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Cases docketed, closed (by type of disposition), and pending, by region, Jan. 1 to Dec. 31, 1944

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Mr. CANNON. But this only brings your statistics down to January 1, 1945. I wonder if you can furnish some information to bring the table down to, say, April 1, at least?

Mr. Ross. That will be done.

(The information requested is as follows:)

Cases docketed and closed, by type of disposition, by region-Jan. 1 to Mar. 31, 1945— Cases pending as of Jan. 1 and Apr. 1, 1945

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Mr. CANNON. Then, again, on page 30, you have a table showing the cases docketed and closed by months. Would it be possible for you to add to that the information for the first 3 months of 1945?

Mr. Ross. That will be done.

Mr. CANNON. Mr. Woodrum?

Mr. WOODRUM. No questions.

(The information requested is as follows:)

Cases docketed, closed and pending, by month, Jan. 1 to Mar. 31, 1945

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Total case activity, July 1, 1943, through Mar. 31, 1945

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Mr. CANNON. I believe I will ask you this also. You list here in your case statistics, item No. 7, nondocketable complaints in 1944. Why were they nondocketable.?

Mr. Ross. They concerned in many cases generalities. We will say a Negro or a Jew comes to us with a complaint of discrimination that was not within our jurisdiction or was a general inference on the part of someone. It did not fit the specifications of naming the employer or naming the grievance, but rather was of a general nature. Mr. CANNON. Not sufficiently tangible?

Mr. Ross. No.

Mr. CANNON. Mr. Ludlow?

COMMITTEE OPERATING UNDER EXECUTIVE ORDER

Mr. LUDLOW. You are operating under Executive order. Is there any assignment except for the duration?

Mr. Ross. The duration and 6 months.

Mr. LUDLOW. You have no punitive powers at all-no enforcement powers?

Mr. Ross. No. Our last recourse is citation of unsolvable cases to the President of the United States.

Mr. LUDLOW. Has that been done in any instance?

Mr. Ross. It has been in 2 cases, once by the committee that preceded us; and the second one that we have put before the President is the case of 14 southern railroads and 7 labor unions.

Mr. LUDLOW. Generally, you find your powers of persuasion have been effective and sufficient?

Mr. Ross. Well, we have 36 percent satisfactory adjustments of our cases. We dismissed 60 percent of our cases as having insufficient evidence or no merits or no jurisdiction.

Mr. Ludlow, most of the work is done in our 15 field offices and by persuasive methods. I think without the clause in our war contracts which makes it obligatory not to discriminate, and without the final war powers of the President in the offing, persuasion alone would be rather valueless, and our voice would not be heeded.

PERCENTAGE OF CASES RELATING TO DISCRIMINATION AGAINST NEGROES

Mr. LUDLOW. What percentage of your cases would you say relate to discrimination and alleged discrimination against Negroes? Mr. Ross. Seventy-eight percent for Negroes alone. Mr. DAVIS. That's right for Negroes alone.

RELIGIOUS DISCRIMINATIONS

Mr. LUDLOW. Now, in reference to the religious discriminations, I assume they would be largely against Jews, would they not? Mr. Ross. It is mostly against Jews; a few Jehovah's Witnesses, or Seventh-Day Adventists.

Mr. LUDLOW. Now, you have still another method of discrimination, and that is of foreigners. That relates to persons born in enemy country?

Mr. Ross. No; most of our cases are in connection with MexicanAmericans. We include them under that heading.

Mr. LUDLOW. What percentage would it be?

Mr. Ross. That is 5.4 percent.

Mr. LUDLOW. Those are your major brackets?
Mr. Ross. Yes.

Mr. LUDLOW. I do not know whether you would want to say anything, either on or off the record, as to the sufficiency of the Norton bill?

Mr. Ross. You are perfectly familiar with the letter of Mr. Cannon to the Budget, asking various executive-order agencies to submit, if they felt it necessary, a notion of what functions might require permanent status. Our committee, as a committee, has sent recommendations to the

Mr. LUDLOW. Were they presented to the legislative committee? Mr. Ross. They have been presented to the Budget.

Mr. LUDLOW. Have they been made public?

Mr. Ross. They have not.

Mr. LUDLOW. Then, I do not want to press that.

Mr. Ross. The Budget has asked us to keep that confidential. Mr. LUDLOW. Just for my own guidance, that I may know, from your past experience with the problem, I should like to know something along the lines of what you think of this bill. But I will not press that now.

Mr. Ross. Would you suggest that I go off the record?

Mr. CANNON. If you will.

(There was a discussion off the record. The following then occurred:)

Mr. LUDLOW. That is all.

Mr. CANNON. Mr. Snyder.

INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE CASES

Mr. SNYDER. You stated that about 60 percent of the cases, I believe, were dismissed because there was not sufficient evidence to proceed with them, and 36 percent you adjusted satisfactorily; is that right?

Mr. Ross. Yes, 13 percent, because of insufficient evidence, 31.3 percent are dismissed on merits, 6.8 percent withdrawn by complainant and 8.9 percent other.

Mr. SNYDER. What about the other 4 percent?

Mr. Ross. The accurate percentage of our dismissals is about 64 percent. As to our other pending cases, you will find on this page we have some 500 cases in the hands of the central office, the committee itself, or the President. They represent cases that we are working on and have not settled. Some of them have been pending for more than a year. Some of those we hope to clear up.

The 36 percent, of course, applies to our closed cases, and not to our active ones.

Mr. SNYDER. That is all.

GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF CASES

Mr. CANNON. Mr. O'Neal?

Mr. O'NEAL. Do you have a table showing the geographical distribution of cases which you handle?

Mr. Ross. We have it by regions, Mr. O'Neal. I think it shows. that some 23 percent are in the Southern States.

Mr. O'NEAL. It is in the great industrial areas that most of it is going on?

Mr. Ross. Yes. Of course, we proceed only upon complaint. Mr. O'NEAL. Is there a table showing the geographical distribution of cases that come to you, by areas?

Mr. Ross. On page 28.

Mr. CANNON. That has been included in the record.

Mr. O'NEAL. . That is all I want to ask.

ATTITUDE OF LABOR ORGANIZATIONS TOWARD WORK OF COMMITTEE.

ON DISCRIMINATION

Mr. RABAUT. Mr. Ross, would you make a short statement on what the attitude of the major labor organizations has been toward this movement, both from the viewpoint of management and organizations, and from the viewpoint of the rank and file?

Mr. Ross. The A. F. L. and the C. I. O. at their annual conventions have endorsed the national policy of nondiscrimination and the F. E. P. C. They have pledged themselves, to the best of their ability, to eliminate discrimination.

The form of organization of the two great unions makes this difference. That the Č. I. O. has a more direct line from its central organization down to its internationals and locals. The A. F. L. gives a greater degree of autonomy to its internationals on policy matters of this kind. Both have spotty places.

72467-45-pt. 1- -6

CASE OF THE BOILERMAKERS' UNION

I think it is a matter of record, of course, that we have had a case with the boilermakers' union on the west coast for a year and a half. We began that case upon an incident in July 1943 when hundreds of Negroes were let out of west coast shipyards because of failure to pay dues to auxiliary unions. We were swamped with telegrams from those Negroes out of work. It was a very dangerous situation and might have spread up and down the coast.

We took the case. We went out to the west coast with the full committee and held hearings. In our formal decision, we found that the various instances of actual discrimination in employment, hire or tenure were resulting from the auxiliary form of union. also joined the shipyards themselves in those cases, because they were the authorities who were primarily responsible for the actual dismissal of Negroes for failure to pay their dues in the auxiliary. This was under a closed shop contract, of course.

Mr. RABAUT. What do you mean by "auxiliary"?

Mr. Ross. I mean an auxiliary union in which a Negro must have his membership if he is to work in those yards. The Boilermakers' Union set up a so-called form of auxiliary membership, and in our examination of witnesses we found that that was a second-class membership; it did not give the Negro the same opportunities given the white man.

Mr. WOODRUM. It is a form of segregation, is it not?

Mr. Ross. Yes, although in the yards themselves there is no work segregation; there are mixed gangs.

Mr. LUDLOW. Is the boilermakers' union A. F. L.?
Mr. Ross. Yes; it is.

I went to the boilermakers' convention. They hold one only every 4 years. I presented the whole thing to them after we had made our decision. They made some advances in that convention over previous policy. Since then, in negotiations with the heads of the boilermakers, they have come several further steps.

My committee at the moment has told the Boilermakers that their last proposals were not thoroughly satisfactory, and asked them to take under advisement the points remaining unresolved.

Among the shipyards themselves-there were five-four of them within the last couple of months have sent us letters of full compliance, stating that they would not discharge because of failure to pay dues in the auxiliary. One of them still has not complied.

The reason back of that, perhaps, is the fact that this issue— exactly the same issue- found its way into the courts and came up by private suit. The Supreme Court of California in the James decision last January held that under a closed shop contract the refusal of the union which holds that contract to admit members freely is illegal; that you cannot have the closed shop and the closed union at the same time. That whole issue is very live one on the

west coast.

We have not cited that case to the President, because we feel that the President of the United States has very great concerns of his own. and moreover, we have tried during the last year and a half to bring that case to a successful conclusion.

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