Mr. SMITH. It certainly is in some areas. I would not say that it prevails across everything we do.

Mr. GOODELL. This is the basis for our concern when you use such words as, "Well, we have to find something that is workable, that we can live with," or "getting an understanding and acceptability in these cases.'

Yes, we want you to be able to do that and we recognize that you have to proceed quickly, and cannot afford the luxury of debating fine points of the Davis-Bacon Act and its application for a year or more. When you walk in there, you want it settled. You want to move, is that correct?

Mr. SMITH. I think that is correct.

Mr. GOODELL. Now, our concern is that, under those circumstances, if the procedures set up do not give you an expeditious way of resolving those controversies, then you inevitably are going to require that they be resolved as quickly as possible, regardless of the merits. That is our concern.

I am not accusing you of doing this. I recognize the situation in which you operate. We have seen some specific examples of this in agencies that have high priority in the Government.

Mr. SMITH. The missile program and others.

Mr. ROOSEVELT. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. GOODELL. This is our concern. You can keep using "workable" and "can live with" and feel that they are happy resolutions from your viewpoint because they will avoid delays, but are they happy resolutions in terms of justice under the procedure that is set up here for Davis-Bacon administration?

Mr. SMITH. We believe that the criteria that we have set up are for the very purpose of accomplishing this.

Do you want to comment on that?

Mr. ROOSEVELT. Will the gentleman yield for one comment? The Chair has to say that there is no information before the committee, and I want this understood, which would indicate that decisions made by the Commission have, in any way, been based upon anything lacking merit or seeking to be made without regard to the merit. The implication of the statement of the gentleman from New York was such.

Mr. GOODELL. I did not mean that implication. I would appreciate

an answer.

Mr. MINSCH. I would like to make a comment that bears on your question and also on one that I think Mr. Griffin made a while back. These criteria, bear in mind, are a procurement regulation. They are part of the Atomic Energy Commission procurement regulations. It is common in Government when you are putting out regulations, even those which are not regulations in the most formal sense that we have on the regulatory side of our business where, under the Admin-istrative Procedures Act, we have to put them out for public comment and in some cases hold a hearing on them before they go into effect; but it is in accord with the spirit of the Administrative Procedures Act and it is good practice generally when a Government agency is putting out a new type procurement regulation to attempt to get comments from the public, particularly those who will be interested.. We vary in our practice on this. On this particular regulation we:

did not publish it in advance in the Federal Register, but we did send copies of it to a number of companies and union representatives and others whom we thought would be interested in it and also we took it up at great length a number of times with the Department of Labor.

The point is that if you get in advance all sorts of comments from people who will be vitally affected and live under it, presumably you can get it in better shape and it will be workable.

This is different from resolving actual problems under a regulation. This is the process we went through in trying to get the best regulation we could in advance to assist us and union people and everybody else when the actual situations arose.

By giving everyone who is interested a chance to review it and make comments and where we thought their comments were reasonable, we revised the language of the regulation. I think as a result, a lot of people have had confidence in it and that we have not had as many controversies.

The question of applying the regulation in a particular case is different than the original problem of drafting it and whenever you have a regulation like this outstanding, you wait and see if certain problems arise under the wording of it. Then you think about revising it.

I don't know whether it is that it has not been in effect long enough or else that it is an extremely successful one, but so far we have not had any particular provisions in it that have shown the need for

revision.

I have just one other comment, if I may. In a particular case of our applying the regulation, if we have made a mistake or offended somebody or they feel that it is a wrong decision, there are ways that this gets back. Someone complains and the Labor Department comes in. I know of one situation in which three decisions which were made under this regulation at our Oak Ridge office were brought to the attention of the regional Labor Department representative in Nashville, Tenn., and we got an inquiry on it on explaining the whole facts.

I think that they agreed with our Oak Ridge people's determination on the first two and in the third case, they said it was borderline, 50-50. They agreed that it was the old question of, with difficult facts, deciding on a principle, but there are checks and balances under this system.

Mr. GOODELL. How many complaints of this nature have you had? Do you have any notion?

Mr. MINSCH. I don't know. I just happened to hear about this one at Oak Ridge.

Mr. SMITH. Since the criteria were issued?

Mr. GOODELL. I would be interested before and since, but let us make the question first with reference to since. I don't mean that you have to give us these estimates off the cuff. If you will provide the committee with the specific information, I would appreciate it.

Mr. SMITH. I believe since the criteria have been issued, outside of this problem that Congressman Dent mentioned, which I think has a lot of other things mixed up in it, there have been two or three situations from Oak Ridge that have reached the Washington level for

discussion. There have been about an equal number from other places, but none that have gone to the Labor Department except this one that Mr. Minsch mentioned.

Mr. GOODELL. In other words, if they have not gotten to the level which you are describing, they have been resolved at a local level? Mr. SMITH. Yes.

Mr. GOODELL. By whom?

Mr. SMITH. Well, they have probably been dropped. Undoubtedly cases may occur with some regularity where the local official of a plant union or of a construction union, and the complaints would normally arise with one or the other, may come in and question a decision and our local people explain the basis on which we decided it that way and this probably puts it to rest.

Mr. GOODELL. Do you have any blacklist at all in the Atomic Energy Commission of companies or unions?

Mr. SMITH. We have no blacklist of our own. We have recommended people from time to time for blacklisting by the Department. Mr. GOODELL. Are any of them related to labor difficulties?

Mr. SMITH. They would be violations of probably the 8-hour laws or the Davis-Bacon law.

Mr. GOODELL. You have recommended people for blacklisting in connection with violation of the Davis-Bacon law?

Mr. SMITH. Yes, Davis-Bacon or 8 hour.

Mr. GOODELL. Well, of course, either one; but specifically for the purpose of these hearings you have recommended them for the DavisBacon law?

Mr. SMITH. Yes.

Mr. GOODELL. Have there been many of these?

Mr. SMITH. No.

Mr. GOODELL. What sort of violations were involved?

Mr. SMITH. I think there have only been three or four of them in any recent time and the ones that I recall I think have all been 8-hour violations.

Mr. GOODELL. Could you check, please, and give us information with reference to all recommendations for blacklisting that you have made that related to the Davis-Bacon Act?

Mr. SMITH. Yes, over say the last 3 years or something like that? Mr. GOODELL. Three years would be fine.

Mr. SMITH. Yes.

Mr. GOODELL. Thank you, Mr. Smith.

Mr. GRIFFIN. I just want to make one more observation.

Looking at your regulations and going to the point that I was trying to make before.

In a specific situation, the Department has indicated that a contract for furnishing and initial installation of piping, wiring, gas exhaust fans, plumbing, sheet metal work, and related activities to install kitchen and baking equipment was comparable to the basic plumbing, wiring, and heating contracts and was covered

By Davis-Bacon

While this situation involves an initial installation, alternation or rearrangement of existing facilities involving such work to accommodate new or different equipment is also covered.

Then when I raised the point that if there was work of this nature within the plant that was covered, I inquired about how the prevailing rate was determined, your answer was, "Well, that is a Labor Department determination," and that seemed to be the end of it.

But I do not think that should be the end of it because you are interested in how many dollars are going to be spent in operating within a budget, and so forth. The point I want to focus attention on is this: Suppose work within a Government plant is determined to be DavisBacon and it is work that in other industrial plants is done by maintenance workers within the plant? Should not the prevailing rate be the wage paid in other industrial plants which do the same work? Do you see the point I am trying to make?

Mr. SMITH. I see your point. I think this is an awfully hard one to run down. It has come up, that I can recall, only in one situation that we have been involved with the Department. There was one plant in which the Department went out and made a survey of its own. We did not. They did it themselves to try to find out in that locality whether they could get any guidance from how industry did it, and I think the answer they came back with was that there was not any basis on which they could generalize. They found that one plant did it one way and another plant did it another way and there just wasn't anything they could draw a conclusion on.

Mr. GRIFFIN. If there was not any practice, that is another question. I will have to develop this point with some other witnesses, perhaps. Thank you.

Mr. ROOSEVELT. Mr. Smith, may I say to you and Mr. Minsch that I think probably after we have had a chance to study more carefully these regulations which are now in force, the committee may well want to have you both come back and discuss them in more detail with us because obviously there are some very interesting points which are raised, particularly the detail which you have written into these regulations.

We may call you after you have had a chance to look over Dr. Van de Water's suggestions. What we are looking for of course, is how we can improve the overall act, not specifically for the Atomic Energy Commission, but as it will be a guideline to all Government agencies and enable all Government agencies to operate more effectively. If you have specific suggestions where we do ask you back, we hope you will be prepared to give us such suggestions.

Mr. SMITH. We will be glad to be of whatever help we can to the committee.

Mr. ROOSEVELT. Thank you both very much for your help and cooperation with the committee.

The committee will now hear Mr. E. D. Hoekstra, the executive secretary of the National Constructors Association.

Mr. Hoekstra, may I express to you on behalf of the committee our appreciation to you for the help and consideration to our work in making yourself available today instead of when originally scheduled.

STATEMENT OF E. D. HOEKSTRA, EXECUTIVE SECRETARY, NATIONAL CONSTRUCTORS ASSOCIATION; ACCOMPANIED BY JOHN MORTON, COMBUSTION ENGINEERS, INC., WINDSOR, CONN.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. That is quite all right, Mr. Chairman. We are happy to be here twice.

Mr. ROOSEVELT. Thank you, sir.

I understand that you have not only prepared your statement for the committee, but you also are submitting to us a supplementary statement with respect to the testimony of Dr. John R. Van de Water.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. That is correct, Mr. Chairman, pursuant to your request at our brief appearance last Thursday.

Mr. ROOSEVELT. You may proceed in any way you want. I point out that we probably have about 40 minutes.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I will try to keep it to the minimum.

I have a brief introductory comment. One is, Mr. John Morton of Combustion Engineers, Inc., is with me.

Mr. ROOSEVELT. We are happy to have you.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. At our brief appearance last Thursday the vice president of our association, Mr. Paul Wetcher, was here and spoke briefly. By way of introduction, I would like to recall that he had a few comments relative to the uniqueness of the industrial construction industry which we represent.

One of the distinctive features is the high degree of skill that is required. He pointed this out in connection with the frequent observation that the construction industry wage rates are high. The industry actually has a higher degree of skill than required in most other industries and a higher concentration, a higher percentage of

the work force is skilled.

There are some offsetting factors, however, that should be mentioned. One of them is the fact that skilled construction workers are available almost anywhere in the country where they are required without any blanket subsistence payments. That is not true of, say, manufacturing industries who send crews of men to missile bases where they are on a blanket subsistence.

With that, I would like to proceed to my statement.

My name is E. D. Hoekstra. I am executive secretary of the National Constructors Association, otherwise known as NCA, a group of nationally known and nationally operating engineering and industrial construction contracting firms which design and build industrial facilities such as chemical plants, oil refineries, steel mills and power generating units.

Attached to the statement are a folder listing the association's membership and a brochure describing its activities. I am referring to a little printed folder which we issue each year listing the association's officers and membership. The brochure is entitled, "Meeting the Challenge," which describes our operations as an association.

(The information referred to appears in the subcommittee files.) Mr. HOEKSTRA. Although much of their work is performed for private industry, many members of the National Constructors Association carry out extensive work for the Federal Government. They serve such contracting agencies as the Atomic Energy Commission, carrying out contracts for the design or construction, or both, of AEC facilities.