Now, compliance on the employer side was handed over to the President of the United States, and when the President of the United States decided that the only way he could get compliance from the recalcitrant employer-and this in view of a real national emergency, we were at war-the President did seize, he did seize certain plants; he seized plants that were vital to the war effort, and of course, I do not recall that we proposed seizure; but that was his method of carrying out what he felt was the Government's obligation, when the compliance was necessary from the employer's side.

Now, I do not think we have ever advocated seizure, but if you boil it all down, if it is decided by this Congress or by the executive branch of the Government that in order to serve the interests of society as a whole, you have to take the individual's freedom away from him— and, to me, there is nothing more drastic than to say to a man that you must work for this private employer because your Government feels that the paramount interests of the whole society is at stake—and that is what you mean when you are talking about a national emergency.

If you say that to the employee or worker, is there something less that you should say to the employer if he stands in the way?

Now, I would say that while I have never advocated seizure of the employer's property by Government, in order to take care of the paramount interests of all the people, I place that right alongside of the Government saying to John Doe: vou have got to work whether you like it or not, at wages which we will lay down to you for private profit of the employer.

That is what it adds up to.

Senator JAVITS. I take it. Mr. Meany, that if seizure were included in one of these bills, it would not meet the objections that labor finds in these various forms of final offer selection, compulsory arbitration? Mr. MEANY. It would not balance off our problem at all. We would still stick to our point that you cannot deny in this society-it is as simple as this you cannot take away one person's legal right to do something, that he has a legal right to do, because of the adverse consequences to some other person.

The minute you do that, then you have got a class society. If a man has not got a legal right to stop working when the conditions are not satisfactory, then he has no right, because you are not dealing with his property. You are not dealing with something he acquired. You are dealing with his person, because labor is himself; it is his hands: it is his heart; it is his mind.

If you take that right away from him, then there is no limit to what Government might do in order to take care of what has been called "the paramount interest of society as a whole."

Senator JAVITS. Lord Mansfield decided that well over 300 years ago, that you could not make a man work and

Mr. MEANY. I have been around a long time, but I was not around then.

Senator JAVITS. The thing I am trying to get from you, President Meany, as seizure was not mentioned at all, and it is a classic alternative here, what about it?

Suppose that in one of these bills, rather than including final offer selection or compulsory arbitration or mediation to finality, we in

cluded some measure of seizure; is that not to be laid side by side what you do accommodate, which is a selective strike, in view fact that as you say

Mr. MEANY. I do not equate that with compelling a person to against his will.

Senator JAVITS. You do not?

Mr. MEANY. No; because when you are seizing something, yo seizing something a man has. When you are compelling a guy to against his will, then you are seizing him. You are grabbing him and soul. It is different.

Senator JAVITS. We are thinking together.

If a man goes to work as a Government worker, that is an matter. You would accept that? In other words, seizure is an alt tive we should consider; that is all I am really asking.

Mr. MEANY. It was used during World War II.

Senator JAVITS. The other thing I would like to ask you is Many of us have been trying to think through some technique tripartite character to deal with problems in this field, you where you might work out some kind of a mechanism which w involve labor, management, and the public or the Government. But I must say that we have been rather dismayed by the Pay F experience.

Now, do we learn anything from the Pay Board experience i spect to tripartite action?

Mr. MEANY. The Pay Board experience was not tripartite. The Board experience was phony; just as simple as that.

We said time and again that we would accept control, that we w give up our personal liberty to some extent and accept controls equitable basis.

Now, I sat on the War Labor Board and we had labor, mai ment, and the public; and it was really the public, and we never that War Labor Board. We did not like a lot of the decisions.

We had a Little Steel Formula put a ceiling on us, just the sar this 52 percent. That was put on. We did not leave. We knew we equity. We knew we had a chance to contribute to the decisions were made. This was not the story of the Pay Board.

Now, let me give you a sample of where we stand on this.

We got off the Pay Board by the unanimous decision of the exec council of the AFL-CIO, a unanimous decision. Seven of the vote that unanimous decision were the heads of the big construction un the building trades; and they voted for us to get off.

They are still on a tripartite board, that has been functioning last March, the Construction Industry Stabilization Committee. was set up by the President of the United States last March. The on that Board with their employers and with an impartial chair and an impartial group. They make their decisions and they carry their decisions.

The employers and the employees agree to carry out the decisi While they are not satisfied with all the decisions, they are satis that they are making a contribution to those decisions. They are s fied that their arguments are being heard. So here we have the A CIO in effect sitting on one Board that is really tripartite

impartial and has said to the other Board, we will not sit; you have loaded the dice against us.

The so-called impartial people on that Board includes a Federal judge. He is not impartial. He is Government. When we say "impartial," we do not mean Government. It includes a Federal employee who was John Connally's hatchetman until October 21, 1971; and on October 22, he was a so-called impartial member of the Pay Board. It includes Neil Jacoby, who is supposed to be an economist of some kind, who was a top officer of the Occidental Petroleum Co., and he sits on the board of directors for Occidental Petroleum Co. and has since 1959, and who said, just before he was appointed to the Pay Board-and we knew this; it was printed in the Los Angeles Timesthat the solution to all our problems is to keep wages down.

Well, if wages were the only things that went into prices, that would make sense; sure. We know wages contribute to prices. But wages are only part of the things that go into prices. Interest rates go in prices; profits go in prices; management's salaries, investors' return, the middleman, the broker, that all goes into prices.

The only thing that he wanted to control was wages. So he is sitting there as an impartial man.

Then we get Bill Capels.

Bill Capels spent his entire life in labor-management relations, on the management side, as vice president of New England Steel Co., and is vice president of the National Association of Manufacturers. After he retired he went into the academic world 2 years ago. So he is not impartial. He cannot bring an impartial thought to these things. Despite all of this, we sat on that Board; but we sat on the Board until we got to the point where it was degrading for us to sit there any longer.

Now, you cannot say we will not buy tripartiteism. You cannot say we will not buy a Board where there is a neutral third party, because we are on the Construction Industry Stabilization Committee, and we are still there; and we are going to say there, and we have said this publicly, and the administration knows it. We are going to stay there until the Pay Board interferes with us.

I just happen to have this (indicating). On March 23-we walked off on March 22-this is the building trades unions, all of the unionsThe labor members of the Construction Industry Stabilization Committee will continue to serve on the Committee only so long as the Construction Industry Stabilization Committee continues to maintain effectively its separate and autonomous position, free from supervision or control of the Pay Board.

At least we are consistent. We said we would serve where there was equity.

You know how the longshore decision comes in; the longshore decision would not have been nearly as bad if we had had some voice on it. They laid it on the table after sending it through the legal branch of the Pay Board, and it was in its final legal language and they said, boy, here it is. We might as well remind you, we got 10 votes.

That is not tripartite. It is not autonomous, and we could not buy it. Now, I went on the War Labor Board. I went on the National Defense Mediation Board in 1940 and went on the War Labor Board when President Roosevelt set it up in 1941, and I stayed there until

the war was over. We had a lot of decisions we did not like, but we took them, because we knew that we were getting a fair deal.

Senator JAVITS. Thank you very much, Mr. Meany. I think that is very helpful. We may have to invoke some similar type organization, perhaps even in this field, and it has been extremely helpful to have your point of view.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Javits.

One question at this point, Mr. Meany.

The press reports that you, as I recall it, indicated that you are exploring on the labor side the possibility of entering into agreements with management to bring insoluble disputes to binding arbitration— to make that part of your contracts.

Mr. MEANY. I personally have maintained the position-well, I do not believe in strikes. Do not misunderstand me. I believe in having the right to strike when I come to the table. It is important. I do not believe in strikes. I do not think they mean what they meant years ago.

Several years ago I brought this matter up to the executive council of the AFL-CIO, and we set up a committee, and that committee is meeting with the American Arbitration Association for the purpose of finding out if there is not some other method by which we can voluntarily agree which we can voluntarily agree that would pretty much eliminate the idea of strikes.

Now, what was the method? Well, let us say you sign a 3-year agreement. You have in that agreement, in practically all agreements, you have arbitration as to the meaning of the agreement. You know, we used to have strikes years ago. After the agreement was signed, there would be disagreement between the employer and the union as to what they signed, as to what it meant, you know, what the language actually meant.

We pretty much eliminated that because we now have clauses in the agreement that go to an impartial chairman; in other words, that just cannot have a dispute as to the meaning of what you signed.

Now, what would be wrong with extending that principle when you reach the point where your agreement is about to terminate, and you are going to consummate a new one; what would be wrong if you cannot reach a new agreement in saying, all right, we will extend this agreement for 6 months, and in the meantime, we will turn over to an impartial arbitrator or arbitrating committee the right to recommend another 6 months, and agree in advance? This of course is just my thought, thinking out loud in this, but I believe that there should be a way where the disputes that cause strikes are settled by impartial arbitrators on a voluntary basis.

Now, I do not know whether industry will accept this or not. I know some of them will. I know some of them believe, with me, that we should be intelligent enough in this day and age to solve these problems without putting people on the street.

You see, at one time, Senator, when we were striking, people that got 75 cents an hour or 60 cents an hour, and we had to keep them alive, we only had to pick up 60 cents; in other words, 60 cents an hour to keep a guy alive. Now when people go on strike, you have got kids going to school and some going to college and people paying off mortgages on houses.

We did not have strikers years ago that had mortgages and things like that. So it has increased our problem, and I think the penalty on industry today for a strike is much greater than it used to be. I am all for setting up some system by which we can voluntarily eliminate strikes.

The CHAIRMAN. It seems to me, and I wondered if it has happened in your experience, that sometimes in the collective-bargaining process there is not an earnest effort to bargain. One side or the other approaches the bargaining period with an adamant position and just offers no opportunity for the other side to persuade them away from that.

Mr. MEANY. All right.

But that, of course, Senator, comes from the circumstances.

You take this bill you have here about the final offer business, where the President of the United States, through his Secretary of Labor, is going to set up an arbitration committee.

Now, if I were on industry's side, I would not want to bargain on something like that. My god, I would just be delighted to have Jim Hodgson appoint some arbitrators to settle my problem. That would suit me fine.

But I am just wondering what would be the attitude of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce toward this legislation if there was a President John Kennedy in the White House and an Arthur Goldberg as Secretary of Labor? I wonder if they would be as willing to buy this socalled decision by Government as they are now under this bill.

And you know, if you write laws of this kind, it does not take long for the pendulum to swing; and they may look good to you now, but they will not look good later.

I tell you, I had one experience here about 4 years ago, 4 or 5 years ago; I testified over here on railroad legislation. I ran into a situation where the railroad management did not want to settle anything, because they felt Congress was going to bail them out, and Congress did bail them out to some extent.

However, Congress bailed them out in a way where Congress set up an arbitration committee, and if I recall it rightly, they were not so pleased when the arbitration decision came down, but they had not figured on that. They had not figured that Congress would put one of its own at the head of the arbitration committee.

Senator Morse was head of that.

But I do recall this, that they did not want to settle because they felt Congress would not allow these people to strike. If you go to the bargaining table, and you do not have the right to quit work, well, then, you are out with a fork when it is raining soup. This is just complete

nonsense.

The CHAIRMAN. You say the final offer selection procedure would not promote collective bargaining?

Mr. MEANY. God, no. If Arthur Goldberg was Secretary of Labor, I would be for it. Jim Hodgson, personally-Jim Hodgson is a nice guy, but, hell, he is industry; he is Lockheed; that is where his whole life is. He thinks that way. He cannot help it, just as I cannot help to think the way I do.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you.
Senator Schweiker.