to sell our employees on all the advantages of apprenticeship, they are perfectly welcome to do it.

Mr. GRIFFIN. Is there anything to prevent those employees from forming their union or joining a union and requiring you to recognize them?

Mr. CAMPBELL. None whatsoever. I do not know what Mr. Dent had in mind.

Mr. DENT. They lecture them every now and then and ask them to join.

Mr. CAMPBELL. What was that?

Mr. GRIFFIN. I do not imagine they do that.

Mr. CAMPBELL. As an example, apparently they do not think they can organize ABC, but in my statement I said the Pikesville Electric Co., whose rates I happen to have heard quoted, was recently organized. They are a good member of ABC.

Mr. DENT. The who?

Mr. CAMPBELL. The Pikesville Electric Co. The rates might have been coincidental; I do not know.

Mr. DENT. In order that there be no misunderstanding here, I wish you would look these over, and if you can find that company in here, then you put them in the record. But I would not put them in the record otherwise. Here they are. You look at them [offering pay slips].

Mr. CAMPBELL. I quote them because they are in my report, as a company who was approached by the unions, their employees were organized, and they are now engaged in collective bargaining. There is nothing that an ABC employer has that in any way keeps the unions from being able to sell their bill of goods if they can do a job. It is their right, and we are going to protect those rights, too.

Mr. GRIFFIN. Are those slips from the Baltimore area you were talking about before, Mr. Dent?

Mr. DENT. That is right.

Mr. CAMPBELL. I think I should mention two other cases and perhaps quote the court again, so that it is their opinion rather than ours, in the Stover Steel case. They attempted to picket several sites in the Baltimore area at one time, where there were open-shop generals involved, to force the union subs off those jobs.

There again, the Taft-Hartley law was used effectively, and the court stated:

Plainly those methods still envisioned one objective which was illegal, i.e., to force or require the union subcontractors, who were in no way involved in the dispute, to cease performance-indeed to prevent performance of their contractual obligation to the general contractors. Thus, the subcontractors, helpless and impotent neutrals, became the chief victims of a dispute which they were powerless to resolve.

That is the Stover Steel case. Another very interesting case in the Baltimore area was where they struck the "Nike" sites in and around Baltimore being built for the Baltimore-Washington area. There, the Federal district judge ordered the U.S. district attorney to determine whether the remedy provided by the secondary boycott provisions of the law was the only available procedure to deal with the situation. The district attorney advised that he knew of no other way to restrain this interference with the defense effort.

That general was a secondary boycott case, in which an injunction was obtained against the picketing.

I think anything else from here would be repetitious. Perhaps I could read my conclusion-and I am very sincere in it.

Mr. PERKINS. Go ahead.

Mr. CAMPBELL. I would like to say that the Associated Builders & Contractors, Inc., believes in the free enterprise system, whereby all contractors shall be free to bid with one another and to accept the lowest responsible bid, whether it comes from a union subcontractor or one with a union. We further believe that employees in the construction industry should have the same right as employees in other industries to freely select or reject unions as their representatives which is the basic philosophy of the Taft-Hartley Act. We have found that this leads to a healthy situation in which the rights of all are protected and the public benefits from the process of free competition. We believe that the amendment before you will destroy this healthy situation and create a union monopoly in the construction industry. We urge you to reject this amendment.

And we certainly want to thank you for the time to hear our statement.

Mr. PERKINS. Mr. Dent, do you have any questions?

Mr. DENT. You say you are giving the right to these contractors to employ either a union or nonunion worker, which is their subcontract? Mr. CAMPBELL. Yes, sir.

Mr. DENT. What about the right of an individual to say whether or not he will work with a substandard worker?

Mr. CAMPBELL. That is the union's opinion. They apparently think that that is their right. We happen to disagree, or agree that it is only their right provided they do not transgress the rights of other nonunion employees who do not have that feeling.

Mr. DENT. But he has no right to say that he does not want to work with this man or this man who happens to be a man who has not learned the trade, for instance, and works for $2 less an hour or something?

Mr. CAMPBELL. As long as they protest those rights and proclaim those rights and abide by the Moore Dry Dock principles, we think those rights they have are being protected fairly. We just do not want to let the pendulum swing all the way, where they not only have those rights but have an additional club to coerce additional employees.

Mr. DENT. What was the experience in the Baltimore area prior to 1950?

Mr. CAMPBELL. What do you mean by experience, sir?

Mr. DENT. Well, you see, prior to 1950, this particular law was in effect, or if not as law, it was the custom and precedent in the industry, the construction industry; and we are just writing back into the law that which was precedent and that which was the procedure and practice up until that time.

Mr. CAMPBELL. We might suggest that, prior to 1950, it was true all over the country. Employers did not take advantage of their legal rights. And in Baltimore, unions are growing and good unions. We are not suggesting that there is something wrong with unions. In Baltimore they were growing. But occasionally, prior to 1950,

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some of the cases, the unions were coercing and were forcing employees into the unions.

It so happens that in 1950, we had an awakened industry that realized that we had been given the Taft-Hartley law to protect our own employees, if you will. We firmly believe our employees are better off with us, without a union. You might not agree, but we think they are just as well off, and their annual wages and so forth can be stated.

But in 1950 we realized in industry that we had a law here to protect our own employees from coercion, and we started to use it. That is all that happened in 1950. We merely started to put to work the laws that Congress had put on the books.

In many other areas of the country that were organized, it was partly because that law was put to work. Of course, is was not available in the earlier days.

Mr. DENT. In other words, if the law had been put to work, they would not have been organized?

Mr. CAMPBELL. I would suggest there would have been less; yes, sir.

Mr. DENT. Do you not believe, then, that sanctions, as we call the secondary boycott-it is in fact a sanction, is it not, a sanction against another employer by the employees of another employer?

Mr. CAMPBELL. I am not quite familiar with the use of the word "sanction" there.

Mr. DENT. Well, a picket line is a sanction. In other words, they are applying restrictive sanctions against a particular employer because they want him to join a union or something.

Mr. CAMPBELL. I think I follow you; yes, sir.

Mr. DENT. Then, you ought to condemn the United States because if I remember, in 1937 we applied a sanction against a country that we had no dispute with, and were not involved in the dispute, by encircling the whole country with our warships.

Mr. CAMPBELL. I am afraid you lost me on that trend of thought, sir; I am sorry.

Mr. DENT. I am just telling you these fellows are fighting for the same thing you are fighting for. Your organization, your movement is a movement to have an open shop movement all over the United States.

Mr. CAMPBELL. The open shop hires union subs.

Mr. DENT. An the only reason you do it is because you cannot get the work done by others. You and I know that-because I was in the contracting field.

Mr. CAMPBELL. No. You said that, sir; I did not state it.

Mr. DENT. I know why you do it.

Mr. SHAW. Congressman Dent, I would like to point out to you that section 7 of the act which Congress has written guarantees to all employers the right to operate open shop, so to speak.

Mr. DENT. That is right. But the Constitution guarantees to all individuals the decision that they would like to make, too, and if they do not like to work alongside of you because you are working for $2 less and taking food from their family, that is exactly one of his rights, too.

Mr. CAMPBELL. We make the same annual wages in our industry. We do not work for $2 less.

Mr. DENT. Well, you work for $1.60 an hour on your open shop as compared to $2.75.

Mr. SHAW. Congressman, I sat with the National Labor Relations Board, and I issued a complaint once against a knitting mill because seven nonunion workers refused to work with three union workers; and the company finally had to let the three union workers stay home. We issued a complaint and charged that employer with an unfair labor practice and said it was his duty to give to those three union workers protection, and if necessary to discipline the seven nonunion workers. That was an unfair labor practice under the Wagner Act, and it is an unfair labor practice under Taft-Hartley.

Mr. DENT. Well, I will see that they strike off a medal for you. That was a fine decision.

Mr. CAMPBELL. Mr. Chairman, unless you have more questions, we would be glad to defer to you and conclude at this point.

Mr. PERKINS. Thank you very much. Your complete written statement will be included in the record at this point.

(The statement referred to follows:)

STATEMENT OF S. JAMES CAMPBELL, CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD,
ASSOCIATED BUILDERS AND CONTRACTORS, INC.

I am S. James Campbell, treasurer of the firm of Harry T. Campbell Sons' Corp. of Towson, Md., just outside of Baltimore. I am chairman of the board of directors of the Associated Builders and Contractors, Inc. (and former president of that organization). I am here today to present the views of the association to this committee on H.R. 9079 which would not only vitally affect the construction industry in the Baltimore and Maryland region and the members of our association, but also, we believe, the entire industry throughout the country.

Our organization, which is generally known as the ABC, has 660 member firms located throughout the State of Maryland, in Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia. The membership of the ABC includes general contractors and subcontractors as well as suppliers and others allied with the construction industry, who employ approximately 30,000 employees.

Some of our members have contracts with the construction unions. However, the unions have not organized the employees of a large majority of our members and those contractors do not have contracts with these unions. In fact, according to the last estimate of the unions themselves, at least 75 percent of the construction in the Baltimore area is performed by contractors who do not have union agreements.

Contrary to what the members of this committee may believe, this situation is not the exception. There are many areas in this country where construction by open shop contractors is prevalent. There can be no question but that the unions expect that the present bill, by legalizing the secondary boycott in our industry, will have the ultimate result of legislating this method of construction out of existence.

We in our area, gentlemen, know exactly what the secondary boycott in the construction industry means, for we have felt its impact for a good number of years now, through almost every device that the construction unions could conceive. And we can testify from experience that in the construction industry the secondary boycott is nothing more or less than the cold steel of coercion upon the employer to force his employees to joint these unions, without any consideration for the wishes of the employees, whatsoever.

Although the construction unions' techniques have varied and shifted over the years, we have found that their basic method of operation has not changed. This method of operation is to remove from the job union subcontractors, with whom the union has no quarrel, in order, by economic and financial pressure, to force the nonunion contractors on the jobsite to capitulate to the union and

force their employees into the unions. This whole process was aptly summarized by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit recently in the Selby, Battersby Case' as follows:

"If the open shop general contractors could be deprived of [union subcontractors'] services it would be difficult or impossible for them to bid upon construction projects where those skills were required. It was hoped that such pressures would compel open shop general contractors to capitulate to union demands, forcing their own employees to become members of the union. If the open shop general contractors could be forced by this means to accept the Standard Agreement, nonunion subcontractors would be confronted with the alternative of capitulation or liquidation." [Emphasis added.]

Sometimes I have heard that the construction unions justify this resort to illegal coercion of employees and employers in the construction industry on the ground that they do not have time or the proper techniques to organize employees in the manner that the law requires of all other unions, and therefore they must force those employees into the union. This, we submit, is a most cynical reason for overriding the rights of employees in this industry and for forcing employers to do what they know is not right or legal.

There is further no reason, except perhaps a lack of confidence in their ability to sell themselves to the unorganized worker, why the construction unions should not really try to organize the unorganized worker, instead of trying to organize his employer through coercion. The open shop construction industry has a great deal more stability of employment than the unionized segment of the industry. Since we do not secure our employees from the union we maintain a stable work force, among whom National Labor Relations Board elections could be held to determine whether the employees want unions or not. It is up to the unions to persuade them; it is not the obligation of the employer to force them into the union.

A recent example of what can be accomplished by peaceful means under the law is shown in the case of one of our members, Pikesville Electric Co., an electrical subcontractor. The electrical union filed a petition with the NLRB, an election was held and the union won. The parties are presently engaged in collective bargaining.

Take my own company, for instance; the construction unions have attempted to organize our employees. A petition for an election was filed with the NLRB which was later withdrawn because the union could not get enough employees to sign union cards.

Failing in their efforts to get our employees to join the union voluntarily, the unions subsequently tried to pressure us by picketing a construction project upon which our company was a subcontractor, in an attempt to force the general contractor to throw our company off the job.

In that case, the unions were unsuccessful because of the protection afforded by the secondary boycott provisions of the law. Of course, if the present law is changed, as proposed by this bill, the unions will have an additional club to get our company thrown off all jobs which they control. In such a situation we may be faced, as the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals said, with the alternative of forcing our employees into the union, although the union has not been able to peacefully organize them, or liquidating our business that has been established in our area since 1892.

It is my understanding that the construction unions have contended that the relationship of a general contractor and the subcontractors on a construction project is just that of one big happy family. I can tell you from personal experience in the construction industry that the dealings between general contractors and subcontractors in this industry is, with minor exceptions, one of dealing completely at arm's length with one another on a cold hard business basis. This is true before the job starts, when the sucontractors bid, one against the other, with sharpened pencils, to get the job, and later on the job itself, where the general contractor holds the subcontractor strictly accountable for performance of the contract between them.

Indeed, the unions' own secondary boycott activities in this industry believe their claim that on the construction site the general contractor and the subcontractor are a unit. In almost every one of these cases, what the unions are

1 Selby. Battersby and Company and Associated Builders and Contractors of Maryland, Inc. v. National Labor Relations Board and Baltimore Building and Construction Trades Council, 259 Fed. 151.