H.R. 3028 introduced by Congressman McGovern, H.R. 3711 introduced by Congressman Bowles, H.R. 3907 introduced by Congressman Loser, and H.R. 4610 introduced by Congressman Udall.

Each of these bills corresponds either completely or with minor variations with the Kennedy-Ervin bill, S. 505, as introduced in the Senate this year.

In terms of their basic purposes, their emphasis upon disclosure requirements by both labor and management, their imposition of penalties directly upon those who violate the standards of conduct required rather than upon the innocent victims of the violations which all labor-reform legislation purports to protect, and their avoidance of punitive provisions which characterize other pending measures, the bills I have just enumerated represent a much sounder, more realistic, and constructive approach to the pending legislative problem than do the other bills introduced in the name of eliminating labormanagement corruption and preventing abuses in the administration of internal union affairs.

But even these bills, although constructive in their basic objectives, contain provisions, some of which are unnecessarily restrictive, others of which are unworkable in their present form in the railroad industry, and a few of which-such as the provisions requiring disclosure by employers and labor relations consultants-are ineffective to accomplish the purpose of their inclusion.

In our opinion, the great majority of the changes required to remedy these deficiencies can be effected by language modifications in the terms of the bills without in any way impairing their effectiveness to reach the abuses at which they are directed.

I make this statement with some degree of confidence because we were able to so demonstrate in a number of instances to the satisfaction of the Labor Subcommittee of the Senate considering the KennedyErvin bill, as I shall later particularize in the course of this statement.

I assume I am on sound ground before this committee when I express concern for continued and effective operation of honest democratic unionism and perfectly lawful union constitutional provisions and procedures without strangulation as a result of unnecessarily restrictive or inadequately formulated provisions designed to eliminate racketeering, corruption, or abuse.

We are just as anxious as you-perhaps more so-to rid the labor movement of these influences within its ranks. As long as they remain and are sensationally publicized, the public will continue to unfairly regard the entire trade union movement in the stained and distorted way in which they view it today. But we must not kill the patient to cure the disease.

Moreover, since the rail unions must live under this legislation, we want it to be workable in our industry. The labor movement is a complicated one where customs and practices and constitutional provisions and procedures under them vary in the railroad field from those in other industry. We feel we must point out these differences, which apparently were not fully comprehended by the draftsmen of this legislation, and suggest the revisions in language which the nature and operation of the railroad brotherhoods necessitate.

We submit that we can do so in such a way that the legislation will achieve its objectives without crippling our present practices and procedures.

In short, the railroad brotherhoods believe it is entirely possible to have a strong and effective labor-management reform bill which will forcibly attack such corruption and racketeering as has infiltrated the labor movement, without at the same time sacrificing existing union customs, traditions, and constitutional provisions which have long been recognized as honest, ethical, and democratic and completely compatible with proper standards of conduct.

Since the stated objective of sponsors of legislation in this field is to end the abuses revealed before the McClellan committee, let us also bear in mind the admission in that committee's report that the misconduct

of certain elements in both labor and management is in no way intended to reflect on the overwhelming majority of labor unions and businessmen of this Nation, of whose integrity the committee is firmly convinced.

In the light of this statement, I believe you will agree that Congress should be particularly zealous, in adopting measures to correct the abuses, to avoid penalizing innocent unions and union members, or destroying their time-honored customs and traditions.

With these observations in explanation, let me repeat that the Railway Labor Executives Association endorses in principle H.R. 3302, 3372, 3766, 3711, 3028, 3907, and 4610.

We urge the adoption by this committee of the legislative proposals contained in these bills with the modifications in specific provisions we shall now discuss.

Since, as I previously stated, all of these bills correspond either completely or with minor variations to the Kennedy-Ervin bill, as introduced in the Senate, in the interest of brevity and convenience of reference let me direct my comments to the specific provisions of H.R. 3302, introduced by Congresswoman Green, of Oregon, a member of this committee.

Title I, reporting and disclosure: First, with respect to the reporting and disclosure requirements of H.R. 3302, let me repeat that railroad labor has no objections whatever to the basic purposes of this title. Our difficulties arise in terms of particular provisions of the bill which seek to implement those purposes.

To be specific, section 101 (a) requires "every labor organization", which we understand to mean national and international, as well as their local unions, in filing a copy of their constitution and bylaws, to also file a report containing, among other information

the initiation fee or fees which new members are required to pay on becoming members of such labor organization—

and

The regular dues or fees which members are required to pay in order to remain members in good standing *

It would be next to impossible for our international brotherhood to comply with this requirement unless we became involved in extremely burdensome detail which I do not think the sponsors of this provision intended.

Our constitution and laws require a minimum initiation fee of $7.50, but the local lodges of our brotherhood, upon approval of the internationly president, may set their fees in excess of that amount and hundreds of them do have fees exceeding $7.50.

The same thing is true with respect to monthly dues. Our constitution provides that local union monthly dues shall be sufficient to cover all lawful per capita tax plus 50 cents to take care of the local union. As a result, our dues vary as between individual railroad systems.

What I am trying to say is that the dues of our members employed on a particular railroad are uniform, but they vary as between railroads.

The provisions governing fees and dues in our constitution are typical of those in a great majority of the rail brotherhoods. Some of them set a minimum, while others prescribe a maximum beyond which the locals may not charge.

To avoid burdensome and expensive duplication of reporting, which we do not believe was intended, it is our suggestion that the provision be reworded so as to permit the international unions to report the provisions of their constitutions governing initiation fees and dues and require only the local unions to report their actual requirements regarding these fees and dues. This could be accomplished by adding a proviso clause to lines 7 and 10, page 5 of the bill, reading: provided, however, that where dues vary between local labor organizations of a national or international labor organization, the national or international labor organization shall report only its constitutional provisions thereon, and each local labor organization shall report its initiation fee or fees (or regular dues or fees).

By this modification in the bill's requirements, the full information it seeks would be provided, but the burden of double reporting would be avoided.

Section 101 (a) (5) requires reporting by national and international unions and local labor organizations of any change in the information furnished in the report "within 30 days" after the occurrence of the change.

In most instances the grand lodge of my brotherhood is not aware within 30 days of changes made by local lodges and other subordinate units.

Certainly this is true also of most national and international labor organizations.

We suggest that this requirement in the law should extend only to the union making the change in order to avoid duplicate reporting. We have a further objection to this 30-day notification of changes even if it is limited to the particular union making the change. It seems to us that such a requirement in the law envisions the local unions as staffed with people who are paid salaries to compile data and prepare reports of the nature required.

As a matter of fact, they are not, and regulations of this sort would only increase our difficulties in obtaining people to assume the chores of a local union officer. We see no reason why the objective of the law would not be served equally as well by permitting reporting of changes in the provisions of constitutions and bylaws at wider intervals than 30 days.

We recommend that the last sentence of section 101 (a) beginning on line 23, page 5 of the bill, be modified to read as follows:

Any change in the information required by this subsection shall be reported to the Secretary at the time the reporting labor organization files with the Secretary the annual financial report required by subsection (b).

This recommended revision was favorably received by the Senate Labor Committee.

Section 101 (b) contains a minor flaw in line 7, page 6, of the bill. It provides that union financial reports shall be signed by the chief financial officer of the labor organization and "two other principal officers."

This terminology presents a problem to our rail brotherhoods who have a number of vice presidents of equal status.

We note that section 101 (a) requires the organizational report to be signed by the "president and secretary or corresponding principal officers," and we suggest that similar terminology be employed in section 101 (b) and elsewhere in the bill for the reason that all of the rail unions, and most other union organizations that we know of, have a president and a secretary-treasurer.

This recommended modification was also favorably received by the Senate Labor Subcommittee.

Section 101 (b) also requires that the financial reports required of labor organizations shall be filed "annually" with the Secretary.

Section 106(a) of the bill, page 16, provides that all reports required under sections 101, 102, and 103 of title I, shall be filed within 90 days after the enactment date of the act, or 60 days subsequent to the date when any person is required to file such report, whichever is the later date, and annually thereafter as the Secretary shall pre

scribe.

As we interpret this provision of section 106, it might permit a retroactive application of the law since most unions prepare their reports of the data required on an annual or fiscal basis.

In order to avoid any retroactivity, which we do not think was intended, we recommend that the language in section 106(a) on page 16, be revised in lines 16 through 22, to read:

SEC. 106. (a) Initial reports required to be filed under this act shall be filed not later than January 1, 1960: Provided, That initial reports required by sections 101 (b) and 103 shall be required to cover only the period between the date of enactment and January 1, 1960, and the second report shall be required to cover only the period between January 1, 1960, and the beginning of the next fiscal year of the person filing such report.

This recommended revision was also favorably received by the Senate Labor Committee.

We regard subsection (6) of section 101 (b) as unnecessarily burdensome. This provision requires the financial report annually filed with the Secretary to include "disbursements of any kind and the purposes thereof."

Regardless of intent, literal compliance with this provision of the bill would require an itemization of every paper clip, pencil, carbon paper, and the like, purchased by a labor organization. Certainly it is possible to obtain the financial data required by this legislation. without the addition of such a broad, all inclusive provision.

We recommend that subsection (6) of section 101 (b) be deleted from the bill and that subsection (2) on line 13, page 6, be revised to read:

(2) receipts of any kind and the general source thereof and disbursements; I should now like to refer to those provisions of the bill which require the reporting of financial transactions by employers and labor

relations consultants. These provisions are set forth in section 103 of this section of the bill.

We have no objection, of course, to the basic purposes of this section of the bill. On the contrary, if the legislation is to be truly a labor management reform measure and responsive to the abuses disclosed by the McClellan committee, it necessarily must include provisions requiring reporting and disclosure by employers and labor-relations consultants.

We submit, however, that certain exemptions provided by the bill completely nullify the effectiveness of these reporting requirements. Section 103 excludes any information obtained by an employer or labor-relations consultant for use "solely in conjunction with a judicial, administrative or arbitral proceeding."

Section 103 (c) further excludes from the reporting requirements any services of a consultant engaging in collective bargaining on behalf of an employer or the negotiation of an agreement or any question arising thereunder.

It does not require any great expenditure of ingenuity on the part of an employer or labor-relations consultant to so use these exemptions as to avoid the responsibility for reporting the very activities which the bill is designed to disclose.

We see no reason why employers should not be required to report on expenditures for labor espionage and the types of abuses of labor consultants which the bill is designed to eliminate, irrespective of their relationship to judicial, administrative, or arbitral proceedings, or the incidence of their occurrence in collective bargaining.

These observations apply equally to the exemption contained in section 103 (e) which provides that none of the reporting requirements shall apply to "any regular officer, supervisor, or employee of an employer" nor shall they require any employer to report expenditures made to any such person as compensation for his services.

To us this provision simply permits the easiest kind of evasion. Under it an employer could virtually hire an army of labor spies to engage in any type of labor espionage he desired, and they and the employer would be exempt from the reporting requirements of the act simply because they were on the payroll as regular supervisors or employees.

In this connection, I invite your particular attention to the observations which President Meany of the AFL-CIO made on the question of employer inclusion in the reporting requirements of the bill. His views on this important item are factual and forcibly stated and appear on pages 4 to 7 of his written statement presented to this committee. He highlights the fact that while the federated labor movement is supporting broad reporting requirements for trade unions, business organizations are bitterly fighting proposals for any sort of employer reports.

And he concludes that the most rudimentary sense of fair play demands that if the unions are to be required to make full public disclosure with respect to all aspects of their finances, employers should at least be required to make similar public disclosure of their expenditures in the field of labor relations.

The further point I seek to emphasize here is that even those bills which purport to require employer reporting so riddle such require