Statement by the President Upon Receipt From the President's Advisory Committee on Labor-Management Policy of Its Report on Free and Responsible Collective Bargaining and Industrial Peace I have today received the Report of the Labor-Management Advisory Committee on Free and Responsible Collective Bargaining and Industrial Peace. As was the Committee's first Report on Automation, this report is a highly meaningful and significant document. The fact that public, labor, and management representatives are in unanimous agreement that collective bargaining is an essential element of economic democracy is a mark of our progress as a Nation when contrasted with the disagreements on this subject in the not too distant past. The fact that all agree on the necessity that collective bargaining be responsible and responsive to the public, or common, interest is a symbol of the maturity of the parties to the collective-bargaining relationship. This report confirms the essential validity and the strength of free collective bargaining. The Committee unanimously asserts the good in collective bargaining and seeks then for ways to make it better. It finds the key in the interrelationship of freedom and responsibility. To be free, collective bargaining must be responsible; so long as collective bargaining is responsible, it will always free. I see in this report heartening evidence of the increased unity of purpose in all parts of the American economy. Where collective bargaining has been a way of settling disputes and differit is becoming even more now a way of achieving new economic strength, achieving new ences, common purpose. I congratulate the management, labor, and public members of the Committee, who have produced a document of lasting contributions to our country's welfare. I appreciate very much all of the Committee's recommendations, including those designed to improve the procedures regarding disputes affecting the national health or safety. The recommendations will receive serious consideration in the formulation of the Administration's legislative proposals to the Congress. The Committee has also today submitted to me its detailed recommendations for the White House Conference on Economic Issues, to be held on May 21 and 22. I approve of these plans and direct that the Conference proceed on the basis of the recommendations submitted. This Conference presents an invaluable opportunity for the two-way exchange of information and ideas among the Nation's public and private decision makers. I want to make this meeting-originally suggested by the Committee-the opportunity for the fullest possible exploration with businessmen, labor leaders, and public representatives of the economic problems and the prospects we as a people face today. The heart of the Conference will be the "roundtable discussion meetings which are being arranged. The agenda of the Conference will be distributed shortly by the White House Press Office. service to the country. John F. Kennedy. May 1, 1962. VIII-h. (Source: Robert S. Rankin and Winifred R. Dallmayr. In Freedom and Emergency Powers in the Cold War. New York, N.Y., Appleton-Century-Crofts, Division of Meredith Publishing Co., 1964, pp. 96–164) 3 Labor Disputes IT IS DIFFICULT to conceive of any other area of executive activity which today is more deeply immersed in popular excitement and emotional charges and countercharges than the field of industrial relations. The memorable collision between President Kennedy and the steel industry in April, 1962, over the issue of price increases produced nationwide concern over the growing power of government in the nation's economy and led to heated charges of "tyranny," "despotism" and "police state" methods. In a statement of April 19, 1962, the Republican congressional leadership accused President Kennedy of having resorted to "a display of naked political power never seen before in this nation," and identified the fundamental issue before the country in these terms: "Should a president of the United States use the enormous powers of the federal government to blackjack any segment of our free society into line with his personal judgment without regard to law?" According to the Republican statement, the president in his reaction to the price increase directed or supported a series of governmental actions that imperiled basic American rights, went far beyond the law and were more characteristic of a police state than a free government.1 This is clearly not the place to enter into partisan controversy or to attach exaggerated significance to political accusations in a congressional election year. Nor does the steel conflict in itself present any significant constitutional or legal problems. As a 1 Milwaukee Journal (April 20, 1962), p. 3, col. 2. On the entire steel crisis see Grant McConnell, Steel and the Presidencu, 1962 (New York, 1963). political maneuver the action of the president was certainly not based on any specific statutory provision; but at the same time the action was not prohibited by a clear constitutional or congressional limitation. The Republican charge that the president acted "without regard to law" by disregarding certain principles of competitive bidding seemed to overlook the fact that there is no vested right in a government contract and that, by boosting the steel prices, the companies had boosted themselves out of the lowest price bracket within which government contracts tend to be negotiated. In this manner the government-by announcing to channel its steel purchases through firms which maintained the lower price line-simply relied on the force of competitive free enterprise which the companies claimed to defend against government intervention. Nevertheless, one does not have to endorse the charges of the opposition party in order to agree that the president's action in the steel conflict was merely the catalyst in a mounting controversy, a catalyst which served to bring into focus a question of considerable magnitude: the proper role of the executive in industrial relations and the proper goal of national policy in regard to labor and management. The problem of executive power in the economic field is not of recent origin; it is at least as old as the debates on tariff policy during the early years of the nation. Under the federal constitution, the major power in economic and industrial matters is obviously vested in Congress under the "commerce clause." However, the executive branch of government has always played a large role in this area either through legislative delegation of power or through the exercise of "inherent" or emergency powers in times of national crisis. The two world wars of our century vastly increased executive authority. Both wars were fought as much on the production front as on the military, with the result that the traditional war powers of the president were progressively intermingled with emergency powers in industrial relations and wageprice developments. Some of the latter powers were abandoned or revoked at the end of military hostilities; others were continued in force and were temporarily or periodically extended. International and domestic developments after the second World War presented the problem of executive power in a new perspective. The abandonment of isolation involved the United States increasingly in international commitments of both a military and economic character, thereby strengthening and modifying the traditional authority of the president in international relations. The development of the cold war posed the baffling question of the extent to which presidential war powers and powers in war-like emergencies were applicable to a struggle fraught with all the strains of belligerence except direct military action. In addition, the gradual shift of cold war emphasis from military to economic competition tended to confuse even further the lines between war powers, authority in international relations, and economic emergency powers. Congress, it is true, has discouraged such a confusion and has maintained "peacetime" standards by insisting on congressional regulation of commerce and industry even to the extent of specifying emergency procedures which the president is to use in case of economic crisis or critical labor disputes. However, the legislative delegation of emergency powers frequently leaves to the president considerable discretion in the exercise and application of the delegated authority. Moreover, a slight “warming-up" of the cold war, or simply an intensification of international economic competition, is bound to bring forth assertions of nonstatutory emergency powers of the executive branch. One should also keep in mind that the described international developments coincide with far-reaching domestic changes in industrial relations such as automation and dislocation of manpower. 1. THE RECONVERSION PERIOD The reconversion period following World War II witnessed one of the severest crises in labor-management relations in the country's history. The reasons for this crisis were manifold. More than any previous military conflict, the second World War had been an industrial war. The huge extent of the military establishment had entailed an unprecedented mobilization of industry and a vast utilization of civilian manpower. With the end of the war, more than 10 million service men and women were demobilized while at the same time workers in industries were faced with the abrupt curtailment of innumerable items of military production.2 As a * See "Postwar Work Stoppages Caused by Labor-Management Disputes," Monthly Labor Rev., 63: 872 (December, 1946). |