proved in eight Minority Training Plans conducted in Washington, New York, Florida and Maryland. In addition, a school training placement project was approved for the West Chester, Pennsylvania area school district.

2. A second avenue for the development of trainee classifications and rates is provided by 29 CFR Part 5a, which makes training opportunities a requirement of all Government construction contracts of $10,000 or more.

This regulation, which became effective on January 30, 1972, is being implemented by all Federal agencies engaged in construction programs. The regulation prohibits discrimination in covered construction projects and requires that trainees be paid wage rates consonant with those paid apprentices on simillar work.

Trainees, therefore, for Davis-Bacon purposes, are treated in a manner essentially similar to that of apprentices. As in the case of apprentices, the hourly wage rates for trainees are not incorporated in the wage predetermination, but contractors are required to pay the rates required under the program which was certified locally to the contracting officer.

The program is self-administering. Thus, after approval of its training aspects by the Manpower Administration, the basic responsibility for setting and enforcing the trainee rates lies with the various contracting agencies.

3. Trainee rates may be established between a contractor and a union for the purpose of using trainees pursuant to a bona fide youth, anti-poverty, or similar manpower program. This program is also self-administering. Thus, the rates are not generally reviewed by the Department, and we would have no information on the numbers involved. We are, however, sometimes asked to approve trainee rates established under this procedure. For example, we were asked to approve wage rates for trainees as set out in the National Iron Workers and Employees Training Program—a program national in scope. Blanket approval of the specified rates was given on a nationwide basis on October 28, 1971, with the statement that the rates would be considered consistent with other rates issued by the Department in a Davis-Bacon case.

Senator BROCK. Let me go now, if I may, to my bill, which I noted two or three times you mentioned that it is related only to safety. I would point out that health and safety are not totally synonymous terms, and my bill relates to both.

You say there has been enough success in meeting the problems of successive wages, stabilizing prices, and productivity, so that our effort should go into improving the structures that we have other than embarking on new ventures.

Now, that is a rather interesting statement about the bill which would simply say that conditions relating to health and safety should be paramount, and that is what we are trying to do.

You talked about what your existing rules would do, and you say when new work rules have been found, the contracts have been returned for modification.

The fact of the matter is that our problem isn't with new rules. It is with the ones that are crucifying the industry and the home buyer today. You don't even address that particular concern. You don't address the concern that we have with building codes. You don't even mention it, totally anachronistic building codes, which are impeding not only construction in this country, but the purchase of homes themselves by the families of this country.

Then you go to a couple of things which I would like to discuss with you.

You say that S. 3373 would place in jeopardy the right of workers in the construction industry to go over the significant aspects of their employment, limit their right to bargain over these positions, and it would do so in an uncertain and unpredictable way with management and labor having no idea what they could agree to.

Is there any new law that doesn't chart a course into some new orders, and isn't it true that virtually all labor law is accomplished in the case law based upon the judgment of decisions as they have been arrived at through the courts over a period of time and the experience of your department?

Is it not true that most law is written with an objective in mind and not with all of the specific criteria which would obviate the need for a Department of Labor at all?

Mr. SILBERMAN. That last question is provocative.

Senator BROCK. Well, we can get into that later.

Mr. SILBERMAN. We, in fact, would agree with you that the Department of Labor is outmoded and should be abolished. The President has, in fact, made that proposal to Congress, that it be merged, so to speak, with various other Departments, to create a new Department of Economic Affairs, and a new Department of Human Resources. So the President's position on that is quite clear.

Of course, we would agree with that. But I suppose that is somewhat apart from the issue that we have been discussing.

In response to your question, Senator, I would like to say on the question of work rules, if I may talk first in a collective bargaining context, putting aside the question of codes, that I think that any attempt to deal with work rules on the part of the Federal Government, dissociated from wages, is probably misconceived.

A collective bargaining process is one in which various issues of importance to both labor and management are put on the table and discussed, and as my testimony implies, there are various tradeoffs between wages, work rules, and other factors, such as safety conditions. And you can't take one part of the matrix of the collective bargaining process and say we are going to step in at this stage and try to regulate collective bargaining there, because I don't believe it will work effec

tively.

If I may use a lawyer's expression, it is a seamless web, and therefore, I don't think attempts to regulate the kind of collective bargaining the parties will embark on in work rules dissociated from the wage bargaining are realistic.

Now, on the model codes

Senator BROCK. Let me stop you at that point, because if you are going to get into the codes, that is something of a different problem. You seem to be arguing two different points of view.

You are saying we have got to have them to go, we have got to centralize, yet we shouldn't have anything to say about them. What is it that we do have a right to do?

Is it for the Federal Government to encourage a situation where an individual has no flexibility, no freedom, or shouldn't he have some protection under the law?

Shouldn't a home buyer or home builder or a labor union member be afforded some access to due process and to relief at the local level when his rights have been impinged upon by a work agreement?

We are not trying to set Federal standards. You are almost trying to say we shouldn't have any standards, but if we have got them, we ought to establish them at a Federal level.

Mr. SILBERMAN. Perhaps I was misunderstood on that.

I was first making a point that it is very difficult in a collective bargaining process to approach a point of work rules and dissociate it from other conditions that are involved.

Beyond that, I am saying it is unwise for the Federal Government to reach in and try to say to the parties, we are not going to recognize these kinds of agreements that you make which somebody can prove in some court at some time impede technology.

It is a very vague standard if I may say so, Senator.

Senator BROCK. There is nothing in my bill that relates or refers to the impediment to technology. My bill says that restrictive work agreements must be based upon health or safety.

That is all it says.

Mr. SILBERMAN. Well, then, let me put it this way:

You would in effect outlaw all restrictive work agreements which aren't based on concerns of safety or health?

Senator BROCK. What is important to you? What conditions would you apply other than health and safety?

Mr. SILBERMAN. Let me try to get to the point. Although we agree with the general proposition that we should move toward the elimination of restrictive work practices, and the adoption of increased productivity, one man's restrictive work practice is another man's livelihood.

It is very difficult to make that kind of judgment. In your bill, you would give this to a court.

Senator BROCK. In a western State, the Plumbers and Pipefitters Union refused to allow the use of prethreaded pipe and rods, unless the contractor pays the union an amount based upon the time it would take to thread the pipe or rod, at the construction site, at prevailing wages, whether it is done there or not.

Now, is that something you would justify and something you would say is in consonance with the free system and the free market, and with the rights of the homebuyer?

Mr. SILBERMAN. I suppose there are various groups in our society. which contract with other groups all the time on a basis whereby they maximize the income or revenue that they get pursuant to that contract. Senator BROCK. And that makes it right?

Mr. SILBERMAN. Well, I am not so sure that it is a question of right or wrong, Senator.

Senator BROCK. How about the rights of the consumer in this country? How about the rights of the guy that is trying to buy a house, and it is pretty nip and tuck, and it is tight? How about the fact of the matter that we have priced housing in this country out of the reach of the average American family? What about their rights? Do they not have any? Are they subject to the whim of a monopoly situation, over which they have no redress?

Mr. SILBERMAN. I do not dispute at all the fact that with respect to residential housing—and incidentally, that seems to be a point of certain confusion on my part, because as I read your bill, it is not limited to residential housing.

Senator BROCK. A person that buys a house pays taxes, and the GAO just got through testifying that the cost of overall construction has been promoted by some of these problems to a degree of somewhere at least 5 percent, and sometimes maybe as high as 15 percent.

Mr. SILBERMAN. I want to point out, Senator, your bill goes far beyond residential housing. On the residential housing issue, I do not for a moment gainsay, that I am concerned that we all have housing developed at a price which our people can afford to pay.

to

Indeed, that is one of the reasons why the Department, in response the GAO report, has discontinued its process over the last 3 years, of determining prevailing wage levels for residential housing based on rates that we get from the commercial side.

Senator BROCK. But, you still do not distinguish between urban and rural?

Mr. SILBERMAN. We do, insofar as it is appropriate. Where the labor market is such that people move from the urban to the rural areas to perform the work, then in fact, the prevailing wages are those that are imported from the urban area in many cases.

Senator BROCK. Mr. Silberman, I have great respect for you, and I think you are doing a fine job, but you cannot tell me that in every instance, you are basing your prevailing wage on a rural area, upon the fact that urban workers come out and do that work.

That is not the fact.

Mr. SILBERMAN. Senator, I would not tell you that. I am sure in a certain percentage of the cases, we make mistakes.

Senator BROCK. I cannot tell you of a circumstance where you set a rate on a rural area. It almost invariably is based upon an urban area. Mr. SILBERMAN. Let me see if my associate can come up with one. Senator BROCK. If you say you have made one in 50 States, I will say you have made some progress.

Mr. SILBERMAN. He has the book here.

(The following information was received from the Department of Labor:)

WAGE RATES IN URBAN AND RURAL AREAS

In determining whether wage rates from urban centers are regularly "imported" into nearby rural areas, two kinds of situations need to be considered; (1) where the city and the rural area are in the the same county; and (2) where the urban center and the rural area are in separate counties.

In the first situation, wage rate surveys normally encompass the entire county. As a result of the larger number of projects being located in the urban center, the wage rates being paid there would normally be found prevailing throughout the entire county.

In the second situation, urban rates are not issued for adjoining rural counties unless information establishes that these rates do, in fact, prevail in the rural area. Standing instructions require a survey of local projects before issuing a wage determination where probative information on wages is not on hand. With decentralization of project wage determinations to Regional Offices, effective March 6, 1972, local knowledge is being applied to local situations so that improper rural wage determinations should be greatly reduced.

To demonstrate current practice, the table below shows the rates issued for three typical crafts in the city of Lafayette and two adjoining rural counties in Louisiana. The surveys of wages paid indicated that substantially lower rates prevailed in the rural counties.

Also, in Muskogee, Oklahoma, for example, for residential construction we show the wage rates issued, and in the next column the rates issued on residential construction in adjacent more rural Cherokee County:

Within the same county where there are differences in wage rates for different kinds of construction, wage determinations reflect the different wage rates which prevail. The following examples illustrate this:

Of course, in other instances, there may in fact be no differences in wages as between residential and commercial building construction.

The following aditional examples show wages found prevailing for selected