DUPLICATION AND OVERLAPPING OF CONCILIATION AND MEDIATION SERVICES IN LABOR DISPUTES

I would like to have you state for the benefit of this record whether or not there is justification for the maintenance of conciliation and mediation services in other departments of the Government. May I say before you answer that that it will not satisfy me to say that they do not exist because I have definite experience in the field from my own observation which shows clearly that there is a duplication of effort regardless of how the paper set-up may appear to be here at the Washington level.

I want you, Madam Secretary, to know that my attitude in that regard is one which is prompted by a desire to see the Labor Department function in its own field to the fullest extent.

I propose before this bill passes this year to again examine that situation, and I should feel very much disturbed, as I was last year in trying to make an honest effort to do what I conceived was in the interest of the Labor Department, to find my efforts thwarted by the Labor Department itself.

I am

Secretary PERKINS. I am sorry, sir, if that was the case. quite clear in my mind that there is no persistent duplication. Mr. KEEFE. What do you mean by "persistent duplication"? Secretary PERKINS. What I mean is this: You may have duplication of effort at spots between the War Labor Board and the Conciliation Service, but it is not persistent; it does not continue.

Mr. KEEFE. Here is what I have in mind. Let us be realistic. about it. Here will be a situation of a plant which is engaged in war production of vitally needed war materials. They are working on an Army contract. They are perhaps working on a Navy contract. Now, the Navy Department has a set-up. I believe that they have people called expediters.

Secretary PERKINS. Labor-relations advisers, they call them.

Mr. KEEFE. Call them what you will. Their men are constantly in these plants. The War Production Board has a labor set-up, and through their field offices they are in intimate contact with what is going on in these plants. All right. Now, I have in mind a specific instance where disputes arise in that plant which threaten production. Who is on the job? Who steps into the picture? Why, first of all, it is the Navy Department, if that is the outfit that is involved, or the War Department, and here is the War Production Board set-up that is right up there in the field office, and they are on the job before the conciliation service here even hears about it. In one case a strike was imminent in one of those plants before Dr. Steelman was even advised. In one case I called his attention to the matter when he was before the committee of a strike in progress, and he had not even heard about it. When he got his conciliators out there on the job he settled that issue within 24 hours, but he was faced with a muddle of a situation that was generated by all these other outfits that had gotten into the picture before he could get to it himself. Do I make myself clear? That is the point I am seeking to elicit.

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Secretary PERKINS. I think that I made a mistake by pointing out the one place, War Labor Board, where we are sure that we do not have persistent duplication. With regard to these other activities which you have mentioned, it is quite true that there is continuing duplication and continuing confusion.

Mr. KEEFE. Now then, I would like to know this: After I had talked for 30 or 40 minutes on the floor last year on this very question, Mrs. Norton went on the floor and made practically a frank and complete denial of everything that I had said and said that there was no duplication; that she had just been in contact with the Secretary of Labor and had been advised that there was no duplication-nothing of the kind; everything was rosy.

Mr. THOMAS. Mr. Keefe, may I ask you a question for my own. personal information? The Army and the Navy under those circumstances that you have just detailed to the Secretary have representatives who are not production men. They are technical men. They are procurement men. They are not in the business of conciliation.

Mr. KEEFE. They have a labor set-up too, besides their expediters. Mr. THOMAS. I am not going to argue with you. Do you really know that?

Mr. KEEFE. Yes; I know that; certainly.

Mr. THOMAS. Does the Navy have that?

Mr. KEEFE. The Navy command and the service command in the Army each has a labor set-up of the kind I have described.

Mr. THOMAS. I will be glad to look into that beginning tomorrow morning.

Mr. KEEFE. Is that right, Secretary Perkins?

Secretary PERKINS. That is true.

Mr. KEEFE. The question that I want to get to is this

Secretary PERKINS. They do not mean any harm. They mean to be helpful.

Mr. KEEFE. They do not mean any harm; but, as the former head of your conciliation concern said he never made the statement publicly, but I talked to him for hours about the situation-he said that he was greatly disturbed.

Secretary PERKINS. It is annoying at times, but it can be worked out without being very serious.

Now, there is, of course, this labor section in the War Production Board which is sometimes very active and sometimes not very active. It is quite active in some places and not very active in other places. We have a treaty with them because of the fact there was duplication and there was at one time crossing of wires, and because they sometimes arrived at the place while the conciliator was at work and had it nearly settled and confused the issue.

Mr. THOMAS. What about the War Manpower Commission?

Secretary PERKINS. There is no labor-relations work in there at all. We made a treaty with the War Production Board's Labor Section. There is a signed document which I will find for you. Mr. Keenan and I both signed it. It has been circulated, and the agreement is specific, and the orders are specific, so that today if the conciliator wires in to the Conciliation Service that he is held up, everything is in a mess, because the War Production men are doing something that they ought not to, we at once, by telephonic communication with

Mr. Keenan, have the situation cleared up, and the thing is straightened out. They do not come in, in most instances, except by invitation.

Mr. KEEFE. The point that I am trying to get at is this: I went over that thing very carefully. I have a copy of the agreement. I was furnished that last year. I am familiar with it. Why is not that a function of the Labor Department and why is that not a function of the Department of Conciliation and Mediation, to which we have constantly been giving increased funds?

Secretary PERKINS. It is an appropriate function, sir. I cannot begin to think up the defenses which I am sure the War Production Board will present. Do they appear before your committee?

Mr. KEEFE. They do not.

Secretary PERKINS. They appear before some committee, and I am sure that they will give to the Members of Congress who have that bill in charge an appropriate set of the reasons for what they do. I cannot defend it, because I never thought that it was an essential service.

Mr. KEEFE. We, of course, do not appropriate in this subcommittee for either the War Production Board or the Army or the Navy, but one of the representatives of the Navy subcommittee is here.

Secretary PERKINS. Agriculture also has a labor group.

Mr. KEEFE. This particular subcommittee, I believe you will concede, has been very fair in providing funds for the Department of Conciliation and Mediation and the Department of Labor. Secretary PERKINS. Yes.

Mr. KEEFE. Now, either that agency needs those funds or it does not, and if the work can be done by the Navy and the Army and the War Production Board, I see no reason for continuing to increase the funds of the Department of Conciliation and Mediation and the Labor Department. I personally feel that that work is the proper function of the Department of Labor, and that is where it should be. Secretary PERKINS. I agree with you.

Mr. KEEFE. Then, have you anything to suggest as to how the work of the Labor Department can be made to function in its own field of activity and how we can eliminate these competing and frequently, we may say, overlapping activities and duplicating activities of the Army, the Navy, and the War Production Board? Secretary PERKINS. I know of no way to eliminate them, sir, except for the appropriate agencies of Congress to cut their appropriations for those purposes.

Mr. KEEFE. Now, as a Member of Congress and I speak very frankly and very plainly I have been trying to do that very thing, but I have been met with rebuff from your own Department.

Secretary PERKINS. I am very sorry if that is so, sir, because I have never known that.

Mr. KEEFE. Can you make the statement on the record now that so far as the Conciliation and Mediation Service of the Department of Labor is concerned, if it is properly staffed and furnished with sufficient funds, it can handle this whole subject as the law contemplates of conciliation and mediation in labor disputes without the interference of other agencies of the Government?

Secretary PERKINS. It can handle the whole matter of conciliation and mediation in labor disputes except insofar as those functions are

carried out by the National Labor Relations Board in enforcing a specific act of Congress and insofar as particular functions with regard to wage stabilization and the issuing of directives in wartime is performed by the War Labor Board. Those two agencies, I think, are essential under existing laws.

In regard to the other agencies where there are labor relations activities, including Navy, War, Maritime Commission, War Production Board, Agriculture-and there may be others as far as I knowwe have always felt, and have so represented, that while they might perform a function of use to the heads of their own departments in bringing certain things to their attention, so far as the direct conciliation or mediation of disputes is concerned, they were not essential, and a liaison officer between the head of the War Department and the Department of Labor, or between the Navy Department and the Department of Labor, or the War Production Board and the Department of Labor, would have served every essential purpose in keeping the head of the department informed of the progress of labor relations within the fields that they had direct responsibilities over.

I want to say this for the War and Navy Departments-that whereas at the beginning of the war effort, when there were so many of these young men acting as labor relations advisers or agents in the field, the situation was rather difficult at times, because they were far less experienced, for the most part

Mr. KEEFE. It was intolerable at times.

Secretary PERKINS. I would not like to use that word. We managed. It was difficult at times, but it has greatly improved for a variety of reasons. Of course, the people assigned to those jobs were asked by the heads of their departments, as well as by the Department of Labor, to kindly be tolerant to each other; that we had a war and we could not afford to have a private war between agencies over whose job it was; also because the heads of the Departments, the Secretaries of War, Navy, Maritime Commission, and Labor, made an agreement. Now, the agreement has not always been lived up to, to the letter, because there are so many people in the field, but there has been a gradual improvement in the technique of the men who were assigned to this work of labor relations in the Army, Navy, and the Maritime Commission.

Mr. KEEFE. In the estimate for the national defense item of appropriation for the Conciliation and Mediation Service you are asking for $1,796,200 as against $1,721,000 for 1945, or an increase of $65,200.

Now, in asking for that so-called national defense appropriation, for the Conciliation Service, do you conceive, if that appropriation estimate is approved, that the Conciliation Service as set up under this appropriation could do all the work in the field of mediation and conciliation that is necessary for the practical conduct of the war effort and the handling of labor disputes?

Secretary PERKINS. Yes; I think so. That provides for about 42 additional conciliators, and we believe they could do the job. I do not need to tell you, for I am sure you are aware of it, that the mere existence of several agencies and several persons operating in the same field is time-consuming, and that a conciliator spends a great deal of time in the course of a week merely conferring with other people in the same field trying to straighten out the tangle. His

time is used to better advantage if he does not have to deal with those people.

Mr. KEEFE. My recollection is that there is a specific provision in some law which prohibits various agencies of Government, including agencies even within the Labor Department itself, from setting up separate research and statistical departments.

Secretary PERKINS. I do not know of any.

Mr. KEEFE. I recall that we had that up at the time this situation developed with respect to the setting up of this Economic Research Division in the National Labor Relations Board; but, be that as it may, these other agencies of Government are constantly using the facilities of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, are they not?

Secretary PERKINS. Yes.

Mr. KEEFE. The War Department, the Navy Department, the War Production Board, and the O. P. A.

Secretary PERKINS. And the Maritime Commission.

Mr. KEEFE. There you have set up in the Department of Labor one great organization to do this specific work.

Secretary PERKINS. Yes.

Mr. KEEFE. And your relations in that field are quite amicable and you get along pretty well, do you not?

Secretary PERKINS. Excellently.

Mr. KEEFE. Why could not that same situation be developed in the field of labor relations in the matter of the settlement and the adjustment of labor disputes and mediation and conciliation?

Secretary PERKINS. It could be, sir.

Mr. KEEFE. That is all.

BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS

Secretary PERKINS. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is one of the large bureaus which has had very heavy wartime responsibilities. Among the things they have to do is to keep current the data on employment and wages used by the Office of Economic Stabilization, the War Labor Board, by Mr. Justice Byrnes, by all agencies of the Government generally. It is essential to the stabilization program. It could not be done without it.

COST-OF-LIVING INDEX

The maintenance of the cost-of-living index is another vital wartime. Enterprise, particularly vital for the protection against inflation. Those figures are used regularly by the Director of Economic StabiliTation and by the O. P. A., and they could not operate without them. They would have to set up elaborate research agencies if they did not Lave this ready-made information coming to them and correct. The B. L. S. itself can extend the figures, analyze them, break them down s much as is needed. This same agency has been asked, and has supplied constantly, special material to the Army, the Navy, the Maritime Commission, housing boards, the War Production Board, The Office of Price Administration, and others.

As you see, the Bureau of Labor Statistics invented a formula by hich they could predict months in advance the approximate number of man-days necessary to carry out every million dollars' worth of ontracts let in different types of industry. That has proved to be a