389 Opinion of the Court. a "declaration year." Section 601 (f) (2) provided that the declared capital stock value for purposes of the tax. shall be the value as declared by the corporation "in its return for such declaration year (which declaration of value cannot be amended)." Since, under the new legislation, the return for the declaration year for each threeyear period and not that for the first tax year of the taxpayer is controlling, there was no occasion for repeating the phrases "first year" and "first return" which had appeared in the earlier legislation and the new section dropped from the statute the words which had given rise to the earlier administrative construction. This was pointed out by the house committee report recommending the amendment,2 stating that the change would serve to permit the taxpayer to amend its declaration by timely amendment of the return for the declaration year and adding, "denial of all opportunity for correction appears unduly restrictive." It must be assumed that Congress was aware through its committees of the change in the regulations which in 1936 had construed the statute as precluding an effective declaration in a timely amended return, and of the litigation then pending in this case and in Glenn v. Oertel Co., "The new section also alleviates the rigid provision of section 105 (f) of the 1935 act that the valuation shall be as declared by the corporation in its 'first' return. Errors of calculation or other errors sometimes occur in first returns, and denial of all opportunity for correction appears unduly restrictive. Accordingly, the word 'first' as it appears the second time in section 105 (f) of the 1935 act, as amended, is eliminated from the corresponding language appearing in subsection (f) (2) of the new section. This will serve to give a corporation the right, so long as it acts within the time allowed for filing its return (including the last day of any extension period) for the year for which a declaration of value is required, to file subsequent returns for that year showing a different valuation, the valuation shown by the last timely return being binding." H. Rept. 1860, Committee on Ways and Means, 75th Cong., 3rd Sess., p. 62. Opinion of the Court. 308 U.S. supra, in which the departmental construction had been challenged as "unduly restrictive." In the face of the legislative expression of dissatisfaction with the earlier statute as construed, Congressional purpose to declare that such was the intended meaning is not to be inferred merely from the fact that the amendment providing for the future said nothing as to the past. If we are to draw inferences it would seem as probable that Congress was content to leave the problems of the past to be solved by the courts where they were then pending, rather than to preclude their solution there. Action so ambiguous in its implications as to the past is wanting in that certainty and evident purpose which would justify its acceptance as a legislative declaration of what an earlier Congress had intended rather than an effort to make clear that which had been rendered dubious by unwarranted administrative construction. Cf. Jordan v. Roche, 228 U. S. 436, 445; Helvering v. New York Trust Co., 292 U. S. 455; Noble v. Oklahoma City, 297 U. S. 481, 492. Retroactive declarations of legislative intent, prejudicial to those who have acted under an earlier statute whose construction seems clear, it would seem, ought not to be implied more than the legislative intention to give retroactive operation to a new statute. See Hassett v. Welch, 303 U. S. 303, 314 and cases cited; cf. Noble v. Oklahoma City, supra. Reversed. 401 Opinion of the Court. District No. 1, is the exclusive bargaining representative of all the workers in such unit within the meaning of the Act. In the Matter of Shipowners' Association of the Pacific Coast, 7 N. L. R. B. 1002. The effect of the certification, as petitioner alleges, is the inclusion in a single unit, for bargaining purposes, of all of the longshore employees of the members of the employer associations doing business at the west coast ports of the United States, and to designate the C. I. O. affiliate as their bargaining representative so that in the case of some particular employers, their workers who are not organized or represented by the C. I. O. affiliate have been deprived of opportunity to secure bargaining representatives of their own choice. Although the petitioners who are affiliated with the A. F. of L. assert that they have in fact been selected as bargaining representatives by a majority of the employees of their respective employers, petitioners allege that they have nevertheless been prevented from acting in that capacity by the Board's designation of the C. I. O. affiliate as the exclusive representative of such employees. The present suit was begun by petition to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in which the petitioners set forth, in addition to the facts already detailed, that they were aggrieved by the "decision and order of certification of the Board" in that the certificate is contrary to fact and to law; that the Wagner Act does not contemplate or authorize "the designation by the Board of an employee unit constituting all the employees of different employers in different and distant geographical districts of the United States." The petition prayed that the "order of certification" be set aside, in so far as it attempts to designate a single exclusive bargaining representative for longshore employees of many employers on the Pacific Coast and denies to a majority of the longshore Opinion of the Court. 308 U.S. § 9 (c) of the Wagner Act, 49 Stat. 449, 453, 29 U. S. C., Supp. IV, §§ 151-166, that a particular labor organization of longshore workers is the collective bargaining representative of the employees in a designated unit, composed of numerous employers of longshore workers at Pacific Coast ports, is reviewable by the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia by the procedure set up in § 10 (f) of the Act. Petitioners, International Longshoremen's Association, and its affiliate, Pacific Coast District International Longshoremen's Association No. 38, are labor organizations, both affiliated with the petitioner, American Federation of Labor (A. F. of L.). In January, 1938, the International Longshoremen's & Warehousemen's Union, District No. 1, a labor organization affiliated with the Congress of Industrial Organization (C. I. O.) petitioned the Board for an investigation concerning the representation of longshoremen on the Pacific Coast, and that the Board certify the name of the appropriate representative for collective bargaining as provided in § 9 (c) of the Wagner Act. The Board directed an investigation with appropriate hearings, and a consolidation of the proceeding for purposes of hearing with two other proceedings already initiated by locals of the Longshoremen's Union. Petitioners were made parties to the consolidated proceedings and participated in the hearings, at the conclusion of which the Board made its findings of fact and of law and certified that the workers who do longshore work in the Pacific Coast ports for the employers which are members of five designated employer associations of Pacific Coast shipowners or of waterfront employers, constitute a unit appropriate for the purposes of collective bargaining within the meaning of § 9 (b) of the Act. It also certified that the C. I. O. affiliate, Longshoremen's Union, 401 Opinion of the Court. District No. 1. is the exclusive bargaining representative of all the workers in such unit within the meaning of the Act. In the Matter of Shipowners' Association of the Pacific Coast, 7 N. L. R. B. 1002. The effect of the certification, as petitioner alleges, is the inclusion in a single unit, for bargaining purposes, of all of the longshore employees of the members of the em ployer associations doing business at the west coast ports of the United States, and to designate the C. I. O. afiliate as their bargaining representative so that in the case of some particular employers, their workers who are not organized or represented by the C. I. O. affiliate have been deprived of opportunity to secure bargaining representatives of their own choice. Although the petitioners who are affiliated with the A. F. of L. assert that they have in fact been selected as bargaining representatives by a majority of the employees of their respective employers, petitioners allege that they have nevertheless been prevented from acting in that capacity by the Board's designation of the C. I. O. affiliate as the exclusive representative of such employees. The present suit was begun by petition to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in which the petitioners set forth, in addition to the facts already detailed, that they were aggrieved by the "decision and order of certification of the Board" in that the certificate is contrary to fact and to law; that the Wagner Act does not contemplate or authorize "the designation by the Board of an employee unit constituting all the employees of different employers in different and distant geographical districts of the United States." The petition prayed that the "order of certification" be set aside, in so far as it attempts to designate a single exclusive bargaining representative for longshore employees of many employers on the Pacific Coast and denies to a majority of the longshore |