During these discussions and with the unanimous agreement within the Federal service, I concluded that in the absence of a bona fide need for mediation assistance in addition to that preferred by the involved parties, the FMCS would not enter the situation at that time. Mayor-elect Lindsay understood fully our position.

Our local representatives maintained close observation as the situation progressed. At no time was a request made of us, by the mayor, by the transit authority or by the union that we intervene as meditators.

Mr. MOORE. In addition, at the regional level with our regional director, Frank Brown, intimately acquainted with the parties, there was constant contact. The parties themselves were advised constantly that if at any time any of us could be of help, we would be available. Mr. FLOOD. That is what I am talking about. This is not known. I think the record should show you were available, and were known to be.

Mr. MOORE. Constantly available they knew it.

Mr. FLOOD. This is not generally known, and you have been under the guns for sitting on your hands with your abilities, and I think you should protect your flanks.

Mr. SIMKIN. In contrast to New York, we have had some requests in Chicago to work in the Chicago picture where there is a problem. Mr. FLOOD. The New York strike was a national problem, even though it was local in fact.

Mr. SIMKIN. Right.

Mr. FLOOD. The fallout was national. In cases like that, I do not think you should sit idly by.

Mr. MOORE. We never do. It is a matter of publicity, and here again it is a matter of whether we blow our own horn. Ordinarily, we would rather take the abuse rather than embarrass the parties.

PREVENTIVE MEDIATION AT FORT WORTH

Mr. FLOOD. The less publicity in some of your operations, the better off you are, of course.

Would you give me briefly the technique, the procedure, the plan of operation in a long-term preventive mediation type of thing as at Fort Worth?

How does that work? What do you dream up? What is the plan? Mr. SIMKIN. In the Fort Worth situation, which is illustrative, one of the very practical problems there was limited, if any, contact between the production people, the foreman and the supervisors on the job, and the union representatives. The union had to work solely through the personnel people rather than through the production people. This is just not workable in a plant of that type. One part of our preventive plan, which will very soon get underway, will be a series of meetings, department by department, to provide a closer working relationship between union representatives and foremen and other people on the firing line.

Mr. FLOOD. They will do this themselves?

Mr. SIMKIN. Our local mediator will work with them and meet with them in these sessions. They will have a long series of meetings over a 5-year period. They have a 5-year contract, and both parties recognize that a tremendous amount of work has to be done to improve the day-by-day relationships.

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This will be done by the series of meetings, some of them department by department, some of them on a larger scale, where the parties will get together and work out their problems to avoid grievances.

STRIKE AT MAC DONNELL AIRCRAFT

Mr. FLOOD. What was the specific problem, if there was just one, at MacDonnell and Boeing-the "quickie" strikes they had? Why at MacDonnell with 30,000 employees, with the long record they have had with the Navy? They are not Johnny-come-lately at this business of defense. Why could that kind of thing possibly happen?

Mr. SIMKIN. In these situations, the background is somewhat different in details, but it is essentially the same. That is, over the years there had been an accumulation of resentments and frustrations that had never found a proper outlet.

In Boeing, the principal issue was an alleged seniority system they call performance analysis which is not a seniority system the way most unions understand it. This was established way back in 1948 after a very costly strike when the machinists lost out. The system was established unilaterally by the company.

That so-called performance analysis

Mr. FLOOD. In 1948, and nobody said, or cared, or did anything about it since 1948?

Mr. SIMKIN. It has been a bone of contention ever since. The system has been monkeyed with a little, and changed here and there over the succeeding years.

Mr. FLOOD. Did you know about it?

Mr. SIMKIN. Yes.

Mr. FLOOD. You knew it was building up a head of steam?

Mr. SIMKIN. Yes.

Mr. FLOOD. The defense plant at MacDonnell. Why did you not step in before the lid blew off with your long-range preventive medicine? You needed it there then.

Mr. SIMKIN. Three years ago, we succeeded in contract negotiations in making some changes in that system. As it turned out, those changes were not enough.

Mr. FLOOD. Did you stay on top of it?

Mr. SIMKIN. When it came up this time, the company, at the beginning, was very adamant on not moving any further. The union was adamant on throwing out the system completely.

GREATER EMPHASIS ON PREVENTIVE MEDIATION

Mr. FLOOD. Do you have any plans? Can you, or should you, have a bureau or division in your shop whose job is to take industry by industry, starting with the big defense plants? Should you not set up a bureau in your shop that would take all of the big defense contractors, the primes that we know--and there are only so many, they are not innumerable. This could be done. Why will you not assign some of your jokers to do nothing but analyze and anticipate this pressure that is building up in these different places?

You should know what they are, and step in before there is a strike in a defense operation. I am sure you could have stopped some of this stuff at Kennedy. I am sure that you could have stopped some of these other things.

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Why do you not have people that do nothing but that?

Mr. SIMKIN. That is the essence of our preventive mediation

program.

I am sure we have not done everything we could do with that program. Part of that reason is manpower.

Mr. FLOOD. Mr. Fogarty asked you about this. If this is as important as you think it is, and I think it is, then this is not a question of butter in this case, it is a question of guns.

Mr. SIMKIN. That is right.

Mr. FLOOD. It occurs to me this would be an exciting thing for someone to do.

Mr. SIMKIN. It is.

Mr. MOORE. The director has relieved me of a number of my administrative responsibilities, and has made, in effect, my whole time assignment the greater use of effective preventive mediation.

Mr. FLOOD. It would be a tremendous service if you could take these pigeons, wing by wing, and go right down the list and go knock on their door and say: "Mac, you are going to have trouble here, according to the weather forecast, in about 6 months. Let's do something about it now."

Mr. MOORE. One of the principal problems we have is that even in dispute mediation, we cannot force our way.

Mr. FLOOD. I understand that. They are not going to throw you out. You are welcome.

Mr. MOORE. You mentioned MacDonnell. This is a perfect illustration.

We had men working on that at least a year before the strike occurred. Because of internal problems within the union, I do not know if you recall, as I remember, there were four negotiated agreements rejected by the membership.

The union would absolutely not participate in any preventive activity at the MacDonnell plant prior to the strike. With the help of the Service they negotiated four complete agreements which were completely repudiated by the membership.

In other words, here was a division within the union and there was nothing we could do. We could negotiate an agreement, but there was nothing else we could do with the membership rebellion; we could not get constructive results.

Mr. FLOOD. Some bureau in your shop should be set up to take these prime defense people alphabetically, go down the list, and put a scope right on them and move in.

Mr. MOORE. We are doing that.

Mr. SIMKIN. We are doing that increasingly.

Mr. MOORE. In the disputes shop in our national office, a constant survey is made of upcoming contracts, constant reports are coming in from the regions on the more important contracts in the future. do not mean in the immediate future, maybe 30 or 40 or 90 days, so some special attention can be given to them."

We are increasing our use of the classification of what we call significant cases which involve all these people, which automatically establishes a much more inexpensive

Mr. FLOOD. It sounds to me as though you should change the title of your group. It looks to me that after you are presented with a

fait accompli you want to go and sit down and mediate; that is no trick.

Mr. MOORE. I do not agree with you.

Mr. FLOOD. That is something different.

Mr. ABNER. There was a recent reorganization.

Mr. SIMKIN. As Bob indicated, we have reorganized our national office staff to give major attention, beginning right now, even more than we have in the past, to precisely the sort of program you are mentioning.

This is the essence of the program from the very beginning. We have had that problem at Cape Kennedy. Let us take another situation where we have an almost perfect record, and that is at the Space Center at Houston. Ever since that building program started down there one of our mediators, Willis Ray has spent a major portion of his time working day by day with the contractors and the unions. There has been virtually no strikes.

Mr. FLOOD. You are doing it, but I am pressing you now to do

more.

Mr. SIMKIN. Very good. I concur completely with that.

PERSONNEL REQUIREMENTS

Mr. FLOOD. If it is a question of personnel, Mr. Fogarty has made the health people do things 10 years ahead of what they would be doing today because the budget would not let them have this or somebody else would not let them have that, and they woke up some morning to find that he gave them 10 or 100 more people than they asked for. Maybe they did not know what to do with them, but they soon found out.

Mr. SIMKIN. We would have no problem what to do with the people. Mr. FLOOD. Then what is the matter?

Mr. SIMKIN. I suppose it might be said I was too soft in agreeing to this substantial reduction.

Mr. FLOOD. That is right. That is just what I am saying.

Mr. SIMKIN. Certainly I would have no objection if you people on this committee want to change that.

Mr. FLOOD. What is the matter with you? What are you, Pontius Pilate?

Mr. SIMKIN. I do feel we could do the job with a gradual increase of our staff.

Mr. FLOOD. We do not think it is fast enough. We do not think the backlogs in these eastern suburbs are being properly disposed of. We think too many people are doing the same things too long, using the same weapons, and they are obsolete.

You are talking now about prophylaxis. This is interesting. This seems to be more along the line of the way the committee thinks.

Mr. MOORE. We gave it a real try at the seminar in Houston last month. I was primarily responsible for leading the program in this area. After it was all through, we sat down with the mediators and discussed their problems. As an example, one said, "I have an opportunity where I think they need this, they want it, and I can be helpful. I set up a meeting for tomorrow but when I get home I get a phone call. A plant is going down. What should I do? I cannot pursue a preventive case if that plant closes down."

Mr. FLOOD. Then he puts on his other hat. I am talking about the first hat.

Mr. MOORE. We have more men than we need to do nothing but crisis mediation. We do not have enough in addition to that required minimum staff to properly handle the type of preventive program we would like, but we are going to do our damnedest with what is available to us.

Mr. FLOOD. That is clear.

Mr. MOORE. We are going to do it in an imaginative way as you suggest. We are not just sitting back.

Mr. FLOOD. I am goosing you.

Mr. MOORE. I am glad to have you do so.

Mr. FLOOD. I have been mixing with bureaucrats for 20 years. We want to get you off your duff.

Mr. MOORE. We are off.

Mr. SIMKIN. And we have been for some time.

CHICAGO TRANSIT SITUATION

Mr. MICHEL. I was interested in the line of questioning of Mr. Flood with respect to the New York subway case. I sense that just prior to the line of questioning you were diverted when you were about to make an observation with respect to Chicago, where a similar situation has developed.

Mr. SIMKIN. Last week we received inquiries at our Chicago office. There is possible trouble brewing out there.

Mr. FLOOD. Trouble with what?

Mr. SIMKIN. With the transit authority in the city of Chicago. The situation in Chicago differs from New York in one significant respect, and that is there is no private mediation group in Chicago. There is no State mediation agency of consequence; there is no city mediation agency. In the city of Chicago we have traditionally participated in certain types of disputes that we do not in New York.

For example, we were active in the taxi strike some time ago where we would normally not be in the city of New York because of the city agency. I instructed our regional director in Chicago, in spite of some question under the law, I said if the parties want help on this transit thing, we will provide it. We think we ought to expect and insist on a joint request of the parties for us to move in, since there is some legal question as thing now stand. But if we get the request, we are not going to stand on formalities. We are going to go in and try to help.

MEDIATION OF GOVERNMENTAL DISPUTES

Mr. MOORE. It might be helpful to clarify what we mean by legal question. It is posed by the Taft-Hartley Act which established this agency and its jurisdiction. Specifically, governmental agencies are not employers. Therefore the general consensus of the legal minds has been that we are not authorized to spend Federal funds when no defined employer is involved. The feeling has been that we are, at least, on dangerous grounds in mediating and spending Federal funds mediating when we have no legal authority to do so.

Mr. SIMKIN. Putting it in other words, there is unquestionably a hole in the act. There is no real legislative provision for the mediation