employees in industry, and to delegate the mediation function and the arbitration function to other agencies. The mediation function, I believe, should be delegated purely and simply to the United States Conciliation Service, and the United States Conciliation Service should, in my estimation, be recognized in law and should be dignified in keeping with, for example, the United States Board of Mediation as it applies to the railroad industry. Now, if there has been one thing which has made the success of the United States Railway Act and the United States Board of Mediation, it is this, that the United States Board of Mediation at no stage of the game has ever been put in the position, or could be put in the position of taking sides in any dispute. It was purely and simply a mediation board, and both parties, as well as Congress, when the act was enacted, went very much out of its way to see to it that the Board of Mediation was not put in the position at any stage of the game of having to decide an issue. Otherwise, its mediation functions would become more or less undermined. Now, with respect to arbitration, the United States Board of Mediation does not serve in an arbitral capacity. Instead, in the event the two parties cannot agree the United States Board of Mediation may propose arbitration and if arbitration is proposed than an arbitration board is set up in conformity with certain practices laid down in the act, and the only thing that the United States Board of Mediation has to do with respect to arbitration is in the event the two parties to the arbitration cannot agree to select the neutral arbitrator, or, as the case may be, one or two. Now, it seems to me that that same practice should be observed in this particular situation. Certainly one thing is true, and it has got to be watched very, very carefully, that if the Board is exposed to all kinds of requests it may soon become overloaded and bogged down. I think Mr. Lewis made that observation with respect to this mediation. Certainly, as far as the mediation function is concerned, the United States Conciliation Service, properly amplified and dignified in the law and otherwise, and properly manned, which, incidentally, is very, very essential, would, I think discharge that function very admirably. Now, if the suggestions which I make are considered seriously, their practical effect would be something like this, that the National Labor Board would stand by as the custodian, as I said, of the Government's conscience with respect to the employees; it would do, in other words, what the Federal Coordinator has been doing in the railway industry. In the railroad industry the United States Board of Mediation has been free to step in and mediate at any stage. The Federal Coordinator has not at any stage of the game interjected himself other than where he might have been called in jointly or otherwise in the capacity of mediator. That thing has been left purely and simply to the United States Board of Mediation. Now, with respect to the matter of arbitration of disputes, if both parties can agree and I believe the act should be amended so as to bring this about-if both parties can agree to arbitration I think it would be wiser to set up independent arbitration tribunals every time there is an arbitration forthcoming of a certain magnitude. The United States Conciliation Service in that event can stand by, can facilitate arbitration, and can participate in the selection of neutrals when they are asked to do so and when it becomes necessary to do so. Now, then, let us assume for the moment that the arbitration in any difficulty is rejected and that some difficulties threaten; then I would say that perhaps the National Labor Board should again be prepared to stand by to step into the picture in this way: Before a stoppage can result, before a lock-out can happen, it is my judgment that there should be a period of, say, 30 or 60 days in which the status quo is maintained, during which time if, in the opinion of the National Labor Board, a serious difficulty is threatened, resulting in strike, working a hardship, or otherwise interfering with interstate commerce, a fact-finding commission should be appointed by the Board, or else the Board sit as a fact-finding commission, and determine the merits of the issue and assign the responsibility and make those facts known. That, in other words, is more or less again in keeping with the general experience of the Railway Labor Act. The CHAIRMAN. This is after arbitration has failed? Mr. BEYER. Not failed, but has been rejected. After arbitration is accepted the terms of the arbitration agreement would simply be that both parties would accept them for a certain period. The CHAIRMAN. But if it is rejected and a strike threatened, you would suggest the Labor Board stepping in and doing what you have indicated? Mr. BEYER. Yes; stepping in and issuing a proclamation to the effect that the status quo be maintained for a limited period pending which time it would determine what the merits of the issue were and who would be responsible in the event of a failure. I believe that the United States Conciliation Service should, as I said before, be dignified in its position, that instead of having conciliators pure and simple we should have a conciliation board perhaps of three. I also consider that the National Labor Board, instead of being a tripartite arrangement, should be constituted-I think for this purpose a body of three or five would be sufficient, but the gentlemen appointed to the Labor Board should be absolutely nonpartisan and not the representatives of labor, not the representatives of employee interests, but should be high-grade individuals appointed by the President with the approval of the Senate and should be men well versed in the whole art of appraising labor disputes, and, in other words, be the Supreme Court in a way of the labor judiciary; standing by on the one hand, to see to it that labor is safeguarded with respect to its right to organization, and so forth, and in the event of a breakdown to act as a fact-finding commission or else delegate that authority to a special committee which may be appointed from time to time as the need may arise. Senator WAGNER. Would you keep the supervision of elections? Mr. BEYER. Yes, decidedly. All of these administrative functions should be concentrated in the hands of the Labor Board. The Labor Board should have access up to a certain point to records for the purpose of enabling the intelligent conduct of an election. I would do that by all means. That constitutes the burden of my observations and remarks. Senator Wagner has asked this question and I, among others, will volunteer an answer: In the first place, there is absolutely nothing in this bill as drawn at the present time that prevents or prohibits any employee from choosing any kind of labor organization or company union or otherwise. Second, there is nothing in this act that gives any American Federation of Labor organization or any other kind of an organization a peculiar advantage. All that it does is to give the employees absolute freedom of choice to be safeguarded under Government supervision, and, as I say again, it is in keeping with the practices that have been recognized as sound and healthy in every other country apparently except this one. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. The CHAIRMAN. Dr. Leiserson. STATEMENT OF DR. WM. M. LEISERSON, NATIONAL AUTHORITY The CHAIRMAN. Your full name, please. Dr. LEISERSON. Yellow Springs, Ohio. The CHAIRMAN. You are listed here as chairman of the Ohio Unemployment Insurance Commission, and the present chairman of of the Petroleum Labor Policy Board. Is that correct? Dr. LEISERSON. That is correct. The CHAIRMAN. I assume you have been interested in labor problems for some time? Dr. LEISERSON. Yes. I am professor of economics at Antioch College. I have been engaged in arbitration work, in labor disputes, ever since the war. I began arbitrating disputes in the manufacture of army clothing, and I have stayed in it, more or less, since. I have not very much to add to what Mr. Beyer has said, so I won't take very much of your time. I think Mr. Beyer has outlined the real problem that requires the enactment of this bill. I want to explain the need for the bill from the point of view of an administrator who has to enforce section 7 (a). Before I became chairman of the Petroleum Labor Board, I acted as Secretary of the National Labor Board, and the problem of section 7 (a) were the main problems that came up. Senator WAGNER. And they still are the main problems, professor? Dr. LEISERSON. Yes. Senator DAVIS. And, I might add, always will be. Dr. LEISERSON. Yes. Well, of course, the problems of administration will always be there, but the need for the specific unfair labor practices provisions that are enumerated in section 5 were well explained by Mr. Beyer. If you have a law, such as the Emergency Transportation Act, which specifically makes certain things that may not be done in interfering with the employee's right to organize, makes them specifically illegal, then the law can be enforced. If, however, you leave the term general, the right to organize, and do not specifically prohibit the things that the administrator or the Coordinator of the Railroads are able to prohibit, then it is not possible for Congress' intent to be carried out, that labor should have the right to organize. Now let me illustrate how that happened. As soon as section 7 (a) was adopted, industries that previously had objected to employee representation plans, that are otherwise called company unions, suddenly began to organize them. Now, there had been sincere advocates among the industries for many years of employee representation plans, but most of the industries that are now fighting the right of labor to organize opposed the formation of employee representation plans, for unions, on the ground, as they told their personnel managers, "What you are doing is organizing our employees, and the first thing you know they will go over to the union." And so they were as much opposed to company unions as they were to other unions. As soon as section 7 (a) was adopted, the National Organization of Employers held conferences and worked out plans of employee representation and distributed them throughout the industry, and beginning with July those plans were imposed on the industry. Now let me read you two or three things that they find essential in every one of those plans. Here is a typical plan, and it appears in practically all the employee representation plans. Here is one with regard to representatives of the employees: Any employee who, on the voting date, is at least of the age of 21 years; who is an American citizen, or who has secured his first papers for naturalization, and who has been in the active and exclusive continuous employ of the company for a period of at least 1 year, shall be eligible to serve as a representative of the employees in elections. Now, no employee group, when they make up a plan of representation, will ever put that in. Now whether it ought to be in or ought not to be in is not a question. Congress did not so limit the right of representation. Congress said an employee who is 20 or 19 or 18 has a right to choose his representatives for collective bargaining, and did not say that he has to be 21. It did not say that he has to work for the company. The companies want that, and that is what is meant by the vague term "company union." Collective bargaining means that the employees want to sell their labor cooperatively and not individually. It is cooperative marketing. Now, obviously if a thousand wage earners chip in together to market their labor cooperatively, they want a highly trained salesman to sell their labor, or they might want a highly trained statistician or economic expert, or a personnel manager, the way the companies do. But the companies insist that you cannot have a personnel manager, they say, "We are the only ones that have the right to have a personnel manager. You cannot have your own statistician. The only one that we will bargain with is a representative who works for us, that we can fire." Senator DAVIS. It is the old story of the check weigher at the mine over and over again. Dr. LEISERSON. Yes. That is the first thing. The next thing is the qualification of voters. The company plan says: All employees of the plant or company subdivision who, on the voting date, are at least 21 years of age and are in the active, regular, exclusive service of the company shall be eligible to vote. Senator DAVIS. Aren't there many skilled mechanics who are 17, 18, and 19 years of age? Dr. LEISERSON. Yes. It varies. It does not make any difference whether they are skilled. The semiskilled machine hands are mostly younger fellows, running from 18 to 21 and they make up the majority in the mechanized industry. There is always in the plant an amendment provision, and the amendment provides this: "This plan may be amended or terminated by the council" which is a joint organization of employers and employees, "by a majority vote of all the duty elected employee representatives, together with the majority vote of all of the management representatives." In other words, if the management representatives object to the amendment, the employees' right is entirely taken away. The management-appointed representatives have the way with respect to changing anything that is in this plan. If, for instance, the employees should discover that they cannot bargain decently and fairly without an outside representative and they want to change the plan, amend it, to elect one, they can be stopped by the appointed representatives of the management not agreeing to it. Now when you hear the talk about company unions, this is what is in mind: The companies prepare these plans, they put them in since July, and they claim, "This is the choice of our employees." Now technically I should say that if the employees prepare this kind of a plan, and this is what they want, I think under the law they have a right to have it. But it is quite a different thing for the companies to come in and prepare the plan. They send their personnel manager around to talk to the employees at the meeting. We have had cases where the employees wanted to stay home and not vote and the company would send trucks after them, making them come and vote for this plan under that kind of pressure. Senator WAGNER. And, Doctor, isn't it also true that if the foreman comes along and says, "I want you to go over there and vote", the man knows if he does not his position would be in jeopardy. They have actually been discharged for that. Dr. LEISERSON. If there were any sincere belief on the part of the employers who foster this plan that what they call the outside union was merely intimidating the employees, and that the employees prefer this kind of a plan, why, the employers would say to the National Labor Board, or to any other governmental agency, "For Heaven's sake, come in here and hold a secret election and let our employees vote without intimidation, so we can hold these elections without intimidation." The trouble is that the people who have imposed these plans on the employees know that if a secret election were held the plans would be repudiated. Take the position of the automobile industry at the present time. They raised the question as to whether the whole issue is not a monopoly for the American Federation of Labor. A year ago there was a strike in the automobile plants in Detroit. It was run by an organization, a bona fide organization of employees known as the Mechanics' Educational Society. That organization was against the American Federation of Labor, and it was against the company union. It was an exercise of the right of the employees to choose their own organization. The employers who are now talking in New York about the American Federation of Labor bound themselves not to make an agreement with this independent organization that antiAmerican Federation of Labor, because what they did not want is the right of the employees to have the same rights that the employers have to sit in New York and decide what wages shall be paid in |