Mr. WEST. Why, certainly. Mr. WOOD. With a representative of their own choosing? Mr. Wood. You believe in collective bargaining? Mr. WEST. Certainly. It is the law of the land. Mr. WOOD. No, it is not; oh, no. Mr. WEST. What is the National Labor Relations Act? Mr. KELLER. It comes pretty near being it right now. Mr. KELLER. Unless the court upsets it. Mr. WEST. I am informed by counsel that in the absence of the contingency mentioned by the chairman, it is the law of the land. What I might think of collective bargaining has nothing to do with the case. Mr. WOOD. There are 3 or 4 hundred employers that do not believe it is. Mr. WEST. That might be. Mr. WOOD. They are not complying with the law. They are getting around it by injunctions and court proceedings in every way; and we do not know yet whether it is a law or not, until the Supreme Court speaks on it. Mr. WEST. Of course, that is the refuge people have when they disagree with laws that are passed. It is the judicial remedy that is applied. But the fact remains that the collective bargaining as described in the National Labor Relations Act is the law of the land. If the law is being violated, there is a remedy for it. Now, about collective bargaining: I do not believe in having collective bargaining the only means of group expression or dealings between employer and employee. Mr. Wood. What other method do you believe in? Mr. WEST. I believe in individual bargaining where it is proper. Mr. WOOD. Individual? Mr. WEST. Individual bargaining. Mr. WOOD. Rugged individualism? Mr. WEST. Yes, sir. Mr. Wood. On the part of the employee? Mr. WEST. Yes, sir; where it is proper. Mr. WOOD. Where can you name any occasion that it is proper? I thought we had kind of evolved out of that stage. but it seemed that we had. I did not know, Mr. WEST. I think there has been a tendency to evolve out of it maybe a little too rapidly. Mr. WOOD. How many employees has your firm down there? Mr. WEST. Nine thousand. Mr. WOOD. It would be just fine for one man to come in there and deal with you. Mr. WEST. They do every day; sir. Mr. WOOD. They do not get very far with it, though. Mr. WEST. I would not go so far as to say that, Mr. Wood. Mr. Wood. Is your plant organized? Mr. WEST. No. And therein lies one of the difficulties with the collective bargaining. It is not a question of theory, it is a question of practice. There are thousands of communities in this country where harmony prevails between employer and employee, where there is collective bargaining. There are thousands of communities where the same harmony prevails where there is collective bargaining in the form of shop committees, or various other forms of employees' representation. Furthermore, there are thousands of communities where harmony prevails where there is individual bargaining. Mr. WOOD. Of course, you know this individual bargaining is as old as civilization. You know it does not require any law for a poor devil to go before an employer and ask him for a little relief in this work assignments. Men have that perfectly free and untrammeled right— they have had it for 6,000 years, to our knowledge-to go in to visit an employer and beg for some relief in work assignments. It is not necessary to enact any law for that at all. That has always been the rule. The employers have dealt with the employees individually, but the employers have worked with themselves collectively. Mr. WEST. That is true. Mr. WOOD. How much chance do you suppose one of those 9,000 employees would have to come up to you, an executive of the firm, and win his point where you did not think he was right? You would say, "Well, now, Bill, that is all right. You have your own opinion; but you go on back and go to work now. If you don't like this place, just walk on out." Mr. WEST. That is true; he would not have much chance. Mr. WOOD. That is your beautiful individual bargaining, the happy family. But you did not believe that in setting up your codes of fair competition under the N. R. A. The manufacturers of this country believed that it was perfectly all right for this Government to enact laws forcing a minority to abide by the decision of the majority, whatever the majority of the manufacturers decided upon. If you believe in individual bargaining, then, by the same token, you ought to believe in every other manufacturer in the United States, just going along and bargaining as he sees fit, cooperating with other manufacturers, or going out in the field and dealing in just any kind of cutthroat competition he desires. That is perfectly all right. It all depends upon whose ox is gored. Mr. WEST. Not quite. I did not state, Mr. Wood, that I believed in individual bargaining to the exclusion of all other kinds, or that I did not believe in collective bargaining. Mr. WOOD. You will have to admit this; you either have to have collective bargaining or individual bargaining. You cannot have the two systems in one plant. You either have to adopt one of the two policies or the other. If you are going to have collective bargaining, then there must be some moving force that will compel all the rest of the employees, whether they desire to live up to the bargain decided upon between the employees and the company or not, to do so. Mr. WEST. That is provided in the law, the National Labor Relations Act. Mr. WOOD. That is collective bargaining, but individual bargaining is an entirely different matter. You cannot have the two in any plant. You have to adopt either one or the other. Mr. WEST. I am not prepared to admit that, sir. Mr. WOOD. You cannot negotiate with your employees collectively and individually also. Mr. WEST. But that is not particularly pertinent, what I think about the matter at the moment, because, as I say, that is particularized in the law; the National Labor Relations Act puts the responsibility of bargaining on the majority of the workers. It states that. Mr. KELLER. Let us go ahead with this, if you will, Mr. West. Mr. WEST. I was endeavoring to throw some light on the question of work assignments before we were diverted onto collective bargaining. What I am anxious to contribute to the hearing on this question of work assignment is not a denial of the existence of the problem, that is, a denial of the fact that it constitutes a continuing problem in the industry as machines are developed, as new processes and new machinery come in; but the matter can be answered amicably between employers and employees by understanding and working out the situations as they exist in the plant, without being circumscribed in their decision by rules and regulations that may be set up by a Federal board-and that board, to function, would have to have those rules and regulations. The reason that I am taking your time on this report is that it is not a matter that is subject only to my opinion. The matter has been studied, studied dispassionately, and conclusions have been arrived at. I believe it is pertinent to incorporating in an act of Congress a method-if it becomes law-of setting up a commission, when the facts of the nature of the case are at our disposal without having to present bare opinions on the matter. I suppose the two questions of work assignments or the stretch-out and who is going to do the collective bargaining are perhaps the cause of more disputes than any other things in our industry or any other industry. I believe that the committee should find it helpful in arriving at its decision on the merits of this bill to consider the findings and conclusions of this committee which was appointed by the Government to make a factual study of the matter. After working conditions, with which the bill has to deal, are the questions of hours and wages of labor. Now, about the hours of labor: It specifies 35 as a maximum, 35 hours of labor. At the present time putting a maximum of 35 hours a week, 7 hours a day, in the cotton textile industry will not increase employment except insofar as it leads to an additional shift of operation. In our mill we run 40 hours a week. It is our standard work week. If we were Monday morning to go on a 35-hour week as a standard operation it would not increase employment, because the number of jobs in a mill that run the 24 hours or run the full 7 days a week are so few as to be inconsequential, and they are the only jobs that we would have to put additional employees on to comply with the maximum 35-hour week. If the imposition of a 35-hour week on the textile industry led to the industry putting on a third shift and running the rounds 105 hours per week per mill, of course, that would put on additional employees temporarily. But the facts that have been adduced here at the hearing as to the capacity of the market to take the product of the threeshift operation make it unnecessary for me to say that if mills went on to three shifts the only thing that would result would be the business would concentrate in certain mills and other mills would 56725-36- 29 shut down because of unemployment. So as an effective means of increasing employment the fixing of the hours at 35 will not accomplish any great increase in the number of people employed in the industry. As to the question of wages: Now, of course, the minimum wage of $15 a week is roughly 25 percent higher than the minimum that prevails today. If a minimum of $15 a week were placed, certainly it would follow that all the other employees in the mills would have their wages go up, maybe not the same percentage but probably the same number of dollars per week. That would raise costs naturally. The question of what a minimum basic wage should be is not for me to determine, whether it should be $15 a week or $10 a week or $12 a week. That in the long run will be determined by what the goods can be obtained for and wages that can be afforded to be paid. It seems to me that getting the bill down, inasmuch as the other law takes care of collective bargaining and child labor is not a problem, this question of getting down to the hours of labor and wages immediately leads us to what in my opinion is the heart of the bill, and that is the public policy of Federal regulation of industry by means of Federal licensing and boycotts employed in the bill. This means eventually the lodging of management in the hands of the Federal Government. Not only that, but it means the control of all working conditions in the Federal Government. That means a necessary rigidity. That has to be. That is, the administrative tolerance, the latitude, will have to be eliminated, if we are going to make laws strictly governing labor conditions and conditions of management. That also means that under laws of that kind it is quite possible that a different type of government or other administration might see fit to put restrictions on labor and management and make them more onerous rather than less onerous. That is, the rigidity of a system of licensing and a system of control of industry will in my opinion ultimately work just as much harm to the working man as it will to management. The textile industry along with every other industry, of course, has had certain weaknesses exposed by the terrific pressure under which it has been during the depression. We have not been able to sell our goods. We have not been able to maintain wages under the depression that existed in our industry from 1930 on. Those weaknesses have been exposed. In my opinion, the attention of Congress should be directed to the other end of the horn rather than trying to impose restrictive legislation on the production end. We should endeavor to widen the distribution so that our production may be increased, there may be more opportunity for employment, and the pressure on management will be relieved by a wider market for our merchandise. There are only 29,000,000 spindles in this country today as opposed to a maximum of some 39,000,000. There are about 24,000,000 of them active. Mr. WOOD. For cotton? Mr. WEST. Cotton, cotton spindles. With any kind of widened distribution of textiles, recapture of export markets and protection of the import markets would immediately relieve the industry from the pressure that it is now under and would enable us to expand our operation. I believe the policy underlying the bill of setting up a Federal power with the system of licenses and the secondary boycotts that are in here is a wrong principle; that the problem that faces the textile industry can best be answered by the other end of it, by the distribution of our merchandise. Mr. KELLER. Mr. West, I am going to ask the committee to delay examining you for a moment while I call the attention of the committee, if I may, to the fact that I have about 20 men from the coal fields in my State and the adjoining States here sitting in on this hearing. They are going to be compelled to go back to their own great convention very soon, and I would like to know if there is any objection to my talking to them for half a minute. Mr. RAMSPECK. No, go ahead. Mr. KELLER. Gentlemen, I want to present some of our coal miners. Will you stand up, gentlemen, please? These men are sitting in here this afternoon listening to the way we do things here in Washington. They are also here having their own convention, among themselves. I want you to see how they get together. I take pleasure especially in introducing them to you for this reason: They are the best organized industry in America or probably any other place in the world. I thought it would be interesting to the cotton producers, the cottonmill men, and the men who work in the cotton mills to know exactly what we do and how we do it in the coal fields of Illinois. I would like to say this for them, that I remember very well when there was no such thing as a miners' organization. That dates back quite a ways, when all the abuses that we hear here from the men who work in the cotton mills were rampant in the coal industry in my own State, in the midst of which I live. After many years through organization they have done away with most of those abuses. I wish they had the time to sit here and listen longer to this work, because it is a development through which they have gone after many years. I shall ask Mr. Welch to take the chair while I go with them and talk to them a little bit before they go back to their own convention. Will you take the chair, Mr. Welch. if you please? Gentlemen, I am delighted to have had you come here and sit in even for a short time you have and listen to the way we try to do things here in our own work for you. Mr. WELCH. I regret I was not here when you started to testify. May I ask what is the name of your company? Mr. WEST. Riverside & Dan River Cotton Mills. Mr. WELCH. Where is that located? Mr. WEST. Danville, Va. Mr. WELCH. How long have you been connected with them? Mr. WELCH. That will be 1930, then? Mr. WEST. Yes, sir. Mr. WELCH. How does production in your plant of that date compare with production at the present time? Mr. WEST. We have a higher production at the present time. Mr. WELCH. How many employees are you operating with now as compared to the number employed by you in 1930, that is, the year that you became identified with the mill? Mr. WEST. Our full complement in 1930 was approximately 4,500; we now employ approximately 8,500 people. |