Proclamation 5791.
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102 STAT. 4983 Proclamation 5791 of April 6, 1988 National Productivity Improvement Week, 1988 By the President of the United States of America A Proclamation Our Nation has long enjoyed a high standard of living, thanks especially to our high productivity, which has accounted for about half our economic growth over the last century. Productivity affects our total output of goods and services, helps keep inflation low, and is vital to our ability to compete in U.S. and foreign markets.
Until the mid-1960s, overall U.S. labor productivity grew at a commendable average rate of 3.2 percent each year. But it slowed to under 2 percent in the 1970s, and last year increased by just under 1 percent. Fortunately, productivity in manufacturing continued at a robust rate and increased by 3.3 percent in 1987. However, the rate of growth in the service sector, which accounts for more than 70 percent of U.S. employment, was less than 1 percent in 1987. We must accelerate productivity growth in the service and other sectors.
Good performance in productivity is especially necessary now that we are in world markets for most goods and services, and because many of our foreign competitors can target the U.S. market using state-of-the-art technology. Government’s job is to create a healthy climate in which private sector productivity growth can flourish. We have done this. We have adopted sound policies to reform internal laws, to encourage inventors to create better products and processes, to reduce burdensome regulations, to stimulate investment in research and development, and to strengthen private sector access to federally funded science and technology.
These achievements provide a solid foundation for the private sector to build upon. Our businesses and their individual leaders must continue their efforts to increase productivity by adopting new technologies and management innovations and by better strategic planning in the increasingly competitive international context. Productivity is now intertwined with quality. To encourage U.S. companies to strengthen their quality, I have endorsed a major initiative, the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, that will honor U.S. manufacturing firms, service companies, and small businesses for improving their goods and services.
This initiative pays fitting tribute to a great Secretary of Commerce who fostered improvement during every assignment he took on. To encourage Americans to understand the importance of productivity growth to their economic welfare, the Congress, by Senate Joint Resolution 223, has designated the week of April 10 through April 16, 1988, as National Productivity Improvement Week and authorized and requested the President to issue a proclamation in observance of this event. NOW, THEREFORE, I.
RONALD REAGAN, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim the week of April 10 through April 16, 1988, as National Productivity Improvement Week. I call upon the people of the United States and especially our business leaders. 102 STAT. 4984 educators, workers, and public officials to observe this week with appropriate ceremonies and activities in a spirit of rededication to improving our Nation’s productivity. IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this sixth day of April, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-eight, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and twelfth.
RONALD REAGAN 5792 April 11, 1988 National Child Care Awareness Week, 1988 Digitization Vendor By the President of the United States of America A Proclamation Proclamation 5792 of April 11, 1988 National Child Care Awareness Week, 1988 By the President of the United States of America A Proclamation Caring for children is the primary responsibility of a parent. It is the task around which family life is organized, a major factor in every decision parents make about their own and their family’s future, from choice of jobs and schools and neighborhoods to the selection of books, films, and every other form of instructional material or entertainment that will influence the development of the child’s character and personality.
Child care is also an organizing principle of society, for it is the primary means of transmitting knowledge, traditions, and moral and religious values from one generation to the next. Sound public policy must support the family in its mission of child care. To do so effectively, public policy must increase and strengthen, not narrow and dilute, the variety of child care options open to families. It must help ensure that child care serves as an adjunct and buttress to parental guidance and love; that it reflects as far as possible the actual preferences of parents for the personal care of their precious offspring; and that it is inherently flexible, to avoid the establishment of practices or programs that defeat these ends and undermine either the well-being of children or the health of the economy.
Heightened interest in child care is a result of tremendous growth and change in the U.S. work force. Between 1982 and 1986, American business created two and one-half times as many new jobs as Japan and the major industrial countries of Europe combined. Our country is well into its sixth consecutive year of expansion—a peacetime record. Women, particularly, are moving into the salaried labor force in large numbers, and their unemployment rate has dropped nearly a full percentage point in the past year alone.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly half of all mothers with a child under one year of age work. Today one family in six is headed by a single, divorced, or widowed woman. Americans have responded to these changes in a number of ways, reflecting the many options parents desire and need. Family members—a sibling or grandparents—and students provide both full- and part-time day care. Churches have developed effective day care programs that supplement custodial care with the religious atmosphere many parents seek.
State-licensed facilities managed by public agencies or private 102 STAT. 4985 entities have rapidly expanded, as have corporate child care programs. Moreover, the landmark tax reform bill I signed in 1986 included a provision beneficial to all families facing child care decisions: the near doubling—to $2,000 by 1989, with indexing thereafter—of the per-child personal exemption. This measure has restored at least a fraction of the exemption’s original worth to families and more realistically reflects the rising cost of caring for children.
To be fair to all families, child care policy analysis must recognize the contributions of women who work, those who would prefer to work part-time rather than full-time jobs, and homemakers who forego employment income altogether to raise children at home. Surely all of these are “working mothers.” As policy options are reviewed and implemented, we must also continue to assess carefully the growing body of research data on the effects of various forms of child care on the emotional, psychological, and intellectual development of children.
I ask all Americans to join with me in honoring the parents, relatives, schools, churches, and institutional child care providers who take on the enormously important task of child care. Theirs is a sacred trust gladly assumed for the future of our Nation. National Child Care Awareness Week affords us a welcome opportunity to offer them recognition and encouragement. The Congress, by Senate Joint Resolution 260, has designated the week beginning April 10, 1988, as “National Child Care Awareness Week” and authorized and requested the President to issue a proclamation in observance of this week.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, RONALD REAGAN, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim the week beginning April 10, 1988, as National Child Care Awareness Week. IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this eleventh day of April, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-eight, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and twelfth. RONALD REAGAN 5793 April 11, 1988 Pan American Day and Pan American Week, 1988 Digitization Vendor By the President of the United States of America A Proclamation Proclamation 5793 of April 11, 1988 Pan American Day and Pan American Week, 1988 By the President of the United States of America A Proclamation For nearly six decades, observance of the annual Pan American Day has told the world that the nations of the Western Hemisphere share a unique harmony of ideals—the love of liberty, independence, and democracy; the willingness to seek these treasures and to preserve them wherever they are found; and firm and profound opposition to totalitarianism.
Each year the United States joins with countries throughout the Americas in pledging fidelity to these ideals so vital to our future. Almost a century ago, in Washington, D.C., the First International Conference of American States made the idea of hemispheric unity a reali-102 STAT. 4986ty by establishing the International Union of American Republics, the predecessor of the Organization of American States (OAS). The common aspirations of the peoples of the Americas for freedom, independence, democracy, peace, security, and prosperity inspire the OAS, which is charged with upholding and defending these critical objectives within the Inter-American System.
The past decade has witnessed several victories for freedom and democracy in the Americas. Ten years ago, the great majority of Latin Americans lived under oppression; today, more than 90 percent of the people of the Americas live under democratic government. We can all be truly grateful for these transformations to democracy. On April 30, the OAS will celebrate the 40th Anniversary of the signing of its Charter in Bogota in 1948—a Charter that declares, “the solidarity of the American States and the high aims which are sought through it require the political organization of those States on the basis of the effective exercise of representative democracy.
” This principle continues to encourage brave men and women in the fight for liberty and democracy. The OAS Charter establishes the basis for hemispheric cooperation in the peaceful settlement of disputes, economic and social development, education, and the protection of human rights. In recent years, the OAS has added a new dimension to its regional problem-solving by creating the OAS Drug Abuse Control Commission to combat narcotics trafficking and drug abuse. The United States of America accords special priority to the crucial work of the OAS in the fields of human rights and narcotics control.
The foundations of the Inter-American System emerged from the Americas’ independence movements, but its consolidation dates from the signing of the OAS Charter; so it is especially fitting that we renew our commitment to the principles of the Organization of American States and its Specialized Agencies on Pan American Day this year as 40th Anniversary celebrations take place. NOW, THEREFORE, I, RONALD REAGAN, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim Thursday, April 14, 1988, as Pan American Day, and the week of April 10 through April 16, 1988, as Pan American Week.
I urge the Governors of the fifty States, the Governor of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and officials of other areas under the flag of the United States of America to honor these observances with appropriate ceremonies and activities. IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this eleventh day of April, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-eight, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and twelfth. RONALD REAGAN 5794 April 11, 1988 John Muir Day, 1988 Digitization Vendor By the President of the United States of America A Proclamation