had some little experience as a public official, as I am sure our d tinguished friend and Senator, the former Governor of Vermont has had. I have always found out that, if you kept the attorneys out you had a pretty good chance of settling the dispute. I mean no d.respect to the attorneys now, and I say this lightly. But when yo get people together, just talked out, base the proposition on whe the facts of the case were, recognizes that you have unions, you have management, you have to make a profit in order to give wages, b golly, you get these things settled. Mr. GOLDBERG. I never thought I would find myself in disagie ment with the Senator from Minnesota, but I do now. Senator TAFT. I take it the Senator would repeal the Wagner A and go back to plain law. That might be a solution, but I do 1 believe the best one. Senator PEPPER. Mr. Chairman, when this discussion became pro tracted, I was asking Mr. Goldberg about the substantiation of the conclusions he had made. You got down how far? It interfered with the collective bargai ing? Had you finished everything you wanted to give? Mr. GOLDBERG. I had several more points. Senator PEPPER. Had you finished that point: that the Taft-Hartley Act interfered with collective bargaining? Mr. GOLDBERG. I have some other observations that I would like “ make on it. I could in 1 minute conclude one of them, and that .the welfare-fund point. The Taft-Hartley law imposed limitations upon bargaining ar welfare funds. I think that was done without experience and with out recognition of realities, and I would like to cite a case from Oho I would like the Senator from Ohio to listen. I would tell him a experience we had in his own State. We recently negotiated a contract with an employer in the State of Ohio providing for welfare funds. I can supply the committee with the name of that employer. It was United Steelworkers and McKenzie Muffler Co., all located in Youngstown, Ohio. Being faced with the Taft-Hartley Act which restricted our right to bargain welfare funds, I did my best to follow that statute. We provided for trustees, one representing the company and one representing the management, with an impartial trustee to resolve the dispute. Senator PEPPER. Do you mean one representing the employees! Mr. GOLDBERG. Yes, one representing the employees' union and one representing the management, with an impartial trustee to resolve that dispute, selected by the American Arbitration Association. Then the contract provides for group insurance, which I think we woul all regard to be a very commendable objective, group insurance is sued to the trustees who are the parties set up under the Taft-Hartley Act to administer this welfare fund. We then submitted it to the insurance commissioner of Ohio, and the insurance commissioner of Ohio advised us that it would be contrary to the Ohio law to have a group-insurance policy issued to trustees under this Taft-Hartley welfare-fund arrangement. The point I want to make is this. In other words, we cannot give effect under Ohio law to our welfare-fund agreement which is created under the Taft-Hartley Act. The point I want to make is that CHIN hat welfare-fund restriction, which is the restriction upon collective argaining, was written into the law on the supposition that there were of t buses which did not exist and without study or regard for the pracical problems that are created in the various States and insurance aws and elsewhere with respect to that problem. it. & I am sure the Senator from Ohio did not contemplate that when he Irafted the statute, nor did I even dream, when I created this trust greement under the Taft-Hartley law, that I was writing into the rust agreement, as I wrote into it, a provision that the insurance olicy should be issued to the trustees provided in this agreement, hat I was violating a State statute. Senator TAFT. It seems to me a criticism of the State statute rather than the Taft-Hartley law. I do not see what it has to do with the Taft-Hartley law. Mr. GOLDBERG. I think it is a criticism of a law which enters upon the field of welfare funds, which raised problems of group insurance, and one of the first things that you think of, or should think of, is the mpact of that law upon State laws. Senator TAFT. May I say in the usual case the employer simply akes out group insurance for the employees, which is not prohibited they the Taft-Hartley law at all. Mr. GOLDBERG. Yes, but we had at the time the Taft-Hartley Act was enacted. I think 4,000,000 American workers who were covered herby various types of arrangements. next! Senator TAFT. Yes, and they were looked into. We examined them har all, and we drew this so that we covered all of them, except one question that was raised about vacation pay, which we made retroactive. This is the point I want to make on this thing. It seems to me oballtious that we must have Federal legislation on welfare funds. I see o escape from it, particularly not so much perhaps with single emverployers. There, I agree, is a question. But, with a number of emlovers or an industry, it seems to me absolutely essential. I would ke to have a much more comprehensive statute than this. techn Of course, in the case of the railroad industry, we have a complete Statute covering the whole thing by statute. That probably is not necessary. But this thing is a trust arrangement. It is growing apidly, which is involving billions of dollars; which, in effect, when it is applied to an industry, becomes a tax on that industry. That is practically what it is. It is no longer a matter of individualemployer payment. It comes so that nobody in that industry can go the industry without paying that tax. 1 I agree with you. It ought to be completely redrafted; but, in the meantime, the protections given by this, it seems to me, are very sential, and I see no reason to repeal it until that general subject dealing with welfare funds and pension funds-we cover pension funds, you know, in the income-tax law already, to a very large extent. But it does not apply to many of these funds. Tat of Mr. GOLDBERG. Oh, yes, sir. I want to differ at that point, if I may respectfully. Senator TAFT. You mean that it has to comply also Mr. GOLDBERG. We must, when we work out a pension-trust agreement, file with the Treasury Department, under section 165 (a) and (b), all of the documents that are required of industry. Senator TAFT. I think 165 is most unsatisfactory, and I think t Treasury has imposed arbitrary restrictions there which are not just fied by anything in the statutes. I agree with you that the only question between us is this, that would raise: What is the reason for repealing this, when welfar funds have grown by leaps and bounds within the provisions of th act, with perfect safety to the recipients, until we get a more com prehensive statute to deal with it? I ask the witness that question. Why should we repeal it until w have a more comprehensive satisfactory statute? Mr. GOLDBERG. Because this agreement has not worked. Ther has been no case made out, outside of your own statement, if I .. respectfully suggest, by evidence of the need for it; because this pry vision has created problems such as I have indicated under State law I now have to embark upon an expensive survey, which I have ordered, of the laws of 48 States. I am not going to put myself an more in the position where I draft a trust agreement and professional become humiliated by getting it signed up and then saying that it do not qualify under the laws of the State. Senator TAFT. I am surprised, Mr. Goldberg, that when you drew a fund with an Ohio company, whether you had a Taft-Hartley lar or not, you should have, and must have, examined the laws of the State of Ohio before you began to draw the fund, if you are a good lawyer Obviously it was governed by the laws of Ohio, whether there w a Taft-Hartley law or there was not a Taft-Hartley law. Mr. GOLDBERG. I thought I had the right to rely upon the good lawyers who presumably drafted the Taft-Hartley law. Senator PEPPER. You did not assume that the Senator from Ob was going to draft a law contrary to the laws of his State. Senator MURRAY. We will meet tomorrow morning at 9:30 a. m. (Thereupon, at 10:05 p. m., the committee recessed until Friday. February 4, 1949, at 9:30 a. m.) (Subsequently Mr. Ching addressed the chairman as follows:) Hon, ELBERT D. THOMAS, FEDERAL MEDIATION AND CONCILIATION SERVICE, Chairman, Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, United States Senate, Washington, D. C. MY DEAR SENATOR THOMAS: In the course of examining the transcript of the current proceedings before your committee, I observed that Hon. Maurice J. Toby Secretary of Labor, made the following statement on February 3, 1949: "Since the question has been raised, I might say I do not doubt the impartial of the present Director of the Department of Conciliation, despite the fact that he has spent a lifetime in management or despite the fact that he has beer member of the board of directors of the NAM” (p. 715). Although this statement expresses the Secretary's confidence in my impartiality which I appreciate, I feel impelled to state that I have never been a member the board of directors of the National Association of Manufacturers. I fel certain that the Secretary was innocently misinformed. Under the circumstances, however, and in view of the fact that a short time ago a newspaper columnist made a similar statement, I should be obliged if you would read this letter into the record in order that the mistake may not be repeated by others. |