vented the phrase "mandatory settlement" in an effort to deal with the question.

But in the final analysis I think this resolution would undermine collective bargaining not only in the railroad industry but generally throughout business in the United States.

The other thing that dismays me greatly is that since April 25 there has been no meeting of the parties. Labor and management have not met. The whole matter is completely up in the air. From present indications it is extremely doubtful that they will meet or that they will negotiate so long as we indicate that we are going to take the job over and negotiate for them or give them our mandatory settlement. Under these circumstances, Mr. Chairman, I feel it my duty to present some alternatives if the administration, itself, is unable to see any way out of this one. This does not commit me to go against the administration's request if I feel there is no other way to keep the railroads running, but it certainly shows that there are other things that can be done.

Accordingly, Mr. Chairman, I shall question the witnesses about two amendments to this measure which I shall propose. The amendments are described as follows: One of the amendments will give the President an alternative of limited seizure by court receivership. I have a bill in on that with Senator Kuchel so the terms are readily

available to the witnesses.

The other alternative, and they are not mutually exclusive, will be to give the President the very tools that he asks for in the resolution which is before us, introduced by Senator Morse, but would provide that the final settlement, if we call it that, would be subject to a congressional veto, with the Congress having 20 days in which, under the procedures of the Reorganization Act which insure us against filibusters, or burial in commitee, the Congress must act if it does not like the settlement which is mandated by the panel's overturn.

It seems to me, Mr. Chairman, that we need to consider these alternatives because in view of the fact that the administration has only an ad hoc solution, our ad hoc solution may be as good as theirs.

I would like to close without taking any more of the committee's time by emphasizing what I consider to be a singular dereliction in American public life. We are not only caught without legislation which would enable the Government to operate-and that is what is involved here, but we are apparently even powerless to remedy it when we face a grave emergency. The best we can concoct is a scheme to deal with this one emergency, which scheme, itself, is deeply concerning and deeply troubling to both management and labor because it has so many of the implications of a mandated settlement or compulsory arbitration, which U.S. labor and management have been trying to avoid for decades.

Here we are, right up against it, with that seemingly the only remedy which the President can see as being possible in the premises. I think it is a most deplorable and depressing situation.

It is high time that the people got up in arms about it and insisted that we do a lot better than we show any promise of doing right now. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Senator YARBOROUGH. Are there any further statements by any member of the committee.

Senator PELL. I also would like to express my regret that no general emergency strike legislation has come up in the last year. And I believe we should have such a law on the books.

Senator YARBOROUGH. Any further statement from any other Senators?

STATEMENT OF HON. PAUL J. FANNIN, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF ARIZONA

Senator FANNIN. Mr. Chairman, I for one support the action of Congress averting, at least for the present, a national railroad strike, but I deplore the situation that gave rise to our action. It is a national disgrace a serious indictment of our labor laws-that twice in recent weeks Congress has had to interrupt its order of business to deal with a threatened strike in a public service industry. The experience again points up the need for permanent legislation to deal with emergency strikes, strikes which threaten irreparable damage to the national interest.

The present administration policy of having Congress settle each labor dispute as it arises is both unsatisfactory and unwise. It confuses the responsibility of the executive and legislative branches of Government, it erodes public confidence and morale, and it further weakens the normal process of collective bargaining. The time clearly has come when the American people must be protected, permanently, against strikes and walkouts that inconvenience the public, that burden the economy and that jeopardize national security.

It has been obvious for years that the emergency provisions of the Railway Labor Act and the Taft-Hartley Act are inadequate. And it is difficult to understand the reluctance of the President, and to only somewhat less a degree the Congress, to meet the problem forthrightly. There is no need for the President to run hat in hand to the Congress each time for a special labor law. Temporary solutions no longer are enough. If, as in the railroad dispute, a threatened strike is serious enough to warrant legislation, it is serious enough to require a permanent answer.

One answer, at least from the standpoint of public service industries, is legislation to permit, if necessary, mediation to finality. Some union officials argue that a settlement reached by an impartial third party would of necessity be detrimental to the best interests of their members. But the charge has no basis in fact. America is a nation of laws, not men. We-including union officials-accept the principle of disinterested third party determination in life and death decisions of criminal law. We do not hesitate to permit a jury of our peers to determine the dollar value of a man's arm, or leg, or life. We empower the National Labor Relations Board, which supposedly is impartial, to settle questions of great importance to labor and management. Why then should we hesitate to allow a group of reasonable men to determine, in a fair manner, the worth of a man's labor? Clearly, there is no logical reason.

It is of course regrettable that any type of enforced mediation is required, but the unique character of these industries demands that

A SUMMARY OF THE RAIL SITUATION AND A PROPOSED RESOLUTION FOR SETTLING THE DISPUTE

MAY 4, 1967.-Referred to the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce and ordered to be printed with accompanying papers

To the Congress of the United States:

INTRODUCTION

On Monday, at my request, the Congress acted to protect the country for 47 days against the intolerable injury of a nationwide railroad strike.

This additional period affords the parties to the current dispute another opportunity to settle it by agreement.

The time has come, however, to insure that by public action we guard the public interest against a continuing failure of private responsibility in this case.

We cannot leave ourselves vulnerable, as a people, to the dangers of:

a disruption in the flow of arms and material to the 500,000 valiant men in Southeast Asia who are making sacrifices greater than any of us are called upon to make;

-food shortages and health hazards in our cities;

-the paralysis of our economy;

-a rising tide of unemployment, as factory doors close for lack of raw material.

I reviewed this situation in detail in my Message to the Congress on April 10. Only a summary is necessary here.

The dispute is between virtually all of the major railroads and six shopcraft unions representing 137,000 railroad employees who inspect,

maintain and repair locomotives and other rolling stock. Without the continuing service of these workers, the Nation's railroads cannot operate.

The disagreement in this case is mainly about wages.

There have been eight months of collective bargaining and mediation in the current round of railroad contracts.

During these months, the process of collective bargaining has produced settlements between the railroads and 11 other unions, representing over 70 percent of the Nation's railroad workers.

THE SEARCH FOR SETTLEMENT

There have been diligent and extended efforts to achieve settlement of the shopcraft dispute. This record is important, and I urge you to consider it carefully:

-During the summer and fall of 1966, private collective bargaining between the parties proceeded, first at the local level and then at the national level, as the parties pursued their search for settlement.

-From October 1966 through early January 1967, the National Mediation Board worked with the parties. The issues were refined, the differences narrowed.

On January 6, 1967, the National Mediation Board advised the parties that its mediation efforts had been unsuccessful and offered arbitration. The railroads accepted but the unions declined. -On January 19, 1967, the National Mediation Board advised me that the services of an Emergency Board were necessary in this

case.

On January 28, 1967, under the Railway Labor Act, I appointed such a Board, chaired by David Ginsburg, a distinguished Washington attorney; John W. McConnell, President of the University of New Hampshire, and Frank J. Dugan, Professor of Law at Georgetown University.

-The Emergency Board conducted an exhaustive inquiry into the facts of the case. It compiled a record of over 1,000 pages. On March 10, 1967, it made a series of recommendations on the basis of that record.

-These recommendations provided a new centerpoint around which further negotiations could revolve. They were accepted by the railroads but not by the unions.

-The full cycle under the Railway Labor Act ran out. A strike was called by the unions for 12:01 a.m., Thursday, April 13th. -I proposed to the Congress on April 10 an extension of the period of statutory restraint under the Railway Labor Act for 20 additional days. The Congress promptly enacted that proposal.

THE FAHY PANEL

As soon as the Congress extended the no-strike period for 20 days, I asked three distinguished Americans with long experience in the field of labor management relations to serve on a Special Mediation Panel. They were: Charles Fahy, recently retired judge of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia as Chairman; Dr. John T. Dunlop, Professor of Economics at Harvard, and Dr. George W. Taylor, Professor of Industry at the University of Pennsylvania.

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For ten days the Special Panel worked patiently and with great skill, seeking to close the gap which separated the parties by encouraging a voluntary resolution of the dispute through collective bargaining.

Then, drawing upon the parties' own proposals, the work of the Emergency Board and their own experience of 10 days of intensive mediation, the Special Mediation Panel developed a proposal. In their judgment, this proposal represented the conclusions the parties themselves could very well have reached if the give-and-take of collective bargaining had resulted in agreement. As the Panel stated to the parties in its report to me:

We ask the parties to agree now to our suggested basis for settlement of this dispute. The matter is one of dollars and cents alone, and the real differences between the parties in our judgment are not great. We cannot say our proposals contain precisely the correct figures; but we can say our terms are reasonable and not unjust. There is no way in which perfect precision about a matter of this kind can be reached. To carry the dispute further, in light of the consequences of doing so, would not be justifiable, especially after so much consideration has been given to the matter.

Despite this plea, both parties declined to accept this basis for settlement.

On April 24, after hearing testimony from the Panel and the parties to this dispute, the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare called upon the parties "to seriously reconsider as the basis for settlement the recommendations of the Special Mediation Panel." This summons went unheeded.

Monday, the Congress acted again; at my request, by extending the no-strike period for an additional 47 days, until 12:01 a.m. on June 19,

1967.

TO BRIDGE THE GAP

This is a record of a free society going to the very limit to permit private responsibility to play its part.

It is a record of risking everything except national catastrophe on free collective bargaining.

It is also a record of collective bargaining almost doing its jobnarrowly failing--but coming close enough to offer clear guidance for the completion of the task.

The remaining dispute is principally about narrow differences regarding the amount of the general increase, about the amountbut not the principle of an "inequity adjustment" covering journeymen and mechanics, and about the length of the contract period.

What is called for now is a procedure to complete collective bargaining, not to replace it-to bridge the remaining gap this bargaining has not closed.

Nothing here warrants resort to a compulsory arbitration procedure which would disregard all that collective bargaining has accomplished and substitute the unfettered discretionary decision of others

The situation does not warrant seizure by the Government of the railroad properties. President Kennedy well defined the difficulties of such a course of action when confronted with a similar situation in July, 1963. He rejected seizure of the railroads "as creating complex legal and financial problems for the Government, and as merely postponing the day of reckoning *"' Seizure of these properties would also be offensive to the equities involved in the present situation.

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