Mr. KEYS. The preamble of the Foremen's Association of America is as follows:

From the early days of mass production by power machinery to the present decade the foreman was considered either as the channel through which the desires of ownership and management were conveyed to and made effective among the body of workers, or as the representative of ownership and management in the shop. Just before the opening of the present decade the organization of the body of workers into plant and industry-wide unions demanding the exclusive right of representation for collective bargaining purposes, dealing with employers or groups of employers in organizations that have existed for years, has greatly changed the real status of the foreman.

In the particulars of the day's production the foreman is yet the channel for making effective the policies and directions of management as applied to production, but he is a part neither of organized ownership and management on the one hand nor of organized labor on the other hand. The foreman fits between two enormous powers-ownership and management on top and labor unions with enormous numbers on the bottom. The foreman has reason to feel that in the ceaseless struggle between ownership and wage labor the foreman will become a victim unless all foremen are organized to protect individuals and interests common and essential to the position of foremen in modern mass power production.

Mr. SPARKMAN. Mr. Keyes, I gather from what you say, I am sorry I did not hear all of your statement, that you are just about as much afraid of organized workers on the one hand as organized management on the other. I probably have used the wrong term in saying "afraid," but you just used the expression you are caught between two powerful forces.

Mr. KEYS. We have been; yes, sir.

Mr. SPARKMAN. And, therefore, you feel the need for a separate organization of your own?

Mr. KEYS. Yes, sir.

Mr. SPARKMAN. You do not want to be a part of either one of these other groups, I understand?

Mr. KEYS. Speaking for our organization only; no. Our experience in industries where we are organizing foremen we definitely feel we should be independent and not an affiliation of any labor group.

Mr. SPARKMAN. Your view is in accord with what most of the foremen's representatives here have said. You would have three bargaining agencies-the workers, the foremen, and the management? Mr. KEYS. That is correct.

Mr. SPARKMAN. Now, do you believe that under the trend of the present decision of the National Labor Relations Board that such a condition as that could exist?

Mr. KEYS. Yes; I do, sir.

Mr. SPARKMAN. Or would be likely to exist?

Mr. KEYS. I do. I believe that the Board has and will continue to study these problems very carefully and in making a decision of setting up appropriate bargaining units the majority of the time they will make the best decision.

Mr. SPARKMAN. Well, now, is there any plant in this country where they have recognized three bargaining units?

Mr. KEYS. Yes; the Ford Motor Co.

Mr. SPARKMAN. Is that the only one so far?

Mr. KEYS. No; there is the Detroit Lubricator Co.

Mr. SPARKMAN. Are there foremen's unions in those plants a third bargaining unit?

Mr. KEYS. Yes, sir.

Mr. SPARKMAN. Separate and distinct and apart from the workers' union?

Mr. KEYS. Management has its committee of personnel men which does the bargaining for it. The workers have a committee they have picked, and then the foremen have picked their own committee. We do not meet together. Management will meet with the laboring group on certain days and on certain days meet with the foremen's group. They seldom have anything turn up where they have to have the three groups together. However, there have been one or two questions in which I assure you we have ironed out difficulties by having these bargaining groups or units or we wouldn't have ironed them out with them.

Mr. SPARKMAN. Do you think occasions might arise when there would be jurisdictional disputes between the foremen's union and the workers' union?

Mr. KEYS. I would give you my own honest opinion on that and say as long as there are unions there will be jurisdictional disputes. Mr. SPARKMAN. Do you believe there might be sympathetic strikes by foremen's unions to help the workers' unions or vice versa ?

Mr. KEYS. Sympathetic strikes? I would say that depends entirely on the times. With the war on, no. Without a war, possibly so. I would not be able to say. We have not even discussed it.

Mr. SPARKMAN. The point I am trying to bring out, and I know it is difficult to state it positively, but will the three units always remain independent and separate and distinct?

Mr. KEYS. Well, that is just like asking me if America will remain independent. We hope so.

Mr. SPARKMAN. Do you believe so?

Mr. KEYS. I believe so; yes.

Mr. SPARKMAN. That is all.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Keys, you have been a very frank witness and very well informed, apparently. I believe you said you objected to section 2 of the Smith bill because it uses what you termed "coercion" and possibly force in compelling a man to not join a union under the penalty of being inducted into the military service.

Mr. KEYS. Yes; I do object to that.

The CHAIRMAN. Yes, sir. On the ground it is coercion?

Mr. KEYS. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. Now, let me ask you this: Where there is a closedshop union, like a coal mine in my district, can a man get a job there unless he joins the union?

Mr. KEYS. If the officials of the union and the owners of the mine have agreed that he cannot, I am afraid that he cannot.

The CHAIRMAN. Doesn't that put a man in the position of being coerced into joining the union if he is hungry for a job and has to have a job?

Mr. KEYS. If you wish to interpret it that way. It more or less hinges along those lines. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. Then I take it in view of your expression of opposition to the principle involved in section 2 of coercion, you would likewise be opposed to the closed shop?

Mr. KEYS. No; not if the big majority of the people and the owners have agreed it is the best thing for the shop. You see, conditions vary.

When you sit down here and try to thrash out what is best for the people of this country, we have varying conditions all over the country, and various situations. In some places the closed-shop people don't believe in and in others everybody wants it.

The CHAIRMAN. You say if management and the majority of the union agree on it it would be all right.

Mr. KEYS. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. Let us assume you have 15,000 men in your Detroit area and the motor companies have a million men and they all have contracts with the United Automobile Workers, which is a closed shop, and they decide they are going to absorb your union and management agrees to it. What are you going to do about it?

Mr. KEYS. If they decide?

The CHAIRMAN. Yes.

Mr. KEYS. I think both management and labor would suddenly realize that for a great many years they have been overlooking the backbone of industry, the foremen. We would certainly put up a battle that they would not forget for a long time, both of them.

The CHAIRMAN. But you would be absorbed.

Mr. KEYS. I do not believe so. I do not believe that American industry can run any more without the foremen than it can run without labor.

The CHAIRMAN. I know, but I am trying to anticipate what might happen if the larger group wanted to absorb your group. How would you resist?

Mr. KEYS. Then we would take it to the National Labor Relations Board and they would have to make a decision, assuming they know what they are doing.

The CHAIRMAN. All right.

Mr. JOHNSON. And if they decided against you would submit to it? Mr. KEYS. We would have to. There's a law; isn't there?

Mr. Chairman, there is one thing I overlooked. It will only take 2 minutes. I would like to bring out the Foreman's Association is endeavoring to do for the foremen what a lot of plant owners and management have forgotten to do. I have here a copy just as it was submitted to me. I have not even changed it. They did not even spell the name correctly. It says, "Foremen's Association of America, Training for Victory." And it consists of 12 books teaching foremen how to be better foremen not only in the shop but in human relations; how to estimate the cost of a job; time study; and so forth. That is inerely our educational program. That goes along with many other things we are trying to do.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you.

STATEMENT OF MILTON N. KEMNITZ, NATIONAL FEDERATION FOR CONSTITUTIONAL LIBERTIES

Mr. KEMNITZ. My name is Milton N. Kemnitz. I appear before this committee representing the National Federation for Constitutional Liberties, to state our opposition to H. R. 2239.

Our opposition to this bill is based on the firm conviction that its passage would be injurious to the war effort.

Our federation is devoted, as a civil-liberties organization, to strengthening the war effort in every way possible. We regard the war effort as the all-consuming cooperative effort of democracy-loving peoples throughout the world, to save and extend the democratic liberties of Thomas Jefferson and the "four freedoms" of the United Nations. We think that it is obvious that upon the ability of our country as the arsenal of democracy, to continue to pass the ammunition, depends the unfaltering advance of the United Nations forces on all fronts. Therefore, on the success of our war-production effort depends in large degree the outcome of our war for survival and freedom.

Our concern with H. R. 2239 is not with the much-discussed foreman problem, but with the total effect of the entire bill on the warproduction program.

The effect of this bill will be to disrupt the increasingly harmonious and productive relations now existing between employer and employee groups. By subjecting labor to the constant threat of criminal action, and by providing as a penalty for alleged interference with war production, induction into the armed forces, and further by placing upon the employer the responsibility of invoking these penalties, this bill would replace the growing cooperation by employer and employee in the furtherance of our total war-production program with disruptive suspicions and antagonisms.

This proposed legislation rests upon two basic assumptions with which we must take strong exception.

The first assumption is that service in the uniform of our country is a punishment to be meted out to those who are allegedly guilty of impeding war output, and thus reducing the flow of war equipment to our fighting forces and those of our allies. We believe that this assumption represents a slur at military service and tends to make of the service of one's country in its armed forces an onerous sentence. The second basic assumption with which we must take strenuous exception is that labor, in the midst of our present crisis, seeks to curtail vital war production. This assumption flies in the face of fact and experience. Labor has made splendid contributions to the meeting of ever larger production quotas. These contributions and specifically organized labor's central place in making them possible, has been recognized by all Government officials responsible for the production of war materials. Donald Nelson, Under Secretary of the Navy Forrestal, Under Secretary of War Patterson, War Labor Board Chairman Davis, and, for those in the armed forces, Gen. Douglas MacArthur and the Commander in Chief himself have given specific and enthusiastic recognition to this contribution of labor organizations.

America's colossal effort to outproduce the Axis has been made possible not alone by the tremendous contribution of labor, but equally by similar commendable contributions by industry, and more particularly by the cooperation of labor and industry through thousands of labor-management committees in which the employer and his employees, through their trade union organizations, have sat down together to solve the knotty problems of increasing production.

We feel that these basic assumptions-that service in the armed forces is a form of punishment, and that labor is interested not in increasing but curtailing war production—are false and harmful, and that any legislation based upon them cannot but have a destructive

effect upon the unity and morale of the American people, and upon mutual confidence and cooperation.

We agree with the preamble of H. R. 2239 in its recognition that production can and must be further increased. We believe that constructive proposals for the fuller utilization of the manpower and the physical resources of our Nation have been embodied in H. R. 2285, the Tolan bill which is now before this committee. We urge that you give this legislation your early and favorable consideration. As an additional constructive recommendation toward obtaining the further utilization of our manpower, we urge that the gentlemen of this committee give their support to legislation designed to eliminate discriminalon in employinent because of race, creed, color, or national origin. Such legislation has been proposed in H. R. 1732, a bill by Mr. Marcantonio now before the Committee on the Judiciary.

It is for such constructive proposals for the total use of our manpower that we urge your support. And it is because we feel that the passage of H. R. 2239 would not be helpful, but would rather be a most serious threat to the full and effective use of our manpower and the strengthening of our war effort, that we urge you to reject this proposed legislation.

Mr. JOHNSON. I would like to submit the following letter for the record.

H. R. 2239, Smith bill.

Hon. J. LEROY JOHNSON,

Member of Congress, Washington, D. C.

AMERICAN BOX CORPORATION,
San Francisco, March 31, 1943.

DEAR MR. JOHNSON: There is before the Congress H. R. 2239, which in effect will clarify the National Labor Relations Act by excluding the representatives of management from the provisions of the act, and we urge that you support this bill.

There are a number of highly desirable changes which should be made to the National Labor Relations Act that would go far toward clarifying the present unsettled national labor situation. Even the better type, broad-minded labor leaders admit this and would be glad to see those reforms made to the act, and to enumerate them I list below amendments that have been suggested by such labor leaders:

1. Only citizens of the United States of America would be eligible to hold elective offices in any labor union.

2. Labor leaders would be men from within the ranks with adequate experience in the occupation represented by the union.

3. All persons responsible for the funds of the union would be adequately bonded by a responsible and independent bonding company, preferably a corporate bond.

4. All members of labor unions would be rendered a financial statement at least once per annum attested to by a certified public accountant.

5. No part of a union's funds would be contributed to any politician or political party seeking office unless by specific authority of a majority of that union. 6. A direct amendment of section 7-A which reads at present, "Employees shall have the right to self-organization to form, join, or assist labor organizations, etc." by adding one word as an amendment to that section. This, "Employees shall have the right to self-organization to voluntarily form, join, or assist labor organizations, etc."

7. Workers would not be required to join unions for the right to work.

8. No strike would be considered legal until the lapse of a "cool off" period. We sincerely trust you will not overlook any opportunity to accomplish this very much needed reform in our present laws governing labor.

Yours very truly,

WALTER S. JOHNSON.

(Committee adjourned to Saturday, April 17, 1943, at 10 a. m.)