staff working under him, which might be in part composed of field representatives and permanent Washington persons. I am wondering whether you thought each authorization required some special handling by the legal division before it would be passed through the Chief Coordinator's office. PATTERSON. Probably not, if no legal question involved. If it is a clear-cat case, there would be no necessity of review by the legal division. I think the lawyer and Coordinator could sit down together and go over things. SMITH. I'll admit that two heads are better than one-the important part is that it is time-consuming. MYERS. It seems to me that that would be more time-saving than for one person to have to write a memorandum. SMITH. That isn't done normally. They just go through the secretary's office without consulting the legal division. At that stage it might be better to have consultation. MYERS. I think these matters are frequently referred to the lawyers assisting the secretary's office. If the Coordinator is a lawyer, he may be sufficient unto himself. If not, then have someone sitting right with him. He wouldn't feel capable of answering legal questions. FAHY. I think it is valuable to have a lawyer like Fred or Gates going over them anyway. They are not going over them as lawyers. MYERS. They can't drop it. FAHY. It isn't the same as if they were a part of the legal staff. AICHER. Dr. Leiserson, in connection with the question you raised, it is eovered at least in part of No. 38. LEISERSON. I may have overlooked it. Well, that would be in there. I didn't get the thought. AICHER. We thought it would be more worth while for the field men to see what was going on in one of the other offices and then codify practices. MADDEN. 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49 LEISERSON. While we are on the question of personnel, I would like to say this. The President has created a Personnel Council, with Davenport on a fulltime salary in charge of it, and he has doped up a staff on full time. In additon to that they have a committee consisting of personnel officers of various departments which make up this council. MADDEN. All the personnel officers? LEISERSON. Not all. They have made a survey-I don't know how completeof personnel policies, practices, and the organization of various departments. I don't know how many they have completed. They are now preparing a report attempting to recommend standardization of personnel procedures for all the government departments. If we go ahead on any of this, we ought to consnit with them to get anything they may have which may be suggestive. MADDEN. Certainly. LEISERSON. Davenport, who used to run the Institute of Public Affairs, has been put in charge, and Zimmerman, who was the personnel officer of the HOLC, is his executive asssistant. MADDEN. 50, 51, 52 SMITH. I think I have the idea in the last sentence, but I am not quite sure"As the Board continues its present policy time will heal these disparities in salaries, and relieve it of a criticism not unlike those so often made of employers who come before us as respondents." What is intended by that? PATTERSON. The Board does appear to have established the policy of bringing those in the extreme lower brackets up, and in consequence of that policy by the passage of sufficient time a lot of criticism that the field examiners make is going to be eliminated. MADDEN. We don't criticize employers because they pay some people a lot ans some people a little. It isn't any of our business, MYERS. Sometimes we say it shows discrimination. MADDEN, 53 WITT. That would imply that the Secretary's office has supervision also of the legal personnel. That isn't so. The legal division has its own personnel people. The Secretary's office has supervision only insofar as it relates to the budget. MADDEN. 54, 55, 56, 57, 58 LEISERSON. Nowhere in this picture is there anything about who is going to be the bargaining agent for the Board with the union. I think this Board spends too much time with individual matters. AICHER. We have given you a bargaining agent in the personnel officer. ELLIOTT. We have that in No. 9, page 22. MADDEN. 59 SMITH. I think you rather spread yourselves in your language there, and I am not sure how much thought is behind it. Admittedly there are differences in geographical areas. How far that really conditions the selection of examiners and that sort of thing on the basis set out here of a mild examiner in one region and an aggressive examiner in another doesn't strike me as sensible. LEISERSON. That is because you are a damn Yankee. You want to put Yankees down south. WITT. For example, Feidelson has a group composed entirely of southerners. They do a good job down there, but they might not work out well in another region. MYERS. Don't send McCann (?) up to Maine again, please. ELLIOTT. I think the geographical area has a lot to do with the chap's usefulness. SMITH. It is a very interesting field for discussion. MADDEN. God help us if we ever confessed to our union that we kicked a man out for that. WITT. We have taken those things into account from time to time. MYERS. There is another point in this paragraph which we had in mind. Within the office there needs to be a balance. Age, for instance, in an office is a thing which must be taken into consideration, I don't think any of us felt that we ought to emphasize those points given consideration so that it would be complete. SMITH. I think it is the expression more than the idea. My mind immediately travelled to the Smith Committee when I read "swearing go-getter" Field Examiners in certain territories. MADDEN. The record has been made-the Smith Committee will get it. 60, 61-Page 23, paragraph 11, "Full and adequate hearing should be available to any permanent employee before discharge." What would be your idea of that in reference to a field examiner in a remote region? MYERS. The Field Coordinator could give him the hearing-not necessarily before the Board. LEISERSON. I wonder if we want to commit ourselves to a hearing before we act. We have a union on our hands. The net result will be that this Board will not have the right to discharge but merely the right to bring charges against anyone. We ought to have a procedure that has worked out under a number of union agreements. If management is on the job, it sees to it that it makes a careful investigation before it acts. The fellow is informed what the action is to be. He should be given some warning before the Board acts. If anyone seeks a hearing afterwards, we may want to have a hearing, but first it ought to go through the regular channels of raising a grievance. If you solve this business by having a hearing, we would be spending half our time on that and people will feel you can't act unless you bring charges against a person. SMITH. I think that is right. I don't think we should be bound to give everybody a hearing as long as there is a provision for handling grievances. If he has not accumulated leave, however, he may be out before he gets here on the grievances. We would have to make sure he isn't dropped while the procedure is being followed. MYERS. If he wants to appeal the decision, he would have a chance to go to some one person. LEISERSON. Some more grievance procedure. MYERS. If a person comes to me and wants to know what to do, I am hardly the person to advise him and hardly the person to hear him after I have made the decision and recommendation. MADDEN. 62, 63 SMITH. I am just wondering about the second sentence, and I wasn't sure what kind of thing you meant and thought an illustration would be helpful. WITT. George Pratt gave us an illustration of that sort of thing the other day. That was what he was talking about. He complained that the list of complaints authorized given him isn't always complete, so the first time he knows anything about it is when the regional director asks him to designate a hearing date. MYERS. We asked him how that happened. Pratt will not give any Director a hearing date unless his records show that a hearing has been authorized in a particular case. Pratt, when he has been unable to get the file, has been obliged to get in touch with the regional office by phone to find out about it. LEISERSON. We had that mix up the other day in the Link Belt case. the Secretary's office and the litigation division acting independently. A case of An order came through consolidating the cases-neither the trial attorney nor the litigation section knew the order had come through, and that is how that happened. MADDEN. 64 SMITH. The whole first sentence raises a question that I haven't thought much about. We really were discussing that earlier. I am just not certain that in the interest of saving time by keeping these proposed settlements out of the secretary's office and having them come directly to the Board that you save by having them routed through the Coordinator. I think it is important that the fellow who has followed the case from the beginning be the one who ultimately brings it before the Board. MYERS. Some of these things won't be needed. WITT. You aren't necessarily recommending that the Coordinator recommend them, but you are just putting your finger on the problem. You can solve them in several ways. MADDEN. 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71— LEISERSON. What's the purpose of quoting Landis? SMITH. I responded very favorably to the whole report because of that. I was very much impressed with Mr. Landis' book. MADDEN. 71 EMERSON. You have the number of unassigned cases in the review division wrong. As of September 1, it was 150. MADDEN. What is it now, Tom? EMERSON. I don't know. I would say about 125 or 130. STERN. The number of complaints is also wrong. MADDEN. 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79 SMITH. 78 and 79-Those paragraphs seem to me only something that can be arrived at problematically. Where they come in and where it takes too much time to come in must be worked out. MADDEN. We are still going to decide our own cases. LEISERSON. There is always the danger of formalizing too much. There is no question, however, of the staff need of the people who are in charge of each division, so that they can act with some unison in giving out the Board's policy, and if they had something like the heads of each division getting together regularly for staff meetings they will know they are working as a team and not one running off ahead of the other. SMITH. It prevents mix-ups and means sharing of points of view, so that the person who finally comes to the Board to report on it has got something out of those contacts. MADDEN. Don't you think it is contrary to form to have findings and conclusions in same section? PATTERSON. We didn't contemplate having this reviewed by the circuit court of appeals. They MADDEN. I think we should give the committee a silent vote of thanks. have done a small job. I don't see how you did it without neglecting your social affairs and your sleep. LEISERSON. They may not have all the answers since this is a very difficult problem, but they have done an excellent job in analyzing all of the work of the Board here. They have given us an outline of the problems, so that we can set up a system here so that the work will flow in a regular order. It is an excellent job. All the answers aren't there, but there is enough there to work on. SMITH. It might be interesting to get a group of regional attorneys in and let them go over the legal section in the same fashion. I think their problems are difficult and I realize that the Directors are closer to the administrative end than the attorneys are, but outsiders can often come in and make valuable suggestions. LEISERSON. You might show them this report and they might have some idea both on this and their own. WITT. I think that kind of survey is essential, because point after point you run into problem of effective coordination between legal and administrative departments. PATTERSON. Difficulty is that you would have difficulty in getting four attorneys to agree. WITT. I thought you were going to say as smart as you people, and that is right. MADDEN. I am going to ask the staff people to leave, so the Board can meet with the regional directors alone for a few minutes. DEAR MR. THORRENS: Your letter of April 10, 1940, addressed to the members of the Special Committee to Investigate the National Labor Relations Board, and to its General Counsel has been received. The delay in answering it has been occasioned by the illness of the member of the Committee staff to whom it was referred. You state in your letter that your testimony before the Special Committee was cited in connection with "certain unwarranted statements" contained on page 51 of the Intermediate Report of the Committee. The statements you referred to are set out on page 50 of the Report, and the footnote citation is to Volume II, page 273 of the printed record. If you will examine the testimony given in column 3 of that page, you will see that the question was asked: “With reference to your work on cases as a Review Attorney, can you state for the Committee just what your duties consisted of?" In your answer thereto, you failed to state that you consider the exceptions to the trial examiner's report, the briefs of the parties, or the trial examiner's report. It is my belief that you were given an oportunity, in the question referred to above, to state for the benefit of the Committee your full procedure in preparing cases for presentation to the Board. Your failure to state at that time your full procedure, if in fact your procedure included consideration of the matters for which your testimony was cited, cannot be blamed upon the Committee or its Counsel. Since you had an opportunity at the time to state the matters which you now seek to have corrected, the Committee feels that it cannot allow you to amend your testimony after it has been given. If the Committee were to accord you this privilege, it would have to accord a similar privilege to every other witness seeking to change his testimony in the light of other developments. As this would impose an intolerable condition upon the Committee, it cannot grant your request. Very truly yours, HOWARD W. SMITH, Chairman. WASHINGTON, April 10, 1940. Hon. HOWARD W. SMITH, Chairman, Special Committee of the House of Repre- Washington, D. C. DEAR SIR: I wish to call your attention to certain unwarranted statements contained in the Intermediate Report of the Special Committee To Investigate The National Labor Relations Board filed with the Speaker of the House of Representatives under date of March 30, 1940. * In Part II, D, under the caption "Review Division cases to the Board" on page 51 of the printed Report, it is stated: Presentation of The approved method of preparing cases for the Board would seem to require the consideration of all the documents in the record, and no others. Several review attorneys reduced this labor by merely considering the pleadings and transcript of testimony and exhibits, failing to consider exceptions to the trial examiner's report or the briefs of the parties. And in a footnote at this point you refer to the testimony of the writer, among two others, given before the Committee in support of the text quoted above. In the next sentence of the body of the Report, it is stated: And certain of the witnesses failed to testify that they used the trial examiner's report. In support of the last statement, again the Report cites the testimony of the writer, among others, given at the Committee's hearings. By these statements the Report clearly intends to convey the impression that I testified before the Committee that in my work as a Review Attorney for the Board I did not make use of exceptions, briefs, or intermediate reports of trial examiners, or, that I could not truthfully testify that I had considered these documents in reviewing cases assigned to me, and consequently that I was not in a position to present a fair and thorough picture of the cases which I reported to the Board for its decision. If you will examine the testimony that I gave before the Committee, you will find that although I made no mention of these documents in the course of this aspect of the inquiry, I was not specifically interrogated as to whether I considered the exceptions, or the briefs, or the intermediate report of the trial examiner in making my preparation for presentation of cases to the Board. If I had been asked these questions directly, I would have unhesitatingly answered that I considered the exceptions, briefs, and trial examiner's report in every case assigned to me in connection with my preparation for presenting such cases to the Board for decision, and in no case did I fail to consider any of them; and I stand ready to so testify before the Committee. In all fairness, therefore, this letter should be made a part of the record made at the hearings of the Committee or the Committee should afford me an opportunity to supplement my former testimony which has been thus misstated in your Intermediate Report. I would appreciate an acknowledgement of this letter and an expression of the intentions of the Committee with respect to the action it decided to take. Very truly yours, ERT: VE EUGENE R. THORRENS. cc: Hon. Abe Murdock, of Utah; Hon. Arthur D. Healey, of Massachusetts; Hon. Harry W. Routzohn, of Ohio; Hon. Charles A. Halleck, of Indiana: Members, Special Committee To Investigate The National Labor Relations Board, House of Representatives, Washington, D. C. Edmund M. Toland. Esq., General Counsel, Room 535, Old House Office Building, Washington, D. C. This was sent to this Committee by mistake. Would you please see that it is included in the printed record of your hearings. MARY T. NORTON, M. C. Hon. MARY T. NORTON, Member of Congress. [Western Union] WEXFORD, PA., Apr. 17, 1940. Am surprised Committee report rates Doctor Sapos as Communist have known him for years and know his record has always been anticommunistic urge further study of his professional record ask for inclusion of this message in report. Sapos. Judge Louis McBride, THE LORILLARD EMPLOYEE'S ASSOCIATION 1836 Central Avenue MIDDLETOWN, OHIO, January 12, 1940. FELLOW MIDDLETOWN CITIZENS: This appeal is being made to you in the hope that the kind of trouble that happened here a little over a year ago can be prevented. This kind of trouble made Akron a GHOST CITY, cost the workers of Detroit untold millions in lost wages, and forced many plants to move away. The working men of these cities will never recover those lost wages and jobs Besides, their families were subjected to useless suffering, abuse and hardship all because CIO Communist organizers got into power and stirred up strikes and riots. You will remember the strike called by the CIO at our plant here in Middletown in 1938. Some eleven hundred employees lost more than a month's work |