Mr. LANDRUM. No, I would not set the standards in the Federal statute for the State to follow. But I would say in order to eliminate this no-man's land area, where the National Labor Relations Board says now they are not going to take jurisdiction, and where the Supreme Court decision has said that the States cannot take jurisdiction, that we try to arrive at some way for the National Labor Relations Board to be definite and to say to the States, "From here we will not, because we cannot, and if there is any jurisdiction to be taken over the disputes that arise from this point down, then you take it.” Secretary MITCHELL. Well, Mr. Landrum, may I recall that prior to the Supreme Court decision, which was made several years ago, this problem of no-man's land did not arise. It only arose because the court said that under the act the NLRB preempted the entire field. That raised the question.

Our proposal is that we, in effect, return the situation to where the States thought it existed before the Supreme Court decision and, therefore, our proposal in fact gives to the States jurisdiction and, in fact, cedes jurisdiction, where the NLRB declines jurisdiction.

Mr. TELLER. Will the gentleman yield for a question on this point? Mr. LANDRUM. Yes.

Mr. TELLER. I do not quite understand the statement of the Secretary, whose testimony I have enjoyed this morning.

You say that the decision in the Guss case brought this about. Was that not simply an interpretation of the Taft-Hartley Act? Do you think it altered the provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act?

Secretary MITCHELL. No, it does not.

Mr. TELLER. Was it simply an interpretation?

Secretary MITCHELL. I think that is what the court does.

Mr. TELLER. What you are trying to do, then, is bring this back to the pre-Taft-Hartley situation?

Secretary MITCHELL. No. What I am trying to do is, as I said before, Mr. Teller, to the situation that the States thought existed preGuss, and which, generally, was understood to exist.

True, the court interprets the act, and in this case interpreted it as complete jurisdiction. What we are proposing is that we cede to the States jurisdiction and authority where the NLRB declines jurisdiction, with the admonition, of course, that the NLRB take the jurisdiction to the fullest reaches that it can, practically.

Mr. TELLER. Under your proposal, then, a State right-to-work law would be perfectly valid as applied to any industry where the NLRB refused to take jurisdiction.

Is that not the effect of your suggestion?

Secretary MITCHELL. No, of course not.

Mr. TELLER. I do not understand it any other way. You said, as I understood in response to someone else's question, that the States were free to act in line with their own views as to any industry where the NLRB declined jurisdiction.

Secretary MITCHELL. That is right.

Mr. TELLER. Then would that not mean that the State could enforce a right-to-work law in any industry where the NLRB declines jurisdiction, and is that not the effect of your proposal?

Secretary MITCHELL. You have now 19 States, as you know, Mr. Teller, that have right-to-work laws and, of course, the right-to-work

law is operative in those States in all matters in relation to all industry, as you know.

I would have to check. Certainly it is not our intent to encourage, by this means, States to pass right-to-work laws. The vast majority of cases and the vast majority of employees would be covered by our provision so that this right-to-work thing would not enter. This is not the intent of this proposal.

Mr. DENT. Will the gentleman yield further?

Mr. LANDRUM. I would like to ask another question and then I will yield.

Continuing on this same point, but just briefly, Mr. Secretary, do you feel that the question could be settled by additional appropriations to the Board?

Secretary MITCHELL. I doubt it, Mr. Landrum. I have talked to some of the Board members and the chairman, and it is my impression that even if unlimited appropriations were given, unlimited or larger appropriations were given that the processes of the Board could be so conceivably slowed up by taking these very small cases that an injustice would be done to the vast majority of workers who work in larger plants, in larger establishments.

I do not think that appropriations or additional personnel is the answer here. The Board now, even with the appropriations it has, is handicapped by a heavy caseload, and I would not want to propose anything that would make it more difficult for unfair labor practices or representation problems to be further delayed.

Mr. LANDRUM. Leaving this field and going over into the other principal area in which we are interested, I would direct your attention to that part of your statement on the bottom of pages 17, 18, and 19, in which you say the object of reporting and disclosure legislation is to bring into the open the information required to be reported.

Then following that, I note that you voice objection to the bill introduced by Mr. Barden of this committee because it goes too far. You do not use the term "too far," but that is the implication I get from it.

Incidentally, I would say it is unusual to see the author of that particular bill willing to grant that much authority to the Secretary of Labor. I thought perhaps you might be in complete agreement with it. But that is just being facetious.

Nevertheless, Mr. Barden's bill seems to do a thing that all of us have tried to keep from doing over the years and that is to get down into the business of regulating the internal affairs of unions. I believe I know him well enough to know that he has not done that without considerable thought and study.

I have some question and reservation in my own mind about whether to go that far. But if we are to develop legislation in this field to protect the great majority of honest union activities, both the men and the activities, then what good is it going to do us to require the reporting and disclosure of constitutions which carry no provisions to protect the very things that have been exposed to view by the Senate Select Committee?

I am afraid that we may be inviting a great amount of reporting down there to the Secretary of Labor and he will have a lot of paper

on his hands but there will not be a thing in the world he can do about it.

What we want to do is to put something in the legislation that will give the Secretary, if necessary, or some officer, the power to tell these unions, the leaders who are in violation of the members' inherent rights, that they cannot do that and, by so doing, protect, as I say, the vast majority of the honest union people.

I believe that that is something that the administration ought to give more study to before recommending, as you do, the section of Mr. Kearns bill which deals with this particular point.

Secretary MITCHELL. Mr. Landrum, we have given a great deal of study to this, and our approach has been, first, the primary one of the reporting and disclosure of the funds, the way that they are handled, the funds of unions raised in dues and initiation fees.

It seems to me that the idea of probing or establishing standards that unions must comply with in detail in their constitution violates a principle that I feel very strongly about; that after all, with few exceptions, most of the unions of this country, and most of the union members and officials, conduct their business above reproach.

To force all unions to comply in detail with provisions as to how they shall have their constitution and bylaws and, in fact, to get into the area of almost licensing the union to operate by this certificate of compliance that is in one of the bills-I think, as you say, goes much too far, or I would add it goes much too far.

Mr. LANDRUM. Wait a minute. I did not mean to say that it does go too far. I said that I had some reservations about it going too far. Secretary MITCHELL. Well, I would say that it goes too far. Mr. LANDRUM. Well, that is all right.

I would say this, having the feeling that I have, that we may be going too far into the management of the internal affairs, and studying along with that feeling the statement that Mr. Geoffrey Smith delivered a few days ago in the other body to the Senate Labor Committee, in which he pointed up the details of how these individual union members are deprived of a proper voice in the management of their union affairs, simply by the wielding of a gavel, such as Mr. Perkins might do here in the committee if he were so inclined-he could take the gavel and adjourn this meeting now-and Mr. Smith's statement, which I am sure you have read, or at least I hope you have

Secretary MITCHELL. No; I have not.

Mr. LANDRUM. I certainly would not be presumptive, I hope, in recommending that you do read it. I believe it is one of the most able statements and one of the strongest arguments I have seen in favor of going into this field that you and I have expressed reservations about going into this morning.

We can provide that they report about the money. We can provide that they report about where they get it, who they spend it on, and how much they can spend, and so forth and so on, but if this everyday union member who foots the bills for these expenses cannot be heard on the floor, if he cannot get up and voice his opinion without fear of reprisal, if he cannot have his interpretation of the constitution and bylaws of his own union expressed in public without being

gaveled down and without being perhaps expelled from the union, then we may have to do what we say is objectionable.

I just wonder if we had not better look a little more carefully into these provisions that seem to me designed particularly to correct the instances that Mr. Smith has so vividly described in his appearance in the Senate.

Secretary MITCHELL. May I point out, Mr. Landrum, that the Kearns bill provides for election by secret ballot. It provides for removal of officers upon a showing of a substantial number of people interested in such removal. It provides for control of trusteeship. To that extent it goes into what might be termed or called the internal affairs of unions.

Mr. LANDRUM. I understand that, Mr. Secretary.

Secretary MITCHELL. May I complete my remark?
Mr. LANDRUM. Yes.

Secretary MITCHELL. After all, if you give to the American working men and women that belong to unions the right to elect their officers or the requirement to elect their officers by secret ballot, I think that goes far enough because, after all, they are intelligent people, they are people who are interested in the union, their union, and their union being run in a right and proper way.

These instances of autocratic gavel-pounding-sure, you can cite them as applied to unions, you can cite them as applied to legislative bodies, you can cite them as applied to many bodies. I am not one who has never attended a union meeting. I have been to many of them.

I have seen union meetings where democracy in action is the word of the day. It would be reprehensible to me to try to tell, by legislation, American citizens who organize for the purpose of collective bargaining exactly and praticularly how they should do it.

While the standards in the bill may be good, to impose them by legislation, I think, would be very bad. You have to depend on the good sense, the integrity of the union members and the union officials. Our bill is designed to give them whatever assistance they need from the Federal Government to bring that about. I would hate to see any more restrictive legislation.

Mr. PERKINS. Will you yield to me for a question, Mr. Landrum? Mr. LANDRUM. I will yield to the chairman.

Mr. PERKINS. I would like to ask the Secretary whether he would recommend an exemption for smaller unions where the attendance is usually good in the conduct of union affairs, and where union dues are limited. Would you grant them an exemption from the reporting and disclosure statute of unions, at a reasonable figure? Would you suggest a reasonable figure or would you suggest that we should cover them all?

Secretary MITCHELL. We considered that, Mr. Chairman, in drafting the administration's legislation, and we came to the conclusion that in all fairness, all unions ought to be covered. Because of the fact that a worker happens to work in a shop where there are only 100 members or 200 members, whatever figure you would have, his funds ought to have the same degree of governmental protection as the funds of a worker in a larger shop.

The argument has been made that compelling a smaller union, where oftentimes the officers are part time in the sense that the secre

tary-treasurer works during the day and he has to keep the books at night, and so on, that compelling a smaller union to file is an undue hardship. This may be so, but we believe that, in fairness, it ought to be across the board.

There is one other factor: In the disclosures of the McClellan committee, some of the very difficult problems arose, and some of the messier situations arose, in these small unions. I am thinking now of the Johnny Dio paper locals, so called.

But after considering the whole business, and after weighing the problem of the part-time secretary-treasurer, and so on, we came to the conclusion that, in all fairness, we ought to bring in all unions and not exempt any because of size. We considered it very carefully. But I see no other answer than to include all unions.

Mr. PERKINS. Mr. Griffin.

Mr. PUCINSKI. Mr. Chairman?

Mr. GRIFFIN. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Wier has spoken to me that he has to get away, so I will yield 5 minutes of my time to Mr. Wier. Mr. WIER. Will we be meeting this afternoon?

Mr. PERKINS. I would like to meet this afternoon, if it is agreeable to the Secretary. We will leave it to the Secretary.

Secretary MITCHELL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If I can get away from here at 12 and not be asked to come back before 2, I will have the rest of the afternoon and the evening.

Mr. PERKINS. That will be all right.

Secretary MITCHELL. Mr. Wier, in the Labor Department we work nights, too.

Mr. WIER. AS I understand your program, we meet tomorrow with Mr. Mitchell?

Mr. LANDRUM. Perhaps we will finish today.

Mr. WIER. I do not think so.

Mr. PERKINS. Let us go along at 2 o'clock and if we do not get through, we will come back tomorrow. We will put it that way.

Mr. WIER. Then, Mr. Chairman, I will leave over some of the controversial issues of these bills until a later moment, because everybody around this table wishes to question the Secretary.

First, let me ask you, Mr. Mitchell, this question: All of these bills that you have referred to and have made application to in your presentation are, in reality, amendments to the Taft-Hartley Act? Is that what we are working on?

Secretary MITCHELL. That is correct, sir.

Mr. WIER. They are all Taft-Hartley amendments?

Secretary MITCHELL. That is right, sir.

Mr. WIER. We hear quite a bit of discussion about the advisability of a one-package bill or a two-package bill. I do not know how you can go into the labor-management relations without applying it to the Taft-Hartley Act. I notice the provisions you read all relate themselves to the Taft-Hartley Act. I assume that you feel a onepackage bill is the only bill that can clarify this problem.

Secretary MITCHELL. I feel this way, Mr. Wier: That Congress ought to in this session pass legislation which includes all of the administration and Kearns provisions.

I agree with you that you cannot legislate in this field without amending Taft-Hartley. The labor reports section is an amendment