It is interesting to note that on June 4, Congressman Hartley on the floor of the House of Representatives, made the following statement, and I quote: "You are going to find there is more in this bill than may meet the eye. There is so much more in it than the people have been led to believe, that I am sure that very few understand what the Taft-Hartley bill would do if it should become law. We have all been told, by its proponents, that this is a "moderate" bill.
We have been told that the bill was "harsh" and "drastic" when it was first passed by the House of Representatives, but that the Senate had persuaded the House to drop out the harsh provisions and that the final bill-the bill sent to me-was "mild" and "moderate. But I found no truth in the claims that the bill sent to me was mild or moderate.
I found that the basic purpose and much of the language of the original House of Representatives bill were still in the final bill. In fact, the final bill follows the provisions of the original House bill in at least 36 separate places. We have all been told that the Taft-Hartley bill is favorable to the wage earners of this country. It has been claimed that workers need to be saved from their own folly and that this bill would provide the means of salvation.
Some people have called this bill the "workers' bill of rights. The bill is deliberately designed to weaken labor unions. When the sponsors of the bill claim that by weakening unions, they are giving rights back to individual workingmen, they ignore the basic reason why unions are important in our democracy. Unions exist so that laboring men can bargain with their employers on a basis of equality. Because of unions, the living standards of our working people have increased steadily until they are today the highest in the world.
A bill which would weaken unions would undermine our national policy of collective bargaining. The Taft-Hartley bill would do just that. It would take us back in the direction of the old evils of individual bargaining.
It would take the bargaining power away from the workers and give more power to management. This bill would even take away from our workingmen some bargaining fights which they enjoyed before the Wagner Act was passed 12 years ago. If we weaken our system of collective bargaining, we weaken the position of every workingman in the country. This bill would treat all unions alike.
Unions which have fine records, with long years of peaceful relations with management, would be hurt by this bill just as much as the few troublemakers. The country needs legislation which will get rid of abuses.
We do not need--and we do not want--legislation which will take fundamental rights away from our working people. We have been told that the Taft-Hartley bill is a means by which the country can be protected from nationwide strikes in vital industries. The terms of the bill do not support this claim. Industry feared the growing power of the labor movement spearheaded by increasingly effective unions.
There was also another ambient concern about the rising efficacy of unions in the American economy: Fear of communism as embodied in the growing postwar menace presented by the Soviet Union. In this heated environment at the dawn of the Cold War, Republicans had gained control of the House of Representatives and Senate for the first time since with a platform to unshackle business and industry from the labor-friendly controls imposed by the Democrats under President Franklin D.
Robert A. Its provisions would cause more strikes, not fewer. It would contribute neither to industrial peace nor to economic stability and progress. It would be a dangerous stride in the direction of a totally managed economy. It contains seeds of discord which would plague this Nation for years to come.
Because of the far-reaching import of this bill, I have weighed its probable effects against a series of fundamental considerations. In each case I find that the bill violates principles essential to our public welfare. The first major test which I have applied to this bill is whether it would result in more or less Government intervention in our economic life.
Our basic national policy has always been to establish by law standards of fair dealing and then to leave the working of the economic system to the free choice of individuals. Under that policy of economic freedom we have built our nation's productive strength.
Our people have deep faith in industrial self-government with freedom of contract and free collective bargaining. I find that this bill is completely contrary to that national policy of economic freedom. It would require the Government, in effect, to become an unwanted participant at every bargaining table.
It would establish by law limitations on the terms of every bargaining agreement, and nullify thousands of agreements mutually arrived at and satisfactory to the parties. It would inject the Government deeply into the process by which employers and workers reach agreement. It would superimpose bureaucratic procedures on the free decisions of local employers and employees. At a time when we are determined to remove, as rapidly as practicable, Federal controls established during the war, this bill would involve the Government in the free processes of our economic system to a degree unprecedented in peacetime.
This is a long step toward the settlement of economic issues by government dictation. It is an indication that industrial relations are to be determined in the halls of Congress, and that political power is to supplant economic power as the critical factor in labor relations.
The second basic test against which I have measured this bill is whether it would improve human relations between employers and their employees. Cooperation cannot be achieved by force of law. We cannot create mutual respect and confidence by legislative fiat. I am convinced that this legislation overlooks the significance of these principles.
It would encourage distrust, suspicion, and arbitrary attitudes. I find that the National Labor Relations Act would be converted from an instrument with the major purpose of protecting the right of workers to organize and bargain collectively into a maze of pitfalls and complex procedures.
As a result of these complexities employers and workers would find new barriers to mutual understanding. The bill time and again would remove the settlement of differences from the bargaining table to courts of law. Instead of learning to live together, employers and unions are invited to engage in costly, time-consuming litigation, inevitably embittering both parties.
The Congress has, I think, paid too much attention to the inevitable frictions and difficulties incident to the reconversion period. It has ignored the unmistakable evidence that those difficulties are receding and that labor-management cooperation is constantly improving.
There is grave danger that this progress would be nullified through enactment of this legislation. There is little point in putting laws on the books unless they can be executed. I have concluded that this bill would prove to be unworkable. The so-called "emergency procedure" for critical nation-wide strikes would require an immense amount of government effort but would result almost inevitably in failure. The National Labor Relations Board would be given many new tasks, and hobbled at every turn in attempting to carry them out.
Unique restrictions on the Board's procedures would so greatly increase the backlog of unsettled cases that the parties might be driven to turn in despair from peaceful procedures to economic force. The bill prescribes unequal penalties for the same offense.
It would require the National Labor Relations Board to give priority to charges against workers over related charges against employers. It would discriminate against workers by arbitrarily penalizing them for all critical strikes. Much has been made of the claim that the bill is intended simply to equalize the positions of labor and management. Careful analysis shows that this claim is unfounded.
Many of the provisions of the bill standing alone seem innocent but, considered in relation to each other, reveal a consistent pattern of inequality. The failure of the bill to meet these fundamental tests is clearly demonstrated by a more detailed consideration of its defects. In connection with these reporting requirements, the bill would penalize unions for any failure to comply, no matter how inconsequential, by denying them all rights under the Act.
These provisions, which are irrelevant to the major purposes of the bill, seem peculiarly designed to place obstacles in the way of labor organizations which wish to appeal to the National Labor Relations Board for relief, and thus to impel them to strike or take other direct action.
For example, broad groups of employees who for purposes of the Act would be classed as supervisors would be removed from the protection of the Act. Such groups would be. This peculiar situation results from the fact that the Board is given authority to determine jurisdictional disputes over assignment of work only after such disputes have been converted into strikes or boycotts.
In addition to these ways in which specific provisions of the bill would lead directly to strikes, the cumulative effect of many of its other provisions which disrupt established relationships would result in industrial strife and unrest.
The bill arbitrarily decides, against the workers, certain issues which are normally the subject of collective bargaining, and thus restricts the area of voluntary agreement. While seeming to preserve the right to agree to the union shop, it would place such a multitude of obstacles in the way of such agreement that union security and responsibility would be largely cancelled. In this respect, the bill disregards the voluntary developments in the field of industrial relations in the United States over the past years.
Employers would be harassed by having to deal with many small units. Labor organizations would be encouraged to engage in constant inter-union warfare, which could result only in confusion.
Employers are likely to be besieged by a multiplicity of minor suits, since management necessarily must take the initiative in applying the terms of agreements.
In this respect, the bill ignores the fact that employers and unions are in wide agreement that the interpretation of the provisions of bargaining agreements should be submitted to the processes of negotiation ending in voluntary arbitration, under penalties prescribed in the agreement itself. This is one of the points on which the National Labor-Management Conference in November, , placed special emphasis. In introducing damage suits as a possible substitute for grievance machinery, the bill rejects entirely the informed wisdom of those experienced in labor relations.
He would be required to refrain from agreement until the National Labor Relations Board's workload permitted it to hold an election--in this case simply to ratify an unquestioned and legitimate agreement. Employers, moreover, would suffer because the ability of unions to exercise responsibility under bargaining agreements would be diminished.
Labor organizations whose disciplinary authority is weakened cannot carry their full share of maintaining stability of production. The bill would deprive workers of vital protection which they now have under the law. It would permit an employer to dismiss a man on the pretext of a slight infraction of shop rules, even though his real motive was to discriminate against this employee for union activity. It is significant that employees on economic strike who may have been replaced are denied a vote.
An employer could easily thwart the will of his employees by raising a question of representation at a time when the union was striking over contract terms. The effect of the bill is to narrow unfairly employer liability for anti-union acts and statements made by persons who, in the eyes of the employees affected, act and speak for management, but who may not be "agents" in the strict legal sense of that term.
By employing elaborate legal doctrine, the bill applies a superficially similar test of responsibility for employers and unions--each would be responsible for the acts of his "agents. This is radically different from the power of unions to control the acts of their members--who are, after all, members of a free association. The bill abounds in provisions which would be unduly burdensome or actually unworkable. The bill would establish, in effect, an independent General Counsel and an independent Board.
But it would place with the Board full responsibility for investigating and determining election cases--over 70 per cent of the present case load--and at the same time would remove from the Board the authority to direct and control the personnel engaged in carrying out this responsibility.
By virtue of this unlimited authority, a single administrative official might usurp the Board's responsibility for establishing policy under the Act. After many years of study, the Congress adopted the Administrative Procedures Act of to govern the operation of all quasi-judicial agencies, including the National Labor Relations Board.
This present bill disregards the Procedures Act and, in many respects, is directly contrary to the spirit and letter of that Act. Simple and time-saving procedures, already established and accepted as desirable by employers and employees, would be summarily scrapped.
The Board itself, denied the power of delegation, would be required to hear all jurisdictional disputes over work tasks. This single duty might require a major portion of the Board's time. The review function within the Board, largely of a non-judicial character, would be split up and assigned to separate staffs attached to each Board member. This would lead to extensive and costly duplication of work and records.
Questions of the bargaining unit, of representatives, of union security, of bargaining offers, are subject to election after election, most of them completely unnecessary. The National Labor Relations Board has had difficulty conducting the number of elections required under present law. This bill would greatly multiply this load. It would in effect impose upon the Board a five-year backlog of election cases, if it handled them at its present rate.
An anti-union statement by an employer, for example, could not be considered as evidence of motive, unless it contained an explicit threat of reprisal or force or promise of benefit. The bill would make it an unfair labor practice to "induce or encourage" certain types of strikes and boycotts--and then would forbid the National Labor Relations Board to consider as evidence "views, argument or opinion" by which such a charge could be proved.
In order to get its case before the Board a union must indulge in a strike or a boycott and wait for some other party to allege that it had violated the law. If the Board's decision should favor the party thus forced to violate the law in order that its case might be heard, the Board would be without power over other parties to the dispute to whom the award might be unacceptable.
This would be an impossible task, since it would require the Board arbitrarily to decide which, if any, of the employees had been replaced and therefore should not be allowed to vote. The bill would establish an ineffective and discriminatory emergency procedure for dealing with major strikes affecting the public health or safety.
This procedure would be certain to do more harm than good, and to increase rather than diminish widespread industrial disturbances. I am convinced that the country would be in for a bitter disappointment if these provisions of the bill became law.
The procedure laid down by the bill is elaborate. Its essential features are a Presidential board of inquiry, a waiting period of approximately 80 days enforced by injunction and a secret ballot vote of the workers on the question of whether or not to accept their employer's last offer. At the outset a board of inquiry would be required to investigate the situation thoroughly, but would be specifically forbidden to offer its informed judgment concerning a reasonable basis for settlement of the dispute.
Such inquiry therefore would serve merely as a sounding board to dramatize the respective positions of the parties. A strike or lockout might occur before the board of inquiry could make its report, and perhaps even before the board could be appointed. The existence of such a strike or lockout would hamper the board in pursuing its inquiry. Experience has shown that fact-finding, if it is to be most effective as a device for settlement of labor disputes, should come before the men leave their work, not afterwards.
Furthermore an injunction issued after a strike has started would arouse bitter resentment which would not contribute to agreement.
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