be, or how he shall manage his business, so long as he does not violate the union's contract with him or ignore his obligations under the Labor Act. The bill provides, in sweeping terms, for bargaining concerning wages, hours, work requirements or "work loads," discharge, suspension, lay-off, recall; seniority, and discipline.

It likewise provides for bargaining on promotions, demotions, transfers and assignments of people within the bargaining unit to other positions in the same unit and of people from outside the unit to positions in the unit. A union representing people in one unit may not dictate what position shall be held by an employee who leaves the unit and goes to another unit, which another union may represent.

The bill further provides for bargaining on safety, sanitation, and protecting the health of employees in the plant, vacations and leaves of absence, and for bargaining about procedures for settling disputes on all these subjects.

It does not require bargaining on any matter during the term of a collective-bargaining agreement. except as the express terms of the agreement permit. This contemplates that the parties will bargain on grievances in accordance with the agreed grievance procedure, and permits clauses such as those on "wage reopening."

(12) "Supervisor": In the discussion of the definition of the term "employee," the reasons for excluding from that definition persons who act for employers in the employer's dealings with labor have been fully set forth. The substantive language of section 2 (12) of the present bill is consistent with that of the Case bill, which passed Congress last year. The only important change concerns confidential employees. These are people who receive from their employers information that not only is confidential but also that is not available to the public, or to competitors, or to employees generally. Most of the people who would qualify as "confidential" employees are executives and are excluded from the act in any event.

The Board. itself, normally excludes from bargaining units confidential clerks and secretaries to such people as these. But protecting confidential financial information from competitors and speculators, protecting secret processes and experiments from competitors, and protecting other vital secrets ought not to rest in the administrative discretion of the Board or on the responsibility of whatever union happens to represent the employees. The bill therefore excludes from the definition of employees persons holding positions of trust and confidence whose duties give them secret information. The bill does not forbid these people to organize. It merely leaves their organizing and bargaining activities outside the provisions of the act.

(13) "Sympathy strike." (14) "Illegal boycott," and (15) "Jurisdictional strike." The activities that these three terms describe have in common the characteristic that they do not arise out of any dispute between an employer and employees who engage in the activities, or, in most cases, between the employer and any of his employees. More often than not the employers are powerless to comply with demands giving rise to the activities, and many times they and their employees as well are the helpless victims of quarrels that do not concern them at all. These activities the bill makes unlawful concerted activities under section 12 of the act, and it removes the immunities that the present laws confer upon persons who engage in them.

Sympathy strikes are those a labor union calls against one employer when it has a dispute with another employer, or when the strikers are not concerned in a dispute between their employer and other employees, or when the strike is against a policy of national or local government, which the employer cannot change.

Illegal boycotts take many forms. Often they are to compel employers to force their employees into unions or to give a union control over them as their bargaining agent in violation of the Labor Act itself. Sometimes they are direct restraints of trade, designed to compel people against whom they are engaged in to place their business with some other than those they are dealing with at the time, or vice versa. The effects of boycotts upon business, and particularly upon small commercial enterprises in metropolitan centers, such as New York, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh, have often been

disastrous.

Jurisdictional strikes usually involve quarrels, not between employers and employees, but between rival unions, which use the strike weapon against each other, and they partake of the nature of some forms of illegal boycotts.

All these activities, which the bill carefully defines, even those most in sympathy with the labor movement deplore and condemn. Union leaders themselves acknowledge the evils of most of these practices. They have known of the evils for many years, but they have failed to provide effective remedies. The Nation must, in selfdefense, provide its own remedies. This the bill does.

(16) "Monopolistic strike": This is another unlawful activity under section 12. This forbids a strike or other concerted activity interfering with an employer's operations that results from any conspiracy, collusion, or concerted plan of acting between employees of competing employers, unless the employees of the competing employers have a common bargaining agent under section 9 (f) (1). Section 9 permits employees of competing employers to have a common bargaining agent only if (1) the bargaining agent represents less than 100 employees of each employer and (2) the plants of the competing employers are less than 50 miles apart.

What this language, and that of section 9 (f) (1), is intended to do is to put a stop to strikes that paralyze the economy of our country and imperil the health and safety of our people. We have laws to forbid competing employers to conspire together to close their plants, fix their prices, and otherwise to restrain trade. There is no justification for permitting employees of competing employers to enter into conspiracies that have the same effect. The language of the bill does not forbid employees of competing employers to strike at the same time. It forbids their doing so collusively.

The exceptions relating to 100 employees and 50-mile arcas are designed to enable very small employers to bargain together in a single locality, and to permit one union to represent the employees of such employers, and, in the case of craft unions, to permit them to represent their members in the plants of a number of competing employers in a single locality, even though the total number of employees of each employer exceeds 100. We believe that employers with 100 or more employees can handle their own labor relations, and that unions with 100 or more members in a plant can form a separate local or other suborganization for them.

For further discussion of this subject, see comments on section 9 (f) (1).

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(17) "Featherbedding": In this bill, as in the Lea bill, which passed both Houses last year by large majorities and now is law, an attempt is made to deal with a problem that is becoming a more and more serious menace to the productivity of our country and to the manufacture of goods at a cost within the reach of the millions of our citizens.

The present bill is substantially less drastic than the Lea bill. The latter aimed to eliminate the practices of the American Federation of Musicians, which, under the leadership of J. Caesar Petrillo, requires employers to hire people who do no work, to pay for people the employers do not hire, and to hire more people than the employers have work for. The precise language of the Lea bill is not applicable to industry generally, and so it has been modified accordingly. The bill applies to the practices described in section 2 (17) the name "featherbedding." and, by section 12, makes strikes and other efforts to force employers to engage in featherbedding practices unlawful concerted activities.

There can be no possible doubts concerning the practices described in paragraphs (B), (C), (D), and (E) of this definition. In the case of those described in paragraph (A), in every industry standards exist and are applied daily to determine how many employees are "reasonably required" to perform given tasks. Indeed, many collective-bargaining contracts contain language not unlike that appearing in paragraph (A) of the definition. When any question arises as to whether or not a union demands more people than are "reasonably required" to do certain work, industrial engineers and time-study people can, and constantly do, resolve the question by reliable, scientific methods.

Unlike the Lea bill, the bill herewith reported does not by its terms subject persons who engage in featherbedding practices to criminal penalties. It makes strikes and other attempts to impose such practices unlawful, as set forth in section 12.

Section 3.-Section 102 of the bill abolishes the present Board. Section 3 of the National Labor Relations Act, as the bill amends it, creates a Labor-Management Relations Board of three members. Its sole duty will be to decide cases. Sections 9 and 10 establish new guides for the Board to follow, in performing this duty. Work that the present Board's staff does will, for the most part, be done by the new Administrator of the Labor Act, an office that section 4 creates. The bill thus achieves a separation of the Board's functions, the need for which has long been obvious. Acting as prosecutor, judge, and jury, and to all intents and purposes as its own Supreme Court insofar as its findings of fact are concerned, the Board seems to have found the temptation to be arrogant, arbitrary, and unfair irresistible.

The present Review Division of the Board is abolished. The Board may employ trial examiners, as it does now, but the members of the Board will be expected to do their own deciding, not permitting trial examiners to attend executive sessions of the Board to defend their reports, as the Board has done in the past.

A significant change requires the President to select members of the Board with reference to their fitness to perform the functions the act imposes upon them "in a fair and impartial manner."

The bill fixes the salaries of members of the new Board at $12,000 a year, being $2,000 more than members of the present Board receive. The members of the Board, not the President, are to designate their chairman.

Section 4.-This section creates the office of Administrator of the National Labor Relations Act and defines his duties, which are more fully set forth in sections 9 (c); (d). (f), and (g) and 10 (b), (e), and (f).

Briefly, the Administrator takes over the investigating and prosecuting functions of the present Board, and will conduct three kinds of elections: (1) those in which employees shall choose or reject bargaining representatives under section 9 (d); (2) those in which employees vote to strike or not to strike, pursuant to the procedure described in section 2 (11) (B), and (3) those in which employees vote for or against authorizing their bargaining representative to enter into agreements with their employers requiring them to become or remain members of the union. subject to the limitations upon such agreements set forth in section 8 (d) (4) and in section 9 (g) which are discussed later in this report. The Administrator is to be an independent agency of the Government and is to act free of influence and control by the Board and its staff.

It is anticipated that, in representation cases, where unions seek bargaining rights under section 9, the Administrator will proceed largely as the Board's field staff has done in the past, both in condueting preliminary investigations of petitions and in conducting elections. In these proceedings, the Administrator can obtain subpenas from the Board and swear and examine witnesses, as the Board has done in the past, but it is contemplated that occasions. when he will need to exercise this power will be rare.

In unfair-labor-practice cases, the Administrator will determine whether or not an alleged unfair labor practice is, indeed, such a practice under the act, and if so, he will proceed as members of the Board's field staff have proceeded in the past.

One important innovation in the bill requires that not only the Administrator but also the head of each of his regional offices and the chief legal officer in each such office be appointed by the President, by and with the consent of the Senate, and that they be selected with regard to their ability to act for employees, employers, and labor organizations fairly and impartially. The committee's investigations, as well as those of preceding Congresses, have shown bias and prejudice to be rampant in the Board's staff, and among some members of the Board itself. It is to be hoped that the Administrator will not employ such people.

Section 5.-This provides, substantially in the language of the present act, for the location of offices of the Administrator and of the Board.

Section 6.-This provides for the issuance of regulations by the Administrator and by the Board, in the manner that the Administrative Procedure Act prescribes.

Section 7.-This, in the language of section 7 of the present act, guarantees, in paragraph (a), the rights of employees that the present act guarantees, i. e., their right to join, form, and assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in concerted activities, e. g., to strike,

for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection.

The committee has revised this section by writing into it in express terms that employees who strike or engage in similar activities in violation of collective-bargaining agreements, or who engage in unfair labor practices under section 8 or in concerted activities that are unlawful under section 12, forfeit the protection of the Labor Act. This is consistent with rulings of the courts. Although the Board professes to follow similar rulings, and sometimes reluctantly does so, it often reinstates with back pay employees whose concerted activities are unlawful.

A committee amendment assures that when the law states that employees are to have the rights guaranteed in section 7, the Board will be prevented from compelling employees to exercise such rights against their will, as it has consistently done in the past. In other words, when Congress grants to employees the right to engage in specified activities, it also means to grant them the right to refrain from engaging therein if they do not wish to do so.

In the Southern Steamship case (316 U. S. 31, 1942, involving mutineers) and in the Fansteel case (306 U. S. 240, 1939, involving sit-down strikers who destroyed property), the Supreme Court held the employers could discharge the strikers. In the Draper Corporation case (145 Fed. (2d) 199, C. C. A. 4, 1944), the Court held that the employer could discharge "wildcat" strikers. In the American News Company case (55 N. L. R. B. 1302, 1944) the Board itself held that an employer could discharge employees who struck to compel him to break the wage stabilization laws. Although it took the Board 11 years to do so, finally, in its second decision in the Thompson Products case (decided February 21, 1947), it reversed itself and held that an employer may discharge employees who strike to compel the employer to violate the Labor Act and orders of the Board under the act. In the Scullin Steel case and in the Dyson case (decided February 7, 1947) the Board held that employers may discharge employees who strike in violation of collective-bargaining agreements. In the Times Publishing Company case (decided February 17, 1947), the Board indicated that unions, as well as employers, are under a duty to bargain collectively.

These, obviously, are correct decisions. But they are only decisions. Some of them are very recent, inspired, it seems, by the public demand for fair labor legislation. In cases involving violence in strikes, the Board has seemed reluctant to follow the decisions of the courts. It is inclined to reinstate, with back pay, strikers whom employers discharge for what the Board seems to regard as minor crimes, such as interfering with the United States mail, obstructing railroad rights-of-way, discharging firearms, rioting, carrying concealed weapons, malicious destruction of property, and assault and battery. (See, for example, Matter of Kentucky Firebrick Co., 3 N. L. R. B. 455 (1937); Matter of Republic Steel Corporation, 9 N. L. R. B. 219 (1938); Matter of Berkshire Knitting Mills, 46 N. L. R. B. 955 (1943).)

The committee has written into the act the rules that the courts and the Board itself have laid down. Under section 7 (a), employees are protected in exercising their right to engage in concerted activities for collective-bargaining purposes and for other mutual aid or pro