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LABOR RELATIONS

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1949

UNITED STATES SENATE,

COMMITTEE ON LABOR AND PUBLIC WELFARE,
Washington, D. C.

The committee met, pursuant to adjournment, at 9:30 a. m. in the hearing room of the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, United States Capitol, the Honorable Elbert D. Thomas (chairman) presiding.

Present: Senators Thomas (chairman), Murray, Pepper, Hill, Neely, Douglas, Humphrey, Withers, Taft, Aiken, Smith of New Jersey, Morse, and Donnell.

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will be in order.

Mr. Denham, will you state what you wish to have appear about yourself in the record and then proceed, please.

STATEMENT OF ROBERT N. DENHAM, GENERAL COUNSEL,
NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD

Mr. DENHAM. Gentlemen, the shortness of time between the advice from

The CHAIRMAN. Will you please state who you are, Mr. Denham. Mr. DENHAM. Yes, sir; very well.

The CHAIRMAN. We are trying to make a record here. I happen to know who you are, but I would like it in your own words. Mr. DENHAM. Very well. Thank you, sir.

My name is R. N. Denham, and I live in Chevy Chase, Md.
Senator DONNELL. What State were you born in, Mr. Denham?
Mr. DENHAM. I was born in Missouri.

Senator DONNELL. That is good. [Laughter.]

Mr. DENHAM. A very good place, too.

Senator DONNELL. I want to say, Mr. Chairman, if I may, that Mr. Denham is an old and valued friend of mine. We were schoolmates, and we are very proud of the eminence which he has attained. Mr. DENHAM. I am the general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, appointed by the President under the provisions of the Labor-Management Relations Act of 1947.

The shortness of time between the advice of the committee that I would be called upon to appear and my actual appearance here has made it impossible for me to put together a prepared statement of the usual kind.

Mr. Coburn very graciously advised me, when I was told of the desire of the committee to hear my views, that such a statement would be waived, and I am taking advantage of that waiver.

In my appearance before this committee about a year and a half ago I was asked to go into considerable detail as to my past histors. I shall not bother you now with a repetition of this, beyond inviting your attention to the fact that since March of 1938, and until my appointment as general counsel under the Taft-Hartley Act, I was continuously employed in the administration of the Wagner Act as one of the Board's trial examiners.

During that time I had occasion to hear the very large number of hotly litigated cases in all parts of the country, and covering alu every conceivable question that could arise under the Wagner Act.

Since the effective date of the Taft-Hartley Act I have, as you know, been very much engrossed in the administration of all the phases of that act, up to the decisional level of the trial examiner, ar i before.

When it is realized that during the 16 months ending December 31, 1948, we handled some 56,000 cases of all sorts, of which slighty under 8,000 were complaint cases, 12,000 were representation cas and approximately 36,000 were union-security election cases, the mag nitude of the volume and the broad extent of opportunity to observe the working of the act are obvious.

It is on the basis of this fairly comprehensive background and the contacts it has afforded with the relations of the management and labor that I hope such views as I shall have occasion to express during the hearings will be considered.

In appearing before this committee, I am anxious only to contribute in any way I can to a legislative decision which will help bring about sound relations between management and labor; relations wh when viewed without partisan distortion, are balanced for the beneti of the entire Nation.

During the past 18 months, as an official charged with an importar: part of the responsibility for the administration of the Labor Man agement Relations Act, I have done everything in my power by word and deed to establish public confidence in the principles and the ob jectives of that statute. Indeed, I considered that to be one of the major responsibilities of the Office of General Counsel.

Now, to change my position would stultify me and would justify the members of this committee and the public in questioning my sincerity in accepting appointment as general counsel.

I could not have accepted that office unless I felt that the statute was basically sound.

Senator DONNELL. Do you still feel that way, Mr. Denham!
Mr. DENHAM. Yes, sir; I certainly do.

Further, I do not believe the President would have appointed me to that office unless he felt that such was my belief.

The Taft-Hartley Act may not be a perfect piece of legislation; it may not be a cure-all for all the problems that confront labor ard management, probably the act could be amended to the advantage of everyone; those are decisions for the Congress to make upon the lass of these hearings and upon the record.

One of the most difficult problems in regulating a field that so closely touches personal human relationships, such as are involved in our industrial economy, is the problem of creating confidence in the

fairness and the impartiality of the Government instrumentalities set up to regulate the relationships.

I think you will agree with me that lack of such confidence was one of the most serious and frequently voiced criticism of the Wagner Act and the old Board.

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The CHAIRMAN. May I ask a question?

Mr. DENHAM. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Denham, confidence, of course, is the basis of every democratic action, and we understand that. But could it have been anything but inevitable that the lack of confidence in any kind of board would have been brought about after the long fight to bring the National Labor Relaitons Act into existence with the tense feeling of practically every witness who appeared here, and then the advice of some 69 highly successful, great, really great, constitutional lawyers, advising their clients that the law was patently unconstitutional? Then, the clients' accepting that sort of advice which, in turn, brought on the civil-liberty-hearings work that I had to take part in, not for months but for years, where probably not a single witness appeared who did not have a bias one way or another?

Could any board ever have been able to attain confidence under circumstances of that kind?

Mr. DENHAM. That, Mr. Chairman, is an extremely difficult question to answer, and I do not know. From my own experience and observation with the Wagner Act and the Wagner Act Board, and with the people who came before me, as a trial examiner, I know that the confidence was not there with reference to that Board.

The CHAIRMAN. I will have to apologize to my colleagues for breaking in on the 10-minute statement to ask that question, but I just could not help in the light of history, asking it when reference was made to confidence.

Mr. DENHAM. Well, the confidence just simply was not there that I observed.

Now, much of the attack of the administration of that act was, I believe, unjustified, but the important fact is that a very large segment of our popunlation, which is directly involved in labor relations, lacked this essential confidence in the integrity of the Board's procedures.

Congress atempted to remedy this situation by the separation of functions, and other procedural reforms in the Labor Management Relations Act. The establishment of the independent Office of General Counsel was the keystone of that. Everyone who was familiar with the Board's operations knows that the regional offices and their personnel play the most important part in establishing public confidence or a lack of it in the administration of the statute.

They are our front line in daily contact with those who are most affected by our work; and I am happy and I am proud to say, to be able to tell you, that the information from these offices is that never before in its history has the Board enjoyed such good will, and so high a reputation for fair dealing, as it does now.

I think that is a very significant tribute to the administration of this act and, particularly, when it is remembered that this front-line administration is made up of the same people who were charged with the bias and the unfairness that was charged against the Board in administering the Wagner Act.

There has been practically no change in personnel except to add some additional people to it.

That, gentlemen, is in substance all that I have to say on generalities. I anticipate, however, there may be questions you may like to ask me, and I should be happy to give you my best judgment."

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Denham.

Senator Morse.

Senator MORSE. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Will Davis, who, if we were on schedule, is scheduled to testify this morning, is here. He has s brother who is very ill at Walter Reed Hospital, and I would like to move, so that he can finish his testimony as soon as possible, that we set aside Mr. Denham's cross-examination until after we hear Mr. Davis. ...

I move that we let Mr. Davis testify at this point so that he wi be free under the circumstances to go as soon as possible.

Senator TAFT. Mr. Chairman, I have only one question to raise about it. I do not want to inconvenience Mr. Davis,

On the other hand, I am very anxious to cross-examine Mr. Denham. I have to leave here at 10:30 and be absent for about an hour, and I do not want to miss that opportunity. But, assuming that Mr Denham will be here at 11:30, and I could begin my cross-examination at that time, if Mr. Davis is through, that would be satisfactory,

Senator MORSE. I think I can give you that assurance. Senator TAFT. Why, then, I will be glad to let it go that way. The CHAIRMAN. Is there any objection to the motion of Senator Morse? If not, Mr. Denham, you happen to be one of the crowd now, so you can be put off easily.

Mr. DENHAM. I am very glad to stand aside.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Davis, please.

Mr. Davis, for the record, will you state your name?

STATEMENT OF WILLIAM H. DAVIS, NEW YORK CITY

Mr. DAVIS. My name is William H. Davis. I am a patent lawyer practicing in New York City. I was asked to come down here, and the subject that I wanted to talk with the committee about was the subject of emergency strikes.

The CHAIRMAN. Will you identify yourself just a little bit more, Mr. Davis, for the record.

Mr. DAVIS. You mean my past history?

The CHAIRMAN. I think that the important thing is the Industrial Labor Confernce of 1941, and what happened, as a result of that conference, so that the readers, when we quote from the record, will know what we are talking about.

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you, Senator.

Senator Thomas and I were joint chairmen of the Labor Industry Conference of 1941 just after Pearl Harbor.

I was at that time the chairman of the National Defense Mediation Board. The result of that conference was the setting up of the Na tional War Labor Board, of which I was chairman until the spring of 1945, when I became Director of the Office of Economic Stabilization.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Davis.

Mr. DAVIS. The subject I wanted to speak about this morning is emergency strikes, that is, strikes that imperil the national health or

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safety, as the Taft-Hartley law expresses it; what to do when the national health and safety is imperiled by the forces of industrial conflict.

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Now, I think, Senators, that that is a question to which the American people are entitled to a clear and definitive answer.

I think that hardly anything could be more useful to labor, management, and the country (the general public), than a feeling of assurance on that rather difficult subject.

Neither the Taft-Hartley law nor the proposed substitute answers that question. Both of them deal only with the cooling-off period during which the parties may try again with the help of the Conciliation Service to settle the dispute by mutual agreement.

If at the end of the Taft-Hartley 80-day period the dispute remains unsettled, the injunction is required by law to be discharged.

May I put it this way, Senators: At the point where the emergency still confronts the country, our judicial system is withdrawn by act of Congress. It turns its back on the emergency and leaves the room. It is equally true that in the proposed substitute, after the coolingoff period, which is 30 days, if the dispute has not been settled in that period, the country is confronted with the emergency. Its health and safety are imperiled in either case.

The history of the Taft-Hartley law, with which you are all familiar, illustrates precisely that there have been six cases under the TaftHartley law in which the President has declared that the health and safety of the Nation was imperiled by an industrial conflict.

In two of them, the meat-packing case and the telephone case, the cooling-off period went on, that is, there was no strike, the parties continued in negotiations, and settled their controversy without an injunction. There was no injunction issued.

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In the four other cases, the injunction issues. In no one of those cases did it settle the controversy or create-or lift the emergency.

In the coal case, in which the dispute was in regard to the fundin 1948, it involved the miners' welfare fund-in the spring of 1948 the miners went out. An injunction issued on April 3; the miners stayed out until April 12, when it was announced that Mr. Lewis had been satisfied by reason of the fact that a new neutral member of the Board had been appointed, and he and Mr. Lewis had agreed upon the procedure which the Board would follow.

Now, there was no cooling-off period. The strike continued. It was settled, the miners won, and they went back to work.

The CHAIRMAN. In other words, the court really and truly had nothing to do with the settlement.

Mr. DAVIS. No; the court afterward punished them with a fine for contempt.

In the other three cases, the injunction served to preserve the 80-day period, but it did not settle the controversy, and at the end of that period, when the court left the room, the men were free to strike, and the country was still imperiled.

I happen to know a good deal about the case down at Oak Ridge with respect to atomic energy. That dispute was in the laboratory down there. The 80-day period was established by injunction, and it went by. There was no settlement. The controversy was just as acute when the injunction was discharged as it was the day it was issued.

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