PUBLIC SERVICE EMPLOYMENT

The U.S. Department of Labor has reported that unemployment has reached a 40-year high. Many public employees are included in this record unemployment rate.

A program of public service employment¾properly conceived and administered--can be an important part of the remedy for our current depression. However, such a program must not create as many problems as it solves.

The Federal Public Service Employment Program created in 1971 and recently extended by Congress, was never designed to operate in a time of high nationwide unemployment, nor to alleviate lay-offs in the public sector. The original program was designed to deal with pockets of unemployment among the young veterans and minorities in an otherwise healthy economy. Today, that is no longer true.

For the first time since the Great Depression, massive layoffs are occurring in the public sector. Jobs that have previously been considered secure are now being terminated because of the current squeeze on state and local budget. The federal Public Service Jobs Program must be changed to reflect this new reality.

First, there must be changes to prevent using these federal funds to hire new people at the same time that permanent employees are being laid off. Before any new hires are made, laid off workers must be put back on the job at their full entitlements to wages, fringe benefits and seniority. The current program provides 380,000 public service jobs. It should be expanded to provide at least one million jobs.

The salary ceiling contained in the law is another provision that needs substantial revision. In 1971 when the Emergency Employment Act was passed, the ceiling on salaries was $12,000. This was a low figure even then, but one could anticipate state and local governments augmenting that figure with local funds to pay for a salary in excess of $12,000. Today the ceiling is down to $10,000; hard-pressed local governments cannot be expected to find funds to bring the salary up to scale. This ceiling has three negative effects:

It discourages the hiring of teachers. The current average teacher salary is $11,500; if a teacher with a few years on the job is laid off, it is unlikely that a public service job can be found for that teacher.

With a ceiling of $10,000, local governments tend to use the federal program as a club against higher wages. New jobs being created by the federal program can be used to depress wage demands.

No other federal program can be used in such a way (witness the Davis-Bacon and Walsh-Healy Acts) and this one should not either.

Finally, the program should be amended to provide for the use of Local Education Agencies, as well as state and local governments, as prime sponsors. Local Education Agencies are the employers for more than half of all local government employees.

In most cases a large city school district is a much larger employer than city government. Nevertheless, education has not received anything approaching a fair share of the funds. We urge that 50 percent of all funds be allocated to LEA either as prime or sub-sponsors. Since LEA employ as many different types of workers as cities and counties do, this will result in the hiring of not only teachers, but carpenters, janitors, electricians, paraprofessionals and many other types of workers.