Except that the act of April 17, 1930, authorized an extension for an additional period of 5 years, this legislation, beginning with the act of April 11, 1916, carries the following provision:

"If the said entrymen are unable to procure water to irrigate the said lands above described through no fault of theirs, after using due diligence, or the legal questions as to their right to divert or impound water for the irrigation of said lands are still pending and undetermined by said (dates of extension), the Secretary of the Interior is hereby authorized to grant a further extension for an additional period of not exceeding two years.'

The additional extensions so authorized were granted in each instance with the result that all desert-land entries within the area described in the acts will continue in a state of suspension until May 1, 1938. The proposed legislation describes

an identical area.

The entries covered by the existing or proposed legislation are those initiated and maintained in good faith in the townships described during the period from late 1908, or early 1909, to June 7, 1912, the date of the first act. The evidence of good faith in desert-land cases is the proof of the expenditure of $1 per acre per year required by section 5 of the act of March 3, 1891 (26 Stat. 1095). Failure to make any annual proof is cause for cancelation of the entry, and the effect of the act of 1912 and the following acts was to relieve the entrymen of the obligations imposed by the said act of 1891. There was a period of approximately 1 year from May 1, 1915, to April 11, 1916, during which all these entries were again subject to the said act of 1891 as to annual and final proof; and the act of April 11, 1916, and the following acts, expressly provide that "the requirements of law as to annual assessments and final proof shall become operative from said date as though no suspension had been had."

Consequently, on May 1, 1938, these entrymen must, in the absence of further relief legislation, resume compliance with said act of 1891 as to annual and final proofs.

After May 1, 1938, the status of those entries, whereof the statutory period of 4 years has expired, will be that of desert-land entries upon which final proof must be made or application must be made for the extension authorized by section 3 of the act of March 28, 1908 (35 Stat. 52); the act of April 30, 1912 (37 Stat. 106); section 5 of the act of March 4, 1915 (38 Stat. 1138), as amended by the act of March 21, 1918 (40 Stat. 458); and the act of February 25, 1925 (43 Stat. 982), or, in the absence of another acceptable source of water supply, for the relief authorized by section 5 of the said act of March 4, 1915, as amended and supplemented by said act of March 21, 1918, and the acts of March 4, 1929 (45 Stat. 1548), and February 14, 1934 (48 Stat. 349).

Those entries having 4 to 2 years to run after May 1, 1938, will be required to begin or resume annual proofs, and, upon the expiration of their statutory periods, to make final proof or apply for the extension or the relief authorized by the aforesaid statutes.

The extension to May 1, 1938, under the said act of April 17, 1930, was granted pursuant to an application by the Chuckawalla Water Co., alleged to have been organized by these entrymen to acquire as their trustee the regulated water of the Colorado River, meaning that available to the State of California from the Mead Reservoir.

The Boulder Dam is complete, and the maximum of 5,362,000 acre-feet of the water acquired by the State of California under the Colorado River Compact is, or will shortly be, available. The so-called Chuckawalla desert-land entrymen are now in a position to determine whether the State of California will allot a portion of its Colorado River water to their project, and pending such determination will, after May 1, 1938, be amply protected by the existing general extension and relief statutes. Accordingly, the reason for the aforesaid Chuckawalla relief legislation being no longer apparent, it is recommended that the bill be not enacted into law.

The Bureau of the Budget, pursuant to a request by this Department, advised that it had no objection to the submission of this report.

Sincerely yours,

CHARLES WEST, Acting Secretary of the Interior.

H. Repts., 75-3, vol. 2-68

O

75TH CONGRESS HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 3d Session

{

REPORT No. 2314

SICK AND VACATION LEAVE WITH PAY FOR POSTAL SUBSTITUTES

MAY 9, 1938.-Committed to the Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union and ordered to be printed

Mr. ROMJUE, from the Committee on the Post Office and Post Roads, submitted the following

REPORT

[To accompany H. R. 2690]

The Committee on the Post Office and Post Roads, having had under consideration the bill (H. R. 2690) granting annual and sick leave with pay to substitutes in the Postal Service, report it back to the House with the following amendment, and, so amended, recommend that the bill do pass.

Strike out everything after the enacting clause and insert in lieu thereof the following:

That hereafter substitutes in the Postal Service shall be rated as employees, and after serving four thousand eight hundred and ninety-six hours (whether before or after the enactment of this Act) as a substitute shall be given the same rights and benefits with respect to annual and sick leave that accrue to regular employees, in proportion to the time actually employed.

This bill has two purposes: (1) It classifies substitutes in the Postal Service as "employees'; and (2) it grants sick and annual leave privileges to such substitutes in proportion to the time they actually work and on the same basis as leave is granted to regular employees; i. e., 15 days' annual leave and 10 days' sick leave per annum. Substitutes will be entitled to the leave privileges after they have put in 4,896 hours of work.

It was the view of your committee that this matter might more easily be worked out, without the need for legislation, through a decision from the Comptroller General granting postal substitutes the rights and privileges accorded to regular postal employees. We have failed in that endeavor, however, as is evidenced in the following letter, and it therefore becomes necessary to enact legislation to give relief to our postal substitutes, many of whom serve for years before securing a regular appointment. Please note that the bill as reported.

grants this leave only as the substitutes earn it, and that it is a privilege accorded only to our experienced substitutes.

Hon. JAMES M. MEAD,

Comptroller General of the United States,
Washington, April 19, 1938.

Chairman, Committee on the Post Office and Post Roads,

House of Representatives.

MY DEAR MR. CHAIRMAN: Your letter of April 16, 1938, is as follows: "Our Committee on the Post Office and Post Roads respectfully requests reconsideration of your decision of May 29, 1923, relative to substitute postal clerks.

"We have been considering this question and have under advisement various bills; but it was thought that if substitutes could be given the same status as is given temporary employees by rulings of the Comptroller, it would go a long way in curing the situation now confronting us.

"The only difference between these temporary employees in the departmental service and the substitutes in the Postal Service is that the temporaries while working receive steady employment while the postal substitutes work intermittently-in some cases they may work 3 days a week, the next week 4 days, etc. "Under postal regulations, substitutes are not allowed to engage in outside business. They must hold themselves available for service when called upon at any time. Three and one-half percent is deducted from their wages for retirement purposes, and they are given credit for retirement beginning with the date they first enter the service.

"In view of the decisions made relative to temporary employees in the departmental service, would it not be proper to give the postal substitutes the same benefits, provided such benefits be based upon the amount of service actually performed?"

The decision of the former Comptroller General of the United States dated May 29, 1923 (2 Comp. Gen. 782), to which you refer, held that substitute clerks and carriers in the post offices and substitute railway postal clerks are not entitled either to annual or sick leave of absence with pay. See, also, decision of August 30, 1923 (3 Comp. Gen. 112), denying military leave of absence with pay to substitute railway postal clerks, and decision of May 3, 1929 (8 Comp. Gen. 584), holding that sick leave of absence with pay did not accrue during substitute service for use after the employee received an appointment as a regular. The rule has been incorporated in section 2019 of the Postal Laws and Regulations, 1932, and applied to temporary postal clerks. Also, the rule is in line with many decisions of the former Comptroller General of the United States holding that the granting of leave of absence with pay, either annual, sick, or military, to employees of the Government generally, under various leave laws in force prior to January 1, 1936, was inconsistent with the status of a temporary or substitute employee, and, therefore, not authorized.

While annual and sick leave of absence with pay can now be granted to certain temporary employees of the Government, other than in the Postal Service, this is not because of any reversal or modification of the decisions of this office but because of provisions of the annual and sick leave acts of March 14, 1936 (49 Stat. 1161 and 1162), specifically granting both annual and sick leave of absence with pay to such temporary employees. However, under said acts and the regulations prescribed by the President pursuant thereto the sick and annual leave to which such temporary employees are entitled is limited to 1 and 21⁄2 days, respectively, for each full month of service, the purpose thereof being to prevent loss of pay for such limited absences from duty due to illness or private affairs during the short period (not exceeding 6 months) of continuous employment. Not only are said statutes and regulations not applicable to employees in the Postal Service, but it is to be noted that the President, in the annual- and sick-leave regulations effective January 1, 1938 (Executive Orders Nos. 7845 and 7846, dated Mar. 21, 1938), has excluded from the leave benefits "part time or intermittent employees", which employees have a status similar to that of substitute postal employees. See section 19 of the annual leave regulations and section 23 of the sick-leave regulations.

While I have no authority under the law to reconsider at your request a decision rendered by the former Comptroller General of the United States to the Postmaster General, even if the question involved in said decision were now properly before me, I would be constrained to conclude that substitute employees of the postal service are not entitled under existing law either to sick or to annual leave with pay.

Furthermore, my view is that the reasons for granting leave with pay to temporary employees who work continuously for a month or more do not exist in the case of substitute employees who, as indicated in your letter, work only intermittently.

Sincerely yours,

R. N. ELLIOTT,

Acting Comptroller General of the United States. The following is the report from the Post Office Department on the bill as originally introduced. Please note that the Department's estimate of cost is predicated upon giving each substitute 15 days' annual leave and 10 days' sick leave with pay each year, regardless of whether he works or not. This cost will be materially reduced under the amended bill reported by the committee, for two reasons: (1) The bill as amended does not apply in individual cases until the substitute has 2 full years of work to his credit; and (2) the leave will be allowed to the veteran substitutes only in proportion to the time actually employed. OFFICE OF THE POSTMASTER GENERAL, Washington, D. C., April 26, 1937.

Hon. JAMES M. MEAD,

Chairman, Committee on the Post Office and Post Roads,

House of Representatives.

MY DEAR MR. MEAD: The receipt is acknowledged of your letter of February 23, 1937, requesting a report upon H. R. 2690, a bill granting annual and sick leave with pay to substitutes in the Postal Service.

On the basis of the actual number of hours of service performed at the rate of 10 and 15 days for sick and annual leave respectively, it is estimated that the cost per annum of this proposed legislation for employees in post offices would be $3,778,130.

Substitute employees are engaged only when their services are required and it would not seem logical to grant annual and sick leave to this class of employees on the same basis as granted to other employees and under the same conditions, irrespective of the actual time employed. In other words, a regular employee, who is required to work full time throughout the year, is entitled to 15 days' annual leave and 10 days' sick leave. To grant annual and sick leave under the same conditions as provided in the bill, would mean that substitutes would receive the advantages that the regular employee receives, regardless of the hours or number of days employed during the year.

Substitute railway postal clerks are not steadily employed; some do not work for days and weeks at a time, and therefore annual leave is not considered a requirement for substitutes. This bill would place all substitutes in a status to receive 15 days' annual leave and 10 days' sick leave a year whether or not they are employed. The Department might be put in the anomalous position of being required in some instances to pay more for leave than for services actually rendered by substitutes.

There are now approximately 2,000 substitute railway postal clerks, and it is estimated that it would cost the Department a maximum $181,500 per annum to grant them annual leave each year and $121,000 to grant them sick leave each year under the provisions of proposed H. R. 2690.

If H. R. 2690 were enacted, granting vacation and sick leave to all substitute postal employees in the c assified service, it would increase the cost of the motorvehicle service by $103,224 annually based on the number of substitutes on the roll as of February 27, 1937. It would also be necessary to increase the number of substitutes employed, which is now restricted by Public, No. 641, H. R. 7688, Seventy-fourth Congress, approved June 4, 1936, to replace substitutes on annual leave or vacation. Any further increase in the number of substitutes now on the roll would result in reducing the earnings of substitutes as a whole, which is not desirable.

The cost to grant leave to substitute employees in the classified service of the custodial service would amount to $3,386.75 annually on the basis of those now on the rolls. This would cover positions of substitute laborer and relief telephone operator.

Although there are a considerable number of positions of substitute charman and substitute charwoman, these would not be covered by the proposed act as the employees are unclassified and, therefore, not in the classified civil service.