88 Dahlgren 



. presenting our case, we had to muster our resources and tell them what our 

 resources were. 



The third resource, to continue the list, was the fact that we did have by this 

 time a quite competent technical staff. We had a good cadre of scientists and 

 engineers. We had built this up painfully over the years by inching and pinch- 

 ing. Every time we hired a professional, we had to get rid of, by attrition, one or 

 two blue-collar people so we'd have money to pay them. We had to increase the 

 technical staff, and we took every step we possibly could. We starved our people 

 for scientific aids. Our engineers and scientists said, "I need somebody to do this 

 data processing work." Well, "I can't give you anybody to do the data. I can't 

 give you an engineering aid, because that's one billet I could put a professional 

 in, and what we're going to live or die by is not how many engineering aids we 

 have, but how many engineers we have." I went through that speech I can't tell 

 you how many times. 



Dr. Bramble recognized this problem as well as I did, and so did Riffolt. It was 

 a slow process cutting back the blue-collar staff when we got out of the proof and 

 testing business and trying to increase the professional staff. This was a very 

 difficult problem. Everybody spent a great deal of time on it, because in the 

 early 1950's the economy, as far as weapons development was concerned, was 

 booming. There were defense contractors all over the place who were stockpil- 

 ing engineers likecordwood becauseif they gota big project, they were going to 

 need them very badly in order to complete the project. They put them on the 

 staff and gave them make-do work until projects came in, because when a 

 project came in, it was too late to try to go out and hire. It was a very wasteful 

 procedure, but you couldn't blame them for it. It was the only way they had to 

 live. It made it extremely difficult for the government to compete against its 

 own contractors, and we had a terrible time recruiting. 



What problems did you- have in classifying professional positions'? 



Anybody in the Navy in those days could tell you that one. I used to meet with 

 the senior scientists of the leading laboratories, and the main topic that would 

 get voices raised was, "Let me tell you what they did to me." The difficulty was 

 that the Area Wage and Classification Office [AWCO] had people who were 

 doing the position classifications who had no responsibility whatsoever toward 

 getting the work done. They were optimizing things that we didn't particularly 

 care about. 



It was a constant fight with AWCO, which had position classifiers who 

 were not only not technical people themselves, but also too far removed 

 from any responsibility for getting the work done. Management does need 

 enough authority with proper checks and balances which are applied by statu- 

 tory considerations. They do need enough leeway to not be completely frus- 



