praiser and the chief assistant appraiser and I talked with something like ten examiners of merchandise-the men who are actually on the floors examining merchandise, appraising it, and making a tentative classification. I went through their private offices where they maintain their tools of trade, you might say-the trade catalogues, the business catalogues, the files of all decisions handed down by the United States Customs Court, the opinions of the Treasury Department and the opinions of the Court of Customs Appeals, and so on, and I went out on the floors with them and watched them actually examine merchandise and followed through all of the things they have to look out for in actually making a practical appraisal of merchandise. Then I went to the surveyor's office and the surveyor assigned one of his deputies to take me around to the several inspection districts in the port of Boston, and he showed me around the various docks. I watched them lading and unlading cargo; I watched the senior inspectors supervise the inspectors under them; I watched the guards at work, and so on. I went into the inspectors' offices where they maintain their records and I went into all of the details of that work. That took me three days. It sounds like an awful lot of work, but I had to step fast. Then I went to New York and I interviewed the collector and assistant collector there and was assigned first to the liquidation division. Mr. WATSON. Then you did practically the same thing in New York? Mr. KEDDY. I did exactly the same thing in New York. Mr. WATSON. It won't be necessary to describe the steps again. Mr. KEDDY. I picked out various divisions and I actually sat down with the men; for instance, in the liquidation division, I spent half a day and sat down right in the middle of all that work and watched it go on, and I did the same thing in the entry division. Mr. WATSON. Then it is your opinion there should not be a flat increase? Mr. KEDDY. You mean throughout the service? Mr. WATSON. Yes. Mr. KEDDY. No; that would be most unjust, because there are men in the service now who deserve a $1,200 raise; whereas there are other men who do not need any raise. Mr. WATSON. The $25 increase is a flat raise to all of the employees? (No answer.) Mr. MARTIN. Would you name the particular positions in the bill itself that should be raised? Mr. KEDDY. I have not prepared a bill. These analysis sheets here contain a list of all the positions in the customs service and every position in the customs service has been examined. That is the detailed description of the positions as indicated on the classification sheets which were submitted to the customs division in Washington. And I feel, by going to New York and Boston, where you might say the highest salaries are paid and the work is the most difficult, that I am certainly giving the benefit of the doubt to employees. at Portal, N. Dak., for instance, where there are five or six people. And when I consider the deputy collector at Portal, in charge of that port, I feel that I know what his job is, although I realize it is on a small scale in comparison with New York, where they will have póssibly 25 men handling all of the duties. Mr. DICKINSON. What is your particular position in the Treasury Department? Mr. KEDDY. I am not in the Treasury Department; I am a member of the United States Bureau of Efficiency, which is an independent establishment directly under the President. Mr. DICKINSON. What is your salary? Mr. CRISP. How many groups are there in the different departments of one of the collection districts? In other words, there are different groups of entry clerks, different groups of appraisers of merchandise and inspectors: How many groups are there in each one of those classes? Mr. KEDDY. Grouped by salaries? Mr. CRISP. I mean by salaries; yes. Mr. KEDDY. Well, I might answer that by saying the entire classification act, the 14 grades in the clerical, administrative, and fiscal services, have been used-the full range, and the second group in the custodial service, which they call custodial No. 2. For purposes of simplification, I eliminated four classes that the classification act used. It uses "professional," "technical," and "scientific," for instance. For purposes of convenience and not to confuse the people in the customs service who have to handle this thing, I tried to make it a single salary range. Mr. CRISP. I did not know that the general classification act applied to employees in those different districts. The Mr. KEDDY. No; but it is being applied by the department. Personnel Classification Board has no control over the field services, but the departments have been permitted by Congress to adopt what they call tentative classifications of their field services, based on the classification act of 1923. There is nothing written into the law on field services. Mr. CRISP. How do the salaries of these Government employees in the customs service compare with salaries paid in private employment in the same cities for similar work? Mr. KEDDY. In making our survey of salaries paid in industries and business in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, and Pittsburgh, we found that in all the routine positions the salaries paid under our classification act were liberal and, when I say "routine positions Mr. CRISP. You mean to say they were more than received in private employment? Mr. KEDDY. Sometimes slightly higher; sometimes much higher. When I talk about "routine positions" I am talking about file clerks, bookkeepers, stenographers, statistical clerks, and such like work, which carries pay up to $2,000, we will say. Salaries for supervisory and executive positions in the business world are far in excess of those paid by the Federal Government. Mr. CRISP. What is the average pay of a bookkeeper and file clerk? Mr. KEDDY. In the District here? Mr. CRISP. In the customs service. Mr. KEDDY. Oh, in the customs service? Mr. CRISP. Yes. Mr. KEDDY. Well, I do not know. It all depends on what you call a bookkeeper, in the first place. You might call a cashier-you might call Mr. Hawkins, chief of the money and accounts division, who gets $5,000 a year in New York-a bookkeeper. Mr. CRISP. I was just asking the question based on your answer. You spoke about bookkeepers, file clerks, and the different ones. I am not familiar at all with the service itself, and I was just asking the question based on what you had in mind. Mr. BACHARACH. You mean in the ordinary routine? Mr. CRISP. Yes. You stated about bookkeepers, file clerks, etc. What did you mean? Mr. KEDDY. I meant simply the clerks who keep the journals and ledgers and do not do accounting work in the way of working up trial balances and working up balance sheets, and so on. I mean those who just do the clerical work. Mr. CRISP. Do you know the average salary of the people engaged in that service? Mr. KEDDY. I do not recall just offhand. We have a great mass of detailed data for the different cities, but I think it is around $1,500, or something like that, a year. Mr. CRISP. What is the average for similar work in the Government service in the District of Columbia? Mr. KEDDY. Bookkeepers in the District of Columbia handling ledgers as well as journals are in grade 3-$1,500 to $1,860. Mr. BACHARACH. What salary do they get outside of the civil service? Mr. KEDDY. They average around $1,500 a year. Mr. BACHARACH. About the same? Mr. KEDDY. Yes. Mr. BACHARACH. As I recall, yesterday you stated in your examination you were under the impression it would take about $1,200,000 to pay these men adequately? Mr. KEDDY. To bring them to the average of the grades I have allocated. Mr. BACHARACH. I wanted to get that into the record at this time to connect it up with the recommendation of the Budget of $400,000. Mr. KEDDY. Yes, sir. Mr. CRISP. Have you any plan or method for allocating that $1,200,000 that you think is needed for this service? Mr. KEDDY. For a proper distribution of that sum in accordance with the merits of the position? Mr. CRISP. Yes. Mr. KEDDY. Yes, sir. These analysis sheets here show that in detail. These analysis sheets have been totaled up simply to show how much money will be necessary to bring everybody to the minimum of the grades assigned, and to bring all of those people who are already within the grade but between steps I mean, for instance, a step is $2,300 to $2,400, we will say, and the person is getting $2,250. They would automatically get a $50 raise in order to bring them to $2,300. That total estimate is $425,000, I think. Mr. CRISP. Of course you understand that Congress could not pass a law going into the details that are in your analysis there. Mr. KEDDY. Yes, sir. Mr. CRISP. Could you prepare and put in the record a concrete statement that might be used in a legislative way, if Congress saw fit to do it, applying to these various employees the increase you think is justified? Mr. KEDDY. No. I think it is inadvisable for any legislature to try to write into a law all of the details of the salaries paid to the thousands of employees. I think it is a matter, rather, where the detailed information should be furnished to the Appropriations Committee and that they should, if they desire, go through all of these individual sheets, check them up and see whether or not the department is putting up a bona fide proposal for appropriation; but it should not be written into the law because it is so voluminous. Mr. CRISP. I was getting at the practical side of it, in case Congress wants to do anything. I thoroughly agree the law could not specify all of these positions; therefore, I was asking if you had any plan whereby, if Congress desired to increase those salaries $1,200,000, you had worked out what legislative steps should be taken to bring that about and authorize it. I judge, from what you say, your idea is there should be an enlarged appropriation? Mr. KEDDY. Yes, sir. Mr. CRISP. And allow the department to fix the salaries? Mr. KEDDY. Yes, sir. I would propose that all of this information be furnished to the Budget Bureau, which will print it in schedule form. I would prefer that it be done just like this [indicating]; not lumped for the whole service, but done like this [indicating], so that Members of Congress can easily check up, for instance, in their own district, the salaries that are being paid. At the present time, if you took this thing in a lump, starting out with 47 collectors with salaries ranging from $2,700 to $12,000 a year, that does not tell you anything. Mr. WATSON. What is the total number of employees to whom the $1,200,000 should be paid? Mr. KEDDY. Eight thousand. Mr. WATSON. That is, $1,200,000 is to be divided among 8,000 employees? Mr. KEDDY. Yes. Mr. CRISP. Now one of our colleagues, Mr. Chindblom, has suggested to the chairman, under the rules of the House, if the Committee on Appropriations should bring in an appropriation increasing the salaries, unless the law authorized them to make the increase, it could be knocked out on a point of order. In other words, the Appropriations Committee is not a legislative committee and, on an appropriation bill, they could not increase the salary unless there was a law authorizing it. Now, of course, if Congress passed a law authorizing the increase, that would do away with that objection? Mr. KEDDY. Yes, sir. Mr. CRISP. That is what I was bringing out when I asked you if your bureau could recommend any concrete legislative provision that would authorize the expenditure of $1,200,000 more for paying the salaries of these employees. Mr. WATSON. In that case, there would be a specific amount placed in the appropriation bill. Mr. CHINDBLOM. I am not a member of this subcommittee but, if I may interject a question here, what I really had in mind is whether 36200-27- -3 the changes or increases proposed by the witness would be within the law authorizing salaries to be paid at the present time, or would you need legislation to do it? Mr. KEDDY. Well, as I understand it-take the Veterans' Bureau: The Veterans' Bureau classified their whole field service on the basis of the classification act of 1923. Mr. CHINDBLOM. That brings you right down specifically to what I have in mind. Are the salaries you propose on those sheets to the employees involved to be paid under the classification act of 1923? Mr. KEDDY. Yes; all Congress has to do is to appropriate the Mr. KEDDY. That is what it has done with all of the services. Take the Immigration Service: Their inspectors Mr. CHINDBLOM. I am not asking you about any other service; I am trying to hold it down to this service. Now, in each appropriation act, as the witness probably knows, there has been a provison that the total salaries shall not exceed a certain average. Mr. KEDDY. Yes; must not exceed the average of the grade. Mr. CHINDBLOM. Does that provision in the appropriation act militate against anything you are now proposing? Mr. KEDDY. That only applies to salaries paid in the District of Columbia; that limiting proviso is just applicable to the District of Columbia; it does not apply to the field. Mr. CHINDBLOM. Would it, as to employees within the District of Columbia, prevent doing the thing you are suggesting? · Mr. BACHARACH. As I understand it, he only recommends just the average of the grade all the way through; that is correct, is it not? Mr. KEDDY. I am simply recommending the salary grade, now. I am ready to give you the figures at any time, of the amount necessary to put this into effect and to put the salaries at a particular place within a grade; for instance, the minimum, the bottom, the average, the middle, or the maximum or top. Mr. CHINDBLOM. Would the suggestions you are now making bring the salaries in a grade above the average, such as provided in the appropriation bill to be the maximum? Mr. KEDDY. I am recommending or I have named only one sum, and that is the sum necessary to bring it to the minimum-$425,000. I estimate it would cost about $1,250,000 to bring it to the average. I could give you those exact figures immediately by having our statistical section total it. Mr. CHINDBLOM. Then I conclude what you are advocating or suggesting here could be done even in the District of Columbia under the usual proviso in the appropriation bill. Mr. KEDDY. You could not exceed the average of the grade with that language in the appropriation act. Mr. CHINDBLOM. I understood you just now to say that the proposals you make are within the average for the grade. Mr. KEDDY. No, sir. The sum I have asked here is to bring the salaries to the minimum of the grades proposed, $425,000. Mr. CHINDBLOM. And, to the average-how much? |