Now, if this is the situation, the enactment of this suggested amendment will leave nothing but the utter chaos in the industry. We will have absolutely no control of any situation whatsoever. Mr. PERKINS. Do you have any questions, Mr. Griffin? Mr. GRIFFIN. I have no questions. Mr. PERKINS. You have been very kind. Thank you very much. We will adjourn at this time. We will recess until tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. (Whereupon, at 1 p.m., the subcommittee was recessed to reconvene at 10 a.m., Wednesday, February 24, 1960.) CONSTRUCTION SITE PICKETING WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 1960 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON LABOR-MANAGEMENT RELATIONS OF THE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND LABOR, Washington, D.C. The subcommittee met at 10 a.m., pursuant to recess, in room 429, Old House Office Building, Hon. Carl D. Perkins (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. Mr. PERKINS. The committee will come to order. We have with us this morning Mr. William L. Keller, a member of the Associated General Contractors, Texas division. We are glad to have you with us, Mr. Keller, and you may proceed. STATEMENT OF WILLIAM L. KELLER, THE ASSOCIATED GENERAL CONTRACTORS OF AMERICA, INC., TEXAS CHAPTERS Mr. KELLER. I am William L. Keller of the firm of Clark, Reed & Clark, Dallas, Tex., and I appear before this committee as spokesman for all the Texas chapters of the Associated General Contractors of Texas, Inc., which includes the following 16 chapters: Texas Highway Chapter, Heavy Branch, Austin, Tex. Dallas Chapter of the AGC. Fort Worth Chapter of the AGC, Fort Worth, Tex. Austin Chapter, AGC, Austin, Tex. West Texas Chapter, AGC, Abilene, Tex. Panhandle of Texas Chapter, AGC, Amarillo, Tex. South Texas Chapter, AGC, Corpus Christi, Tex. Rio Grande Valley Chapter, AGC, Arlington, Tex. Houston Chapter, AGC, Houston, Tex. Municipal Contractors Association of Texas, AGC, Houston, Tex. Waco Chapter, AGC, Waco, Tex. San Antonio Chapter, AGC, San Antonio, Tex. I have divided the last 10 years between service with the National Labor Relations Board and private practice of law. Mr. PERKINS. When were you on the NLRB? Mr. KELLER. That was from 1952 to 1956, and I was legal adviser to the NLRB during that time. Our firm has represented for many years the Dallas Chapter of Associated General Contractors of America, Inc., and other associations in the building industry, as well as numerous individual contractors. The contractors of Texas for whom I speak, some 600 in number who constitute the major portion of the construction industry in Texas, are unanimously opposed to the passage of this bill. From their practical experience, persons engaged in the construction industry know that the passage of H.R. 9070 would invite and produce boycotts that would completely shut down and stagnate thousands of construction projects throughout the country involving hundreds of millions of dollars, with resultant losses of tens of millions of dollars to innocent and neutral employees and employers alike who are not concerned with the dispute and have no control over the dispute, and can ill afford such losses. Analysis readily shows this bill to be a radical departure from the guiding principle of all Federal labor-management relations legislations of the past quarter of a century. That principle is stated in the opening sentence of the bill introduced by Senator Wagner in 1934, which on becoming law, brought Federal Government into permanent regulation of labor relations. The bill was entitled “A bill to equalize the bargaining power of employees and employers." This principle, the equalization of bargaining power, has permeated all Federal labor law. Equality of bargaining power necessitates the restriction of labor disputes to the parties affected. When secondary pressures and boycotts are permitted, innocent persons are damaged, and the field is ripe for abuses. Among the domestic issues of this country in the 20th century, the proper balance between labor and management has been foremost in its effect upon the economic well-being and domestic tranquility of our people. Congress has dealt extensively in the field, and the various congressional committee reports and debates illustrate an absolute and undeviating singleness of purpose. A study of the Wagner Act, the Taft-Hartley Act, and the 1959 amendments disclose beyond question a legislative purpose to insure to employees freedom of choice and equality of bargaining power with management and to cause competent representatives of both labor and management to reason together under conditions calculated to produce an amicable resolution of industrial disputes. H.R. 9070, for proper evaluation, must be carefully studied, analyzed, and weighed against the background of these statutes and their respective histories. If, while studying these statutes, you will keep in mind the picture of the "full range" of picketing activity and the economic loss thrust upon innocent employees and employers alike whenever a picket sign goes up, you will readily see and fully appreciate the devastating impact of H.R. 9070. The Wagner Act was based on the principle that employees should be free to organize, select their chosen bargaining representatives, and have bargaining power equal to that of management. Senator Wagner, speaking of the need for equal bargaining power for employers and employees, stated at the time he introduced his famous bill: Such equality is the central need of the economic world today. A full study of the legislative histories of the Wagner and TaftHartley Acts, including the statements of Senator Wagner, Representative Connery, President Roosevelt, Senator Taft, Representative Hartley, and others, shows that the basic purposes of these acts was to guarantee full freedom of choice to employees and insure their equal bargaining power. Like its predecessors, the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959 is dedicated to the same purposes. Unless labor and management have equal bargaining powers, the congressional purpose fails. With management at the mercy of labor, or vice versa, fairness in the rules and procedures settling disputes are meaningless since the one must accede to the demands of the other under any circumstances. Where one party to a bargain has the power to exact its demands from the other through sanctions granted by Federal law, the niceties of the procedures through which the exactions are made cannot save the underling. As a counterpart to the great growth of trade unionism under the Wagner Act, certain abuses, including secondary boycott practices, became widespread. In order to correct these practices, Congress wrote section 8(B)(4)(A) into the Taft-Hartley Act which made it an unfair labor practice for a labor organization or its agents, to engage in, or to induce or encourage the employees of any employer to engage in, a strike or a concerted refusal in the course of their employment to use, manufacture, process, transport or otherwise handle or work on any goods, particles, materials, or commodities, or to perform any services where an object thereof is: (A) forcing or requiring *** any employer or other person to cease using, selling, handling, transporting, or otherwise dealing in the products of any other producer, processor, or manufacturer, or to cease doing business with any other person ** By proscribing secondary picketing and boycotts when such conduct was coupled with an illegal objective, Congress sought to put an end to these coercive and abusive practices. The legislative history shows that the abuses in the construction industry led to this amendment, after prolonged study Congress came to the conclusion that there were no good secondary boycotts. Examination of many NLRB and Federal court cases that arose under old section 8(B) (4) (A) of the act readily discloses that effective enforcement of this section did not thwart or greatly interfere with legitimate attempts by the building trade unions to organize, represent, and bargain collectively for workingmen employed in the construction industry. Indeed, their membership rolls grew to unprecedented numbers, and their wealth and power increased accordingly. As this committee knows, cumulative evidence presented at hearings prior to the passage of the 1959 amendments demonstrated beyond question that, notwithstanding the attempt by Congress 12 years earlier to eradicate secondary boycott abuses when it enacted section 8(B) (4) (A) of the Taft-Hartley Act, many types of secondary boycott pressures were still continuously and methodically being applied. A study of the 1959 amendments reveals that the dominant purpose of Congress was to close the "loopholes" in old section 8 (B) (4) of the Taft-Hartley Act. The legislative intent is made abundantly clear by a reading of the amendments and the legislative history. Representative Griffin, in commenting on the secondary boycott provisions stated that "our substitute bill is designed only to close up these loopholes." Thus Congress in 1959, in essence, agreed with Senator Taft's belief expressed in 1947 at the time the Taft-Hartley amendments were under consideration, that all secondary boycotts are bad. Although the new amendments became effective on November 13, 1959, a scant 3 months ago, and notwithstanding the fact that they have not yet been tested by experience, it is already urged that this amendment sever the construction industry to permit common_job site picketing. Proponents who greatly over-simplify the secondary boycotts questions have but one argument and it is wrong in fact and theory. They argue that if a union has a dispute with an employer who operates, for instance, a factory that it can picket at the factory site and all the employees may respect the picket line without the union being adjudged guilty of having committed an unfair labor practice; but that if the same union pickets at the site of a construction project with the result that employees employed by other contractors do not cross the picket line it is held guilty of causing a secondary boycott. This argument, of course, is wrong in fact and misstates well settled rules of law, because picketing has never been held to constitute an illegal secondary boycott unless coupled with an unlawful objective to cause an employer "to cease doing business with any other person." The NLRB and the courts have consistently held that the mere picketing of a construction site absent an illegal objective does not violate the act. Proponents argument is also wrong in theory because secondary picketing at construction sites has the overall effect of spreading and inflaming labor disputes, rather than promoting industrial peace and harmony. The real evils of this bill are best shown by the fact that for every employee as to whom there is a dispute, 20 employees will be idled if unrestricted common job site picketing is legalized. The 20-to-1 ratio is a very conservative estimate, based upon experience. By strategic use of common job site picketing a union can find circumstances where the ratio will be as high as 1000-to-1. For one man's grievance, a thousand will cease work. The tremendous disparity in bargaining power is immediately revealed by a study of these ratios. The unions' leverage will be irresistible. Through what has been termed the process of "litigating elucidation," rules have been carefully laid down as to when and under what circumstances picketing will be found to constitute a secondary boycott, and in enacting the 1959 amendments, Congress made it clear that it was specifically preserving the rules of law theretofore developed with respect to picketing at construction sites. A proviso was inserted in clause ((B)) of section 8(b) (4) to the effect that nothing in that clause shall be construed to make unlawful, where not otherwise unlawful, any primary strike or primary picketing * * * The conference report shows that this language was inserted for the following reason: The purpose of this provision is to make it clear that the changes in section 8(b) (4) do not overrule or qualify the present rules of law permitting picketing at the site of a primary labor dispute. This provision does not eliminate, restrict, or modify the limitations on picketing at a site of a primary labor dispute that are in existing law. See, for example, NLRB v. Denver Building |