In my district we have no trouble because we abide pretty well by the unions and we hire union people and we don't have that problem. But we did have one case where a Baptist minister was building a church and he brought nonunion laborers in from Ohio or New York and Pennsylvania. Under the law, Joe says, he can't picket that job and so they had to work it out diplomatically to the degree that they got together with the good pastor and the job was half done and so the pastor agreed to let all of those fellows go, and then Joe moved in and set up all of the trades in there and they finished the church for him.

It goes to show that under the law as it is now, they cannot picket, and nonunion people can come in and work for less than the scale, and the trades people which I have supported always since I have been in Congress are really in jeopardy in that situation. There is no question about it, Mr. Gray.

Now, this morning I would like to get your comment. You probably read Mr. Raskin's article in the Times, and also in the Post this morning. To me these articles highlight the problem of racial discrimination by some of the local unions. And in fact, there have been serious charges that such discrimination appears on both the Capitol and New House Office Building over here. I am very pleased with Mr. Meany's stand and approach to this matter. I want to compliment him very highly.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to introduce the article in the New York "Times and also in the Post, for the record, if it is agreeable with you. Mr. PERKINS. Without objection it will be inserted in the record. (The articles referred to follow :)

[Article from the New York Times]

MEANY DISCLOSES BID TO AID NEGROES

BUT SAYS NIXON COMMITTEE FAILED TO BACK HIM IN DRIVE ON UNION'S BIAS

(By A. H. Raskin)

BAL HARBOUR, FLA., February 15-George Meany disclosed today that he had offered to help recruit nonunion electricians as a means of smashing a Washington union's ban on Negro members.

The president of the American Federation of Labor & Congress of Industrial •Organizations asserted that his unorthodox offer had come to naught because the President's Committee on Government Contracts refused to put pressure on :a balky employer.

Mr. Meany's account represented a bizarre chapter in the frustrating history of the federation's efforts to eradicate Jim Crow practices in Local 26 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. The local, which controls electrical work on all Government construction projects in the Nation's Capital, admits no Negroes.

NIXON IS MENTIONED

Today's chapter brought in the names of Vice President Nixon, who heads the President's Committee; Secretary of Labor James P. Mitchell, its Vice Chairman, and Mr. Meany, a labor member of the group. Also involved in a footnote to the story was Matthew H. McCloskey, head of the McCloskey Construction Co., who happens to be treasurer of the Democratic National Committee.

The pages of this "political who's who" started turning when Mr. Meany announced that the federation's permanent civil rights committee had confessed its inability to persuade local 26 to abandon its discriminatory policies. The blunt union chief said he had appointed himself as a one-man committee to end the local's intransigence.

A PROMISE IS RECALLED

He made it plain, however, that he felt the fight might already have been won if the Nixon Committee had gone along with a written suggestion he made in December 1958, that the electrical contractor on a Government housing project be required to hire qualified Negroes.

The project was a part of a large-scale urban redevelopment in southwest Washington, and the employer involved was the Truland Electrical Contracting Co.

Mr. Meany asserted that the company had not hired a Negro in 30 years and had no intention of hiring one, even though it had promised to hire without discrimination when it got its Government contract.

"Under the law the contractor can't hide behind the restrictive practices of the local union," Mr. Meany declared. "I volunteered, through Secretary Mitchell and the Committee on Government Contracts, to get Negroes for this employer. He said flatly he don't hire them. Yet there has been no action by the President's Committee against him."

The union chief said he had been under tremendous pressure from the committee to crack down on local 26 until he made his offer to help the contractor get Negro electricians from outside the union. The only communication Mr. Meany received after that was a letter several months later to the effect that the complaint had become moot because the project was completed.

At the headquarters of the committee in Washington, a spokesman said the group drew no line between employers and unions in its effort to obtain full compliance with the Government's antidiscrimination rule.

Irving Ferman, who became the Committee's Executive Vice Chairman last September, said it was working more vigorously than ever to insure nondiscriminatory hiring on the two big projects now underway in the capital. One is the new east wing of the Capitol and the other is a Federal office building adjacent to the headquarters of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.

Mr. Ferman said special stress was being put on assuring compliance before work actually began. He said success already has been achieved in breaking down race bars previously enforced by the Iron Workers Union and that efforts were being made to score a similar breakthrough in electrical work to be done by members of local 26 on the two new projects. Mr. McClosky is the prime contractor on these projects.

The decision of the federation's executive council to take direct action against local 26 marks a strengthening of the enforcement machinery it has built up to back up its antidiscrimination policies. In the past the federation high command has not taken a direct hand in bias cases.

[Article from the Washington Post]

U.S. GROUP IGNORED OFFER TO TEST RACIAL BARS, MEANY SAYS

(By Joel Seldin)

BAL HARBOUR, FLA., February 15.-George Meany charged today that the President's Committee on Government Contracts, headed by Vice President Richard M. Nixon, ignored an AFL-CIO offer to help break down anti-Negro discrimination in Washington construction unions. He said he has undertaken to deal with the problem personally through the labor federation's own machinery.

Though the AFL-CIO president declined at his press conference to attribute any motive to the committee, other AFL-CIO spokesmen were less reserved. They declared, but not for attribution, that labor leaders feel pro-Nixon forces are using the discrimination issue to make political capital for the Vice President. In Washington, Irving Ferman, Executive Vice Chairman of the Government Contracts Committee, said his group is attempting "more vigorously than ever" to end discriminatory practices. He said the effort had been effective in one case, with one contractor Matthew H. McCloskey, treasurer of the Democratic National Committee, and that the Government committee is working with McCloskey on other cases.

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA JOBS AT ISSUE

At issue are Washington construction jobs under Government contract. The contracts bar discrimination in hiring, but contractors say they are unable to hire Negroes because local unions admit only whites to membership. The committee has laid the blame on the unions.

Meany, who is a member of the Government Contracts Committee, said he offered almost a year ago, through Secretary of Labor James P. Mitchell, Vice Chairman of the Committee, to "take care" of the local unions, if the Government would enforce the nondiscrimination clauses of its contract with the employers. He said he has not heard from the committee since then, and that nothing has been done.

The federation president said he took the unusual position for a labor leader of advising the Government, in a case involving electrical workers, to instruct contractors to hire nonunion labor in order to put Negroes to work. "I, myself, offered to get the Negroes," he said, adding that there are qualified Negro electricians in Washington presently barred from membership in Local 26, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

STATUS OF CONTRACTS

The Federal contracts are, under law, "union shop" contracts. This means an employer may hire anyone, with the understanding that the employee will become a union member within 30 days. In practice, however, contractors employ only union members.

Last October McCloskey appealed to Meany after the Government Contracts Committee ordered him to stop hiring on the basis of race for two building projects in the Capital for which he held the contracts. McCloskey charged that union shop stewards did the hiring, and that they refused to hire Negroes. McCloskey even offered to bring qualified unionized Negroes from Philadelphia to work on the Washington projects, but this proposal was rejected by the Government committee.

Meany said Monday he was making no excuses for the policy of local 26, but he objected indignantly to "the committee allowing the contractor to hide be hind the local." If the committee were to enforce the contract, he said, and the local unions went on strike, "it then will be a question of who wins, the local or the whole AFL-CIO-and we won't surrender to the local unions."

DISCRIMINATION BARRED

The constitution of the AFL-CIO contains a clause which bars any local, national, or international union from practicing racial discrimination.

Meany said the IBEW international officers have made sincere efforts to deal with local 26, "but they can't get the local union to comply." He noted, also, that officers of the local who campaigned to end discriminatory practices, have been defeated for reelection.

In the past, Meany said, questions of compliance with the AFL-CIO constitution have been handled by a subcommittee of the civil rights committee. At Monday's executive council session, he said, it was decided that in the future, cases which reach an impasse in the committee will be brought directly to the council's attention. The council will then appoint a special subcommittee to deal with the specific problem.

Of the local 26 affair, "the subcommittee in that case is myself," he said. He declined to discuss what steps he might take.

Mr. KEARNS. Now, from your standpoint, and your opinion, would you like to comment on that a little bit?

Mr. GRAY. The only comment I can make is that I held a card of membership for 56 years in the bricklayers union and in that union we never have discriminated.

Mr. CORNELIUS GRAY. In the past 10 years that I have been with the Construction and Building Trades Department, I don't ever remember one single solitary protest coming in to our office on racial discrimination, not one.

Mr. KEARNS. Now, is it true down South that you have one union for Negroes and one for whites in the carpenters union?

Mr. GRAY. In some instances they have had those for years. But they have many integrated unions in the South. In the city of New Orleans, La., my own union has had a mixed local union there and no other local for the last 30 years. They seem to get along pretty well together.

Mr. KEARNS. You have not had a problem?

Mr. GRAY. We have had no problems on it.

Mr. KEARNS. What are the initiation fees in your union?

Mr. GRAY. If I may continue, in 1910 I worked on a schoolhouse in Charleston, S.C. This man went down there to Myrtle Beach and he came over and shook hands with my son, and he said, "I worked with your dad over 40 years ago," and he is the secretary of our union in Charleston, S.C. There may be some individual unions at the local level with this racial feeling, that everybody gets too incensed over, that do violate that system of giving equal rights and employment opportunities regardless of race, color, and creed. I don't think that the majority of trade unionists throughout the country approve of that discrimination.

Many of these same employers that operate nonunion, they don't hesitate to take the colored man and work him under nonunion conditions, so as a matter of commonsense, self-defense, we have to admit that we have to work with them and give them equal employment opportunities regardless of their color.

Mr. KEARNS. Mr. Powell made a statement that no colored people were working over on this building here.

Mr. GRAY. That may be possible.

Mr. KEARNS. But there are, and I have seen them, and I looked out my window and I have seen them working over there, and I do not know why he would make such a statement.

Mr. GRAY. Let me give you an illustration of this problem and it is a vexing one. When the Honorable Frances Perkins was Secretary of Labor and I was secretary of the Bricklayers Union, I received a communication from her that a colored man was being discriminated against out in the city of St. Louis. There was a small arms plant going on that was working overtime, there was a housing project going on, and it wasn't a question of him getting a job. But he wanted to pick his job and he wanted preferential treatment over his colored brothers and white bricklayers and everybody else. So the fellow wouldn't put him to work on a small arms plant. I directed our regional director there, a vice president, to go get hold of that man and told him to find employment for him. He took him to the housing project. He wouldn't go to work on the housing project. But then some time later when the arms plant was completed, he went to the housing project and the same foreman who had offered to employ him and wanted to lay off a white man to put him to work. I guess you could imagine what that foreman told that particular fellow.

Now we have those kinds of people that instead of trying to adjust this, and do it gradually without a lot of commotion and arousing of ill feeling and emotions in people, they are out just to exploit the issue. I have no use for that type of man, be he colored or white or any other type. But some years later, the same fellow showed up in Johnson City,

Tenn., and he showed up again in Chicago, and somebody was sending him around as a troublemaker. There was a man named Mitchell and he was connected with a bank up here, I think, on Q Street, and he has since passed away and he served on the Selective Service Board of Appeals and he got in on the conversation. I said, "Well, sometimes you have some people among your race that do the race more harm than they do good."

This man's name was Davenport that I am speaking about, and he said "What is that man's name?" And I gave it to him and we never heard of that fellow again. So that is the problem, social problem, that we have had with us for many years. I personally would like to see it settled and adjusted.

Mr. KEARNS. I am sorry, Mr. Powell isn't here this morning, because I have contacted the contractor, and I personally counted 35colored people working on that building on 1 day over there.

Mr. GRAY. There are any number of them working on it.

Mr. KEARNS. He said he did not want to move over there when he was chairman of the committee, in a building that discriminated between colored and white when they constructed it.

Mr. DENT. He does not have to take the chairmanship, does he?
Mr. KEARNS. He said he was going to take it.

Now, there are a few things for the record, Mr. Chairman. I would like to have permission later before the hearings end to put in the record the number of colored people employed over here on this building, so that we do not have the Members of Congress feel we are discriminating. The Speaker appoints a committee to build a new building and they have to supervise it, and they hire a contractor, and he hires the trades people, and that is the story.

Mr. DENT. Just as an observation on that point, it might be interesting to note that wherever you find a segregated union in the South, you find a segregated church, and a segregated school, and a segregated restaurant, and a segregated transportation system, and a segregated establishment for entertainment, and it is the rules of the game in that community. If a union tried to buck the rules, first of all it has an awful tough time trying to organize under any conditions in the South. That is let alone trying to set aside what they believe to be their way of life.

Now, you just cannot do it, and I think even to mention the fact, anybody that tries cloud up the issue of the right of a union to do this or do that on the basis that there might be a segregated union here and there, I agree with you, Mr. Kearns, it has absolutely nothing to do with the rights of a union to organize.

Mr. KEARNS. If you would, would you give me a breakdown of the number of colored and white men in the trade unions that hold cards?

Mr. GRAY. That would be a tremendous job. If you were to go through the index file in the bricklayers union, there is nothing on one of those cards to show whether they are colored or white or what they are.

Mr. DENT. Or their religion.

Mr. GRAY. I wouldn't be able to do it.

Mr. HOLLAND. This is a policy of all unions, and no one marks a card black or white.