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. We 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 issueexactly 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 a 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.

Mr. SNYDER. Do you mean that in the auxiliary they belong to one little union and then have to pay dues to the big union?

Mr. Ross. The difficulty arises from the closed shop, Mr. Snyder. When a Negro takes membership and is given a job, his membership only gives him status in an auxiliary union, which is supposed to have separate Negro officers and is deficient in rights and privileges when compared to the white lodge.

There are many privileges belonging to the white local which these auxiliaries do not have. For instance, the white business manager is a very powerful fellow. His assignments to jobs is a very telling one. Now, the Negro auxiliary had no direct business manager who could really represent the interests of its members, although they too were members of the Boilermakers' Union under this closed-shop contract. I am reminded that the auxiliary members had no chance to participate in the election of the business agent who would have this power over their work life.

Mr. LUDLOW. What are the facts as to whether there is discrimination against members of an auxiliary in the matter of employment? Mr. Ross. I am going to ask the deputy chairman, Mr. Johnson, who is a lawyer, which I am not, to answer that question, Mr. Ludlow. Mr. JOHNSON. The situation in the case on the west coast, so far as it involved the auxiliary union problem, results in the Negro getting less than the white person gets at the time he joins the union while at the same time he pays the same union fee.

Mr. LUDLOW. Does he get a job or does he not?

Mr. JOHNSON. He gets a job, but his tenure is subject to the control of persons over whom he has no control in the sense that a member of the white union has. That would be true whether Negroes get the same wages and the same working conditions at the moment. In addition there is the very important fact that the member of the white union-the regular white lodge-from the time he joins the union gets as part of his membership the right of universal transfer; that is to say, he has the right to transfer from one area to another, be accepted immediately, and be accorded the rights of union membership in the area to which he goes. That right is denied to the Negro. In the opinion of the committee, these facts represent a present discrimination, because the Negro must pay the same union fee as the white worker but he gets less solely because he is a Negro.

Mr. LUDLOW. Getting down to the matter of wages, aside from the discriminatory features, do they get the same wages?

Mr. JOHNSON. They get the same wages-precisely the same.

wages.

Mr. WOODRUM. And the same working conditions?

Mr. JOHNSON. And the same working conditions.

Mr. Ross. May I make one remark in answer to the gentleman's question? I want to point out that on our committee there are two A. F. L. members, Mr. Shishkin and Mr. Webster, and one C. I. O. member, Mr. John Brophy, who are full members of my committee, which, I think, would indicate the attitude of the unions.

Mr. CANNON. Mr. Taber.

DISCRIMINATION CASES DOCKETED CALENDAR YEAR 1944

Mr. TABER. Now, Mr. Ross, a year ago you gave us a table indicating a break-down of your activities as between different groups. Do you have such a table with you at this time?

Mr. Ross. The percentage of the groups involved in all cases, and the number of cases involved in different groups, appears on page 32, Mr. Taber.

Mr. TABER. Is that in the record?

Mr. Ross. I shall ask the chairman. Is page 32 in the record? Mr. CANNON. No; I inserted in the record pages 28 to 30. Do you think you would like to have page 32 in the record?

Mr. TABER. I think it should be inserted.

Mr. CANNON. Without objection, we will insert at this point the table on page 32 of the justifications.

(The table referred to is as follows:)

Mr. TABER. Now, your set-up indicates a separation of governmental cases and business cases, and the number of governmental cases is about a third?

Mr. TABER. On the other hand, there seem to be maybe 5, 6, or 7 percent that are union cases. Is that somewhere near right?

Mr. Ross. It is 6.3 percent.

Mr. TABER. Now, your race cases. How many of those race cases are in the business picture, or one group, and how many are in another? Can you give us any breakdown on that?

Mr. Ross. The available figures show nonwhite-they are classified as nonwhite-about 96 or 97 percent. Nonwhite virtually means Negro. The other might be Chinese or other races. That percentage, that characterization of race, means nonwhite in our data. Mr. TABER. 97 percent of those would be Negroes?

Mr. Ross. Yes.

Mr. TABER. Now, your creed group. What are they mostly? Mr. Ross. Mostly Jews, with a scattering of other groups, such as Seventh-Day Adventists and Jehovah's Witnesses.

Mr. TABER. National origin, what does that mean?

Mr. Ross. Mostly Mexican-Americans, with a scattering of Canadians, British, Polish, and Czech.

Mr. TABER. Alienage-what does that mean?

Mr. Ross. You will recall that the question of alienage was brought up at our first meeting, and we said we would not process alienage cases until further agreement might be made. Those cases are the old cases that have not been processed but which remain on our docket. That is for the calendar year. There were probably 38 cases pending at the time we met with you last year, and we decided not to process them. There have been eight docketed since, but not processed.

Mr. TABER. Have there been any more cases of German aliens? Mr. Ross. We have processed none. I believe that none have come in, either.

Mr. TABER. You have gone out of that business entirely?

Mr. Ross. We have suspended processing them, sir. If the committee has any new views on the subject we would welcome them. We have no recommendations to make on the subject as to action.

Mr. TABER. I supposed you had gone out of that business.

Mr. Ross. We have, sir. The 46 cases that I have referred to are on our docket. I do not know of any way of disposing of them, from our records. When new cases come in they are docketed, but no processing of them is done on them, under our agreement with your committee.

Mr. TABER. I do not know how others feel, but I would express the hope that at least as far as that group is concerned, there be no more processing. I can see where you would get into a lot of trouble.

POST-WAR EMPLOYMENT

You spoke about the situation in the Northwest and in California, where wages are presently so much higher than they are in other parts of the country, and that in those places it is natural that folks who have landed there would like to stay and draw those higher wages.