses may be contributing factors to the backlog of complaints. I look forward to the next few days of considering how we may further strengthen and support the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in its important work.

At this time I would ask if Mrs. Mink has any questions or elaboration?

Mrs. MINK. I have no questions, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HAWKINS. The first witness to be called by the subcommittee will be Mr. John H. Powell, Jr., Chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Mr. Powell, you may have at the table, obviously, many of your associates. I hope that you will for the record identify those who will be seated at the table with you.

May I first personally, on behalf of the committee, also express our appreciation for all of the courtesies and the cooperation which

you have given this subcommittee and likewise welcome you this morning as our first witness.

STATEMENT OF JOHN H. POWELL, JR., CHAIRMAN, EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY COMMISSION; ACCOMPANIED BY WILLIAM A. CAREY, GENERAL COUNSEL; AND HAROLD S. FLEMING, ACTING EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Mr. POWELL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman and members of the House Subcommittee on Equal Opportunities, I thank you for this opportunity to be with you today to discuss pending legislation and the sizable backlog of charges currently confronting the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Accompanying me are the following officials from the Commission: Mr. William A. Carey, General Counsel who has a prepared statement; Mr. Harold S. Fleming, Acting Executive Director; Mr. Alvin Golub, Deputy Executive Director; Mr. Eduardo Pena, Jr., Director, Office of Compliance; Mr. Horace G. Bussell, Director, Office of Voluntary Programs; Ms. Lucy DeCarlo, Director, Office of State and Community Affairs; Ms. Yvette W. Duggar, Director, Office of Management; Ms. Helen Stellman, Budget Officer; and Mr. Edgar Morgan, Director, Office of Congressional Affairs.

Mr. Chairman, since the primary interest of these hearings, according to your letter of August 27, 1974, is the processing of charges and the nature and extent of the accumulation of these charges and because of the volume of data submitted in response to your letters of June 7 and July 18, let me summarize the prepared statement you have before you which I made available to the subcommittee yesterday.

On the subject of legislation let me say that while it may be desirable to amend the law to enhance the EEOC's authority, it is my view that additional legislation is not needed at the present time. Until such time as our experience shows that we have used the present powers and notwithstanding the employment of those resources, additional resources and other authority may be needed. At this point the EEOC is at a phase of implementation to meet the prescribed responsibilities of the 1964 act as amended by the amendments in 1972. In order to confront our growth problems we are constantly reviewing our operations in order to increase the agency's effectiveness.

A history of our problems, as well as a survey of our progress, is what I hope to share with you today in looking at our present backlog burden. For your information I have laid out the complaint process followed by the agency at this time. This appears in pages 1 through 7 of my prepared statement, a copy of which is before you.

Voluntary compliance remains the goal of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. If, however, employees are unwilling to comply voluntarily with title VII's requirements, they are put on notice that the agency will seek the full remedies which the courts and the law provide.

Since 1972, the Commission has authorized the filing of almost 400 lawsuits; several have resulted in pretrial settlements granting substantial relief to the victims of discrimination. In addition, 92 lawsuits have been transferred to the Commission from the Department

of Justice, as a result of the impact of the 1972 amendments which, on March 24 of this year, resulted in this agency being the exclusive enforcer of title VII.

I shall not dwell on this area since the General Counsel is here with a prepared statement on this aspect of the agency's responsibility. So let us look at the principal issue for which these hearings were called, the buildup of cases since the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission went into business 9 years ago. In looking at the geometric growth rate of charges filed with the Commission to see what has happened to bring about the present backlog of approximately 98,000 charges. Pages 9 through 16 of my prepared text spell out for you the Commission's procedural development and the growing backlog concomitant therewith.

The Commission opened its doors in July 1965. Initially charges were received and investigated out of Washington, although field investigators were borrowed from other agencies. All decisions were drafted by the individual commissioners and their staffs. Every attempt at conciliation, in every case, was also handled at headquarters. Late in fiscal year 1966, the first few field offices were established and charges began to be investigated in the field. However, all files were sent to headquarters for decision and the conciliation process was handled entirely in Washington.

Slowly, over the years this highly centralized approach was modified. In fiscal year 1969 district directors were given the authority to sign conciliation agreements on behalf of the Commission. In fiscal year 1970 district offices were permitted to draft some decisions. Also at this time district directors were authorized to conciliate most cases but still had to consult with Washington on sufficiency of remedy.

Beginning in September 1970, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reorganized its field structure into a two-tiered arrangement of district offices supervised by regional offices. Six more district offices were established in that year, bringing the total to 18. While these were meant to improve the Commission's availability to the public as well as alleviate the burden of backlogged cases it ultimately resulted in only providing the former which further resulted in more cases with a resulting increase in the backlog.

The field or district offices were required to maintain a work progress system which measured productivity on a comparative officeto-office basis.

With this new procedure the administrative processing of cases should have broken the wave of the increasing backlog except for one inescapable fact-the number of complaints surged upward at almost geometric proportions.

I might note the Chairman indicated that the backlog is increasing at a declining rate. It should also be noted that the charges are increasing at a geometric rate, and even though, as you will note from my prepared statement, while we did almost 100 percent better in the fiscal period ending June 30 last, than we did in the fiscal period from July 1, 1972 to June 30, 1973, even though we did twice as well, the tremendous surge in the increase of charges resulted in the increased backlog. So we have found it is not good enough to do a better job. We also have to do that kind of job that keeps pace with the geometric

increase in the charges brought before us. Currently it was at the rate of 1,500 charges a week.

On March 24, 1972, the President signed the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972 that expanded the agency's jurisdiction to include 10 million employees of State and local governments and 4 million employees of educational institutions. Of course, we did have jurisdiction over the nonteaching staff of educational institutions. The amendments gave us for the first time jurisdiction over the teachers of these institutions. Title VII was also broadened to apply to businesses and unions with 15 or more employees, instead of those with only 25 or more. Now the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had the responsibility of assuring equal employment opportunity to more than 63 million employees in the United States, virtually 75 percent of the Nation's entire work force.

In addition, the 1972 amendments gave the EEOC the authority to initiate litigation against companies or unions where conciliation efforts failed.

This added authority coupled with an increasing caseload required another review and reorganization of the Commission's procedures. This year 14 additional district offices were established to carry out the compliance process. The total number of district offices has now reached 32. The compliance manual issued to district offices was shared. with all 706 State and local agencies, to which under the statute we are required to defer cases where they have statutes which are like the Federal statute and administered substantially the same as we administer Title VII.

This was to assist them in developing a uniform approach in improving the processing of charges within their respective jurisdictions. A performance management system was also initiated to provide objectives and goals and facilitate performance monitoring and the optimum allocation of resources to meet those objectives and goals.

In fiscal year 1973 the cumbersome finding of fact procedure, whereby facts were summarized in an investigator's memorandum but not sent to the parties involved, was abolished. Predecision settlements could now be negotiated and signed by district directors after preliminary investigation. District directors were also authorized to draft and issue letters of determination in precedent cases. Nonprecedent cases continued to be sent to headquarters for preparation and issuance of a decision on behalf of the Commission. On conciliation, final authority continued to rest with the district director; headquarters consultation was no longer required though a quality control review system was established.

My term as chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission began, as you know, January 3, 1974. At that point, a little better than half of the 1974 fiscal year had already elapsed. I will therefore comment on the situation for that year.

You will note that this is the first time since 1968 that the number of resolved charges exceeded 51 percent of the total number of charges received. Also the rate of conciliated charges increased over the last 2 years at a far greater rate than the number of charges received.

At this juncture I want to underscore one point: Success comes by way of improvement which is an evolutionary process. Realized results quite often take considerable time from initial inception to imple

mentation. My predecessors worked long and hard to eliminate employment discrimination. I am sympathetic toward the problems confronting the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission before I became its chairman and I hope to benefit from their experiences.

It is essential for all of use to appreciate the development and growth problems that are inherent with an organization charged with such an enormous task and that has the immense social and economic consequences that are involved with the ferreting out of discrimination in employment.

Some of the improved procedures that we have undertaken originated prior to my assuming the chairmanship but nevertheless are ones which I wish to pursue. Other improvements originated after my term began. It is my firm belief that the following steps will go a long way toward achieving the goals of the EEOC on a more effective and timely basis.

I might say, if I may digress for a moment, that I think the problems of employment discrimination are such that while there is no question that there was a need for an agency to be provided with the kind of enforcement authority it now has, I am firmly of the view that one of the things which will precede a fundamental change is greater public understanding of the depth and nature of these problems, because it is only out of that understanding that we will achieve a greater voluntary compliance.

The Office of Voluntary Programs during fiscal year 1974 began an experiment in which attempts were made, without reference to pending charges, to obtaining voluntary agreements with employers. These agreements contain all that is included in conciliation agreements growing out of the compliance process. A basic difference is that voluntary agreements would not directly resolve charges but would, rather, deal with the change in discriminatory systems and affirmative action. I think voluntary agreements, at least it is my view and as I understand the view of my colleagues, it is the view that voluntary agreements in much the way as conciliation agreements would in effect change the problem of discrimination but where appropriate would also resolve such charges that might be on file against the particular employer involved in that process. In addition, as was the case in the A.T. & T. agreement, a procedure was established for resolving pending and future charges.

We plan to invest approximately 1 work-year in each of the seven regions to see if we can expand the successes of fiscal year 1974. However, we propose to enter into such self-enforcement programs only if the employer is willing to make them fully enforceable in the courts as any other contract would be. If this investment proves effective, the commission will reprogram and seek additional resources as appropriate to take full advantage of the "voluntary agreements" approach. It must be noted, however, that these voluntary agreements will probably only bring relief to the backlog situation over the long haul rather than as an immediate short-range benefit.

The National Programs Division, which was established under the aegis of my predecessor, resembles in purpose and function the district offices. This unit is currently investigating broad Commissioner's charges against five respondents on a national basis that ultimately could resolve 2,200 individual charges pending against these