Senator PROUTY. I will wait.

Senator KENNEDY of Massachusetts. We are delighted to have you appear before the subcommittee. I know you have testified on other occasions. We appreciate your coming back.

STATEMENT OF LEE ISENBERG, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, ASSOCIATED RESTAURANTS OF CONNECTICUT, HARTFORD, CONN.

Mr. ISENBERG. Thank you, Senator Kennedy and gentleman of the subcommittee. Our association does appreciate the privilege of presenting some of the problems that we on the on-the-job firing line face. I mentioned in our February testimony, when Mr Dewhurst was not here, that we in the restaurant industry are greatly indebted to Mr. Dewhurst's pioneering effort in the tool and die industry. He and Mr. Harry Hyman, the State supervisor of our Bureau of Apprenticeship and Training program in Connecticut perfected this training technique, this new instructor-coach training technique used in association on-the-job training now throughout the country and we lifted it completely from Mr. Dewhurst's approach and we are using this same technique in the training in the service trades in the restaurant field. We are coming before the subcommittee 6 months later and repeating the same problems that existed 6 months ago, only it seems in a more serious fashion.

We are proud of our own results. This past 6 months has seen us training—we had training contracts for 108 cook-chef apprentices over the past 16 months, and we still have with us 102 apprentices in the program. Some of them are already in their second year and our boys in this 18 months of the program are now making somewhere between $85 and $118 a week.

We are proud of their particular advancement and the fact that we have been able to make a special attempt to have a large number of Negroes and Puerto Rican apprentices in our program, which is an excellent one, guaranteeing the boys a minimum of $7,000 a year shortly after the completion of their training program.

I am not going to outline our training program. I am just going to mention the fact that the irritating factors involved here are that we know that we could multiply our efforts many fold, that the service industries, and particularly the restaurant industry, is uniquely suited to provide many new employment opportunities for disadvantaged groups. Somewhere in the vicinity of 84 percent of the 325,000 restaurant establishments in this country have under 20 employees, and each one of them can use a first cook or a chef and they cannot afford to pay a good wage for a skilled person.

We have a feeling again of frustration. We feel that we could almost echo Mr. Dewhurst's words in the paperwork problems that we face. We feel that the on-the-job training concept is not being treated with any degree of responsibility and fairness as compared to funding allocations.

For example, it is impossible for us to understand how, where we have job guarantees-I know in our State that we can place 900 boys immediately-I cannot get on-the-job training money for that, but there is five times the amount of money for institutional programs.

We would like to be able to have a fairer recognition of the role of on-the-job training. We can produce the jobs, we do not have to

make vague promises that we can reasonably assure the Federal Government that these jobs exist.

Now, any of us who are dealing with on-the-job training programs are very upset about these arbitrary rules and regulations that cut off our funds where there are untold amounts that are weighed in other allocations that do not have the immediate effect of job placement and job development tied in with their programs.

I am not going to rehash the specific recommendations that we have made. We have listed a number of recommendations where we have proven that on-the-job training is the best investment that the Government can make and why it has only allocated 16 percent of the funds available to train 100,000 employees where 84 percent of the funds are available to train 175,000 in institutional programs.

Something is drastically wrong, and-for example, we feel that until an honest evaluation of training results in terms of where are the boys working, never mind this nonsense of how many start a class or how many are finishing, a class, but how many people are actually working in a training program that starts.

And we have found that in numerous comparisons of other types of programing, they can start with 30 people, graduate 13, and 2 are working or 1 is working. This is everywhere, and yet in on-the-job training here we have a continued investment to the Government in these boys. We have 102 of 108 contract boys that are still working over a year, and yet this is the pattern.

I understand it is the same situation in Mr. Dewhurst's organization. We get no recognition for the actual maintenance of training effort as compared to other programs; for the 100-percent placement of these boys.

There are no boys wandering the streets in droves after the normal completion of school programs that articles in the paper day in and day out asking and begging for placement. We place our boys, and yet we only get a fragment of the funds we should have allocated.

Speaking of ridiculous arbitrary figures, the figure came over that we can only have an average in the region of $570 per trainee.

Now, we have been averaging good programs, apprenticeship programs, somewhere between a thousand and $2,000 per trainee, if you are trying to train in the higher skill.

Now, immediately, this puts the pressure on all of us to say, "Well, we will have to reduce our programing. We will have to work within some kind of an arbitrary figure, and we have to sacrifice in our minds what is considered good training."

This just does not make sense.

A further irritation: After we are limited in our on-the-job training State fund allocation, they further take off from our funds the institutional and training allowance part of the program that normally should come from the institutional allocation, so further our amount of $570 average is pulled down even lower.

We just feel that there is something drastically wrong where a segment of our economy is working hard in the placement and development of positions and yet we cannot seem to get any decent recognition for the efforts. And I know-I have been chairman of our State association restaurant industry training group, evaluating training programs, and I know that we could easily multiply our efforts in Our State.

For example, Massachusetts Restaurant Association is now on the verge of copying our exact type of programing in Connecticut. We are fortunate again; the tool and die industry waited a whole year to have the vocational school system approve the concept of the instructor-coach. We are moving in behind them and we will not have that delay, because that particular problem has been overcome. This is just an illustration, incidentally, of some of the many levels of paperwork and delays that we are facing with on-the-job training aspect.

In conclusion, I would like to say that we are not making any pious reply that on-the-job training, per se, is any answer to all questions. We feel very keenly that on-the-job training with a proper training structure for small businesses, is the answer.

Just to give out funds is a dangerous trend as evidenced in certain areas on community action projects and in certain city and State agency programs, that they try to buy positions by giving a certain. amount to an employer. Particularly in small business is this true, and unfortunately most small business in the service trades do not have the capabilities to train without some real instructional assistance or a closely supervised program.

So we feel it makes far more sense to take part of that allocation and put it into an actual traveling instructor that goes into that plant once a week and he works with the boys and gives them the psychological support. He is not just a checker of records, an on-the-job training coordinator. He is actually a traveling instructor, maintaining the quality of instruction.

This is the system Mr. Dewhurst's group developed. It has worked marvelously in terms of our dropout rate, particularly among the disadvantaged groups.

Our men start in the school program. One of our biggest problems is to get them into the schools, but once they are accepted in the schools they teach our present apprenticeship program and then they move out on the job with the boys, and that continuity is something tremendous in maintenance of our job placement and job continuance. We think that this same kind of approach is absolutely necessary in dealing with small business and we feel that on-the-job training, per se, is not enough. It should be organized, meaningful on-the-job training.

And in conclusion, we say that this type of approach certainly should receive a greater recognition on the part of agency authorities or Congress for the type of job that they are trying to do and their potential that seems to be unrealized.

Senator KENNEDY of Massachusetts. Thank you. I would like to commend both of you very highly for the depth of your testimony and the manner in which you approach these problems and suggestions which have been made.

I would like to ask a question of both of you. In your testimony you both concern yourselves to some extent with the problem of small businesses. As I understand it from your testimony, you both feel there is a real opportunity for developing job opportunities in the service trades and the other small business establishments, but they do not have adequate resources for extensive training.

Could you expand to some extent on this particular point? How you feel that the on-the-job training programs can really assist in this?

Do you feel it should be through various trade associations or industry associations?

Mr. ISENBERG. To answer your question, Senator, we feel very strongly. I did not want to repeat some of my testimony that I had given to the committee previously, but we feel very strongly that the staffed trade association is a fantastic vehicle of job development and is being completely ignored.

There is nobody, our fieldman-permit me to give an example.

The average small businessman has to be-first of all, when he gets the paperwork, he has to proceed to sign a contract, he immediately throws up his hands. We go in there and we have meetings and our own attorney says, well-they get the same kind of contract that the Department of Defense issues for a $50 million Government order. I mean, all the clauses and everything else in there. So, we have to reassure him that nothing is being demanded of him more than adequate training.

But before we reach that point, our own trade association is in a far better position, enjoying the respect of management. They can dig out these jobs. We can dig out-if I had the manpower-it just gags me, for example-we can see all kinds of job development programs being given to community action groups-I do not mean to demean their approach-but we can do a job for about half the money at 10 times the efficiency, because we know these people.

When we go into a place we can sell minority representation. We have worked out some very excellent-some excellent techniques in terms of placing of minority boys.

When we have personality problems, for example, in a small operation, a local trade association can easily rotate that boy to another place. We never drop a boy because of these problems.

The local trade association is a surprisingly fine vehicle for opening up tremendous areas of job placement.

As I said, there are 84 percent-and it is the same thing in Massachusetts and in Connecticut-84 percent, approximately, of our establishments in the restaurant industry have under 20 employees. Those people have no training structures in most cases and we can go in there and we can develop the training structure for them, and they will follow it.

After a while these chefs look forward to the arrival each week of our training instructor. Pretty soon he brings in other men in his operation for training. They gather around as this training proceeds, and before we know it, we have actually inculcated a whole new level of training in an operation that heretofore had been unable to get into this function.

Yes, the trade association, the staffed trade association, is an outstanding vehicle, both on the national, regional, and, particularly, local level, to execute this type of training. They can really produce untold job opportunities and this is our right. They are not getting the recognition.

Senator KENNEDY of Massachusetts. And do you feel that there is a danger that once these people are trained they might go to other industries or different companies that may be related?

Mr. ISENBERG. Well, we think-we started on the higher skill level. We tried to work on a distinct program, although we have been blocked and delayed because of lack of funds. We thought that we would try

to establish this so-called ladder of opportunity and start at the top bracket of a cook-chef apprentice. Those men will stay in the industry. There is no question about that, because these boys will be makingare making good money now. It is unbelievable in their own eyes what they are doing, and they will continue in the industry and we will have and there will be mobility, there will be moving around within the industry, but we are certain that they are well on their way to making a career and staying in the food service industry.

We feel that there are less able people, and this is again what we wanted to develop with a screening program, where we would have various levels of training and attainment, that there are less skilled people that could be put into short-order cook jobs at $85 a week.

I can guarantee any waitress, for example, in my State, in a good establishment can be earning at least $100 a week as against gratuities and wages-mostly gratuities, but nevertheless they have innumerable I have innumerable job openings in these so-called secondary skills.

I even went down to the Job Corps to see if we could move in boys from there to Connecticut. We have so many openings and I know that you have the same situation in Massachusetts, as they have been working very closely with us in our training committee to develop a similar program.

I do not know if that specifically answers your question.
Senator KENNEDY of Massachusetts. Senator Prouty?

Senator PROUTY. Mr. Isenberg, I noticed in your prepared statement you say: "Furthermore, selected applicants for these openings are guaranteed these jobs before they enter a brief school period." Now, how do you select these?

Mr. ISENBERG. We start with the U.S. Employment Service and we find even though we are trying to do a decent job of minority representation that unfortunately we cannot fill our quota from the U.S. Employment Service as in most cities. They do a very commendable referral job to us.

Then we have to go out and use our own association personnel, in fact, we hired a full-time social worker just to work different community agencies to round out our quotas that we have had left open for various underprivileged individuals.

We then screen-we have developed our own screening test which we use, a simplified test-we find that for cook-chef training the man has to have an idea of portions and additions, basic English.

We find that in some cases our test is less strenuous than existing employment service tests, and in other cases, other aspects, they might be more demanding. But in any event, we have a screening committee made up of employers, chiefs, and our bureau of training and apprenticeship personnel, and every boy goes before that screening committee, and it is the understanding of all employers that once the screening committee accepts the boy, that any employer in the area will have to take that boy once he finishes the class.

In other words, we line up the job acceptances for these boys, not pairing them to an individual employer, but being accepted for the program and so many positions will be open and the understanding is that any boy that finishes the course is placed among the group. of employers that requested those position openings.