But in the discussion of your panel meeting with the America Arbitration Association, do I gather that this would require legislatio or could it be done simply by contract?

Mr. MEANY. By contract.

We do have, for instance, we have one union that has followed th procedure since the year 1900, I think. But despite that, they have h an odd strike here and there. But the record is 99 to one, I guess.

Senator TAFT. I would like you to comment for a moment on ho this proposal would work in relation to wage and price controls a: attempting to stabilize inflationary pressures.

Has there been any consideration given to granting powers to a boa of arbitrators to freeze profit margins and product prices or impose excess profits tax?

Mr. MEANY. All I can tell you, Senator, is beginning in Februa 1966, and at least five occasions since February, 1966, the AFL-C executive council officially declared that they would accept contr provided they were evenhanded, equitable, and across the board. say that today.

Now, our squawk today, and it is a real loud squawk, is that wa are being very, very effectively controlled, and that prices are being controlled.

Now, officially, of course, we have what is known as price cont We have absolutely no machinery to control prices. The control prices was given to the IRS, and they are trying to control it over telephone with 3,000 people. We got a couple million establishm here, and we also said in our statement back in 1966 and repeated si that we felt if you are going to control prices, that you had to con everything that went into the price of the final object, not just storekeeper and his profit, not just the worker who put in the labo it, but everybody in between: interest rates, rents, and everything that was in there, and these things are not controlled

Senator TAFT. I understand that position.

Mr. MEANY. Frankly, the administration feels, and I think they wrong, they feel that they can control prices, one, by the fear they claim is in the hearts and minds of the American people of IRS everybody is afraid of the IRS. I am afraid of the IRS, my members are. I do not think business people are afraid of I have got an idea they have contempt for IRS, the way they been handing it over. I do not think you will be doing it by jawbo or scolding them.

In World War II, we had 200,000 people controlling people u Mr. Henderson. Mr. Harris was in that setup; so was Mr. Ni Mr. Nixon was an employee in the OPA during World War II had 200,000 people doing that.

Senator TAFT. I understand that.

Mr. MEANY. We just do not have enforcement machinery, a think the administration feels and hopes that they may be ab control prices by these other methods, and they are just not contro them. I do not think they are going to control them.

As far as we are concerned, we have said we will accept cor in the national interest. We will accept them provided everybod is in the game here.

Senator TAFT. I would like to get back to the problem we are dealing with here regardless of the overall wage-price freeze situation. I want to know if you think there is any way under your 6-month extension proposal which would prevent unfair advantage being taken of the public?

Mr. MEANY. We have no experience in the field where people can ask for wage increases and just get what they want. That does not just happen.

I would assume that the antitrust laws would still prevail and that certainly there could not be some collusive action which would be milking the public. Surely, I am not thinking of abritration of a man's rights that would also prevent competition.

Senator TAFT. It is difficult to apply antitrust action in this area. Mr. MEANY. It is if they have a monopoly. If they do not have a monopoly, it is not fatal, because competition would take care of them.

Senator TAFT. The Construction Industry Stabilization Commission, which you praised earlier, is granting on the average wage increases about double the wage price guidelines?

Mr. MEANY. Now, they started off where the averages were even higher, and the latest report I get is that they are coming very, very close to what is known as the guidelines. They are coming downSenator TAFT. Average figure of 11 percent.

Mr. MEANY. They are lower than that now. There is another report since then. The last I heard was they were getting around 61⁄2 and 7 percent.

Senator TAFT. That is very encouraging. It would seem to perhaps to indicate that wage-price guidelines are working.

Mr. MEANY. They are not working wage-price guidelines. This was an effort on the part of the President and the unions involved and the industry, they are all in it, the large contractors, the small contractors, they are in it; and they are sincerely trying to stop this balloon-type agreement which very strongly, I am willing to admit, got out of hand.

Now, of course, in that industry, you know, you are not dealing with the fellow who puts the money in.

The contractor is just one step removed from the worker. He does not put his money into a building operation. He has his shop. He has his estimators he has his bookkeepers and so on and so forth. He is sitting there waiting for work or he has people out looking for work, just the same as the people he employs.

So you have an entirely different industry there when you look at it, because the employer is not the fellow who invests money in the project. He is sort of the middle man.

Senator TAFT. I would like to return for just a moment to the Williams bill and the partial operation alternative.

Opposition has been expressed by you to the partial operation alternative contained in the Packwood bill. The Packwood partial operation provision states that operation may not be any more onerous to the parties than total shutdown would be.

Can you give certain situations, if we went to partial operation, whether partial operation might be more onerous to the union

Mr. MEANY. I would like Mr. Harris to answer that. It is really complicated legal question.

Mr. HARRIS. Well, I believe that is an absolute prerequisite in t administration bill to the partial strike.

Certainly in something like a railroad strike, the carriers take t position very strongly that partial operation would be very uned nomic and very expensive for them.

Senator TAFT. Selective strike could have the same effect.

Mr. HARRIS. Yes. There might be industrial operations where th would not be true, but any kind of transportation operation, it see to me that clearly the partial operation would be uneconomic fr the employer's standpoint.

Senator TAFT. How could it be more onerous to the union? Co it be more onerous to the union to have partial operation than to ha total shutdown?

Mr. HARRIS. It might raise a morale problem in the strike if so of the members of the local are working and some are not. But ap from that, I do not think that would be a major problem. Senator TAFT. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That is all I have.

Senator PACKWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I have one other question. Mr. Meany, in your statement, you said that:

Given the central role of the right to strike in our industrial system, only most overwhelming necessity could justify restrictions upon its exercise. plain that the mere existence of some adverse side effects on third persons is such an overwhelming necessity.

Do I understand you to mean, at least in theory, that whatever adverse economic side effects may be on third persons. it will n be great enough to give those persons paramount interest over right to strike?

Mr. MEANY. That is right. Unless you are ready to change your w society.

Senator PACKWOOD. No other questions.

Senator TAFT. Let me follow up on that.

Mr. Meany, would you say that is true as to hospital workers telephone workers. A telephone strike can prevent access to poli fire protection.

I was personally involved with such an experience in the Chesap Telephone strike in Ohio.

Mr. MEANY. You are talking about police and fire, and I think are talking about something a little different. I think you have p who have obligations as part of their job to protect.

Senator TAFT. What about telephone workers?

Mr. MEANY. I do not

Senator TAFT. Availability of police and fire.

Mr. MEANY. I do not think telephone workers should lose freedom as individuals, as people just because they are working industry that the public has great interest in.

Senator TAFT. I certainly agree with you. As individuals, that should not be taken away.

Mr. MEANY. But should they be allowed to exercise it collecti Senator TAFT. I cannot believe that they should be allowed to cise collectively a right that would interfere with the right c

public generally to obtain police and fire protection. That has happened. We paralized a whole community in southern Ohio.

Mr. MEANY. I put police and fire bureau aside.

Senator TAFT. But the availability of the police and firemen depends on the telephone. You can make the same argument as to the coal industry and powerplants and the necessity of having electric

power.

Mr. MEANY. If you are going to say to one worker

Senator TAFT. I do not say to one worker. I say to collective organizations such as yours.

Mr. MEANY. You say to one worker or group of workers collectively, as far as I am concerned, if a worker has a right to exercise, it can exercise it with the fellow next to him, or else he does not have the right. If you are saying to a group of workers, you are going to lose your freedom because of paramount interest of the public in what you do, in what way do you recompense him for that?

Senator TAFT. The individual should never lose freedom. I think we are all agreed. But I think that there is a problem here. We cannot put our heads in the sand and say that there is not any problem here; because there is a problem.

Mr. MEANY. I have not said there is no problem. I know there is a problem.

Senator TAFT. The same thing is true to some extent with other public employees. I do not know whether you may want to comment on the public employee problem as it relates to this legislation. We have not gotten into that, but it is about in the same category.

Mr. MEANY. That, of course, is another subject that will certainly take a long time to work on. I am no expert on that either, but I know that is a problem, and I again refer back to what happened in New York, when Governor Dewey said publicly that he had solved the problem, that that ended all problems connected with public employees as far as the State of New York was concerned; and, of course, it did not solve the problem.

You take even Government workers, take post office people, they have technically, legally, I guess, they do not have any right to strike in the Postal Service, but they do strike and they did strike. And when they did strike, the Government of the United States went and bargained with them and got the strike settled at the bargaining table. That is where they got it settled.

Senator TAFT. There is compulsory arbitration in this area.
Mr. MEANY. That was not compulsory at all.

Senator TAFT. There is now; is there not?

Mr. MEANY. Now what they have done, they have given these unions. all the rights of private unions, including grievance procedure, collective bargaining, and everything else. That was the result of that strike. Senator TAFT. But there is compulsory arbitration at the end of the line.

Mr. MEANY. It is not compulsory arbitration if the union agrees to it. Senator TAFT. I was asked to vote against it by organized labor on that basis.

Mr. MEANY. I do not recall that particular phase of it, but I know the unions agreed, I know the unions agreed to the legislation, because I was a party to it.

Senator TAFT. Thank you very much.

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Packwood?

Senator PACKWOOD. I believe that what you have said, Mr. Meany, and I have read your testimony, is that it was the first time the AFLCIO has ever agreed to compulsory arbitration, you said in support of the legislation.

Mr. MEANY. We agreed to it, and some of the unions did not like it, but I insisted they stick to their agreement. I was in that at the request of the President of the United States. He can tell you about it.

Senator PACKWOOD. I want to make sure I understand your answer to Senator Taft about police and fire.

You are willing to draw some kind of distinction? You are not going to have hospitals shut down and people dying on operating tables and buildings burning, but short of some emergency concerning physical health and safety, you are saying the right to strike is absolute?

Mr. MEANY. I do not know of any of these transportation unions that have not made that reservation every time they have a strike

Senator PACKWOOD. They have made offers to move vital materials for war or safety. But you are saying, short of that, the right to strike is paramount to whatever the economic effects may be on the rest of the community.

Mr. MEANY. That it is paramount to the interest of people in trying to save their homes from fire, no; I do not agree with that. I think you are point or you are trying to draw a parallel that just does not exist.

Senator PACKWOOD. Conceding that, conceding the right to save your home from fire and your house from theft, is it your position that short of those exceptions the right to strike is paramount over whatever the economic effects of the strike may be on the rest of the country?

Mr. MEANY. That is right; that is my position.

Senator PACKWOOD. No other questions.

The CHAIRMAN. We certainly appreciate your full consideration of this problem before us, Mr. Meany. I will say that in the administration bill, really the end of the line is this last offer selection; that is the only part that really has finality in it, as I understand it. The others are a continuation of 30 days and of some kind of partial operation, which you discount because it has its built-in escape.

I will say in these hearings, which have been open and available for people to come in, you are in a majority position. We have had a limited amount of testimony supporting this last offer selection as a method to deal with emergency strikes in transportation. We did have two industries, I believe the lumber industry

Mr. MEANY. I do not really understand the theory back of this last offer selection. In my experience, the fellow who got in the position of arbitrator between the last position of the union and the last position of the employer, he was seeking something in between.

Now, under this proposal, he cannot seek anything in between. He has either got to take one or the other. I do not see where that makes any sense at all.

The CHAIRMAN. We did have some testimony from the lumber people in support of final offer selection. The reason is that