It is a great pleasure to be here today with my friends of the Massachusetts State C.I.O., and to participate in your deliberations on matters affecting all working men and women, and indeed all people everywhere. I thought I would speak to you today about conditions in Washington. I know that you have been greatly disappointed not only by what the present administration and Congress have done in the field of labor law, but also by their actions and inactions in other fields.
It seems to me that those of us who are opposed to government by postponement, government by give-away, and government by turning-back-the-clock are faced with three serious responsibilities in the years ahead. First, we must oppose vigorously those measures and failures which harm the public interest; secondly, we must propose constructive approaches to fill the gaps left vacant by delay and confusion; and third and finally, we must make only those promises and charges which are within the limits of fairness and responsibility.
As an example of our first responsibility, of vigorous opposition, let's look at the field of labor. Start at the White House. On September 22 of this year, Press Secretary Hagerty said he checked on Martin Durkin's story with the President, and said: "I find that there has been no decision made by the President on any suggestions or detailed recommendations for changes in the Taft-Hartley Law." No decision! No decision despite promises of changes over a year ago, and despite the President's statement calling for specific amendments in his message to Congress.
We then move to the Department of Labor itself. Martin Durkin was replaced by a man who considers Taft-Hartley to be basically a good law; and left a department where political replacements and budget cuts have seriously weakened its effectiveness. The President promised to strengthen the Department of Labor; yet its budget, which was already the smallest in government, was cut 14%, more than 7 times as much as they cut the Post Office Department, the Justice Department, the District of Columbia, Agriculture, and the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. The Wage and Hour Division was cut 27% below the 1952 appropriation, thus making it possible to inspect only 1 out of 22 establishments covered by the law. Field offices in 8 regions in the South were abolished entirely, which was good news for those sweatshops paying less than $0.75 an hour. As Senator Paul Douglas charged, "The runaway and exploiting shops and the commercialized farms have called the tune, and the Administration is dancing."
Now let's move over to the National Labor Relations Board. The new Chairman is Mr. Farmer, who says the Taft-Hartley Law is basically sound. The other new member is Mr. Rogers, who was council for the Republican majority on the Rules Committee and who says he wants the law carried out just as the Republican 80th Congress would have wanted it to be carried out. The third hasn't been appointed, but you can bet it won't be Bill Belanger. Already, there has been a series of NLRB decisions which indicate that a still wider latitude is going to be given to employers refusing to bargain, refusing to enforce union shop contracts, discharging employees because of union activities, weakening employee bargaining units, and coercing employees under the guise of so-called "free speech."
Next, the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service. Here, too, they slashed 14% out of the budget, and fired the able and experienced Director, a Republican himself.
That completes our tour of the Administration. Now let's ride down to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue - to see what's been going on in Congress that affects labor. There, too, the Taft-Hartley Law was carefully studied; but the only concrete result was a bill drawn up by the staff of the Senate Labor Committee which contained provisions far more stringent than those now contained in Taft-Hartley. This bill would not only have halted unionization in the South and other areas of the country, but would have turned the clock back 20 years in giving full power to the states to take any anti-union actions they pleased.
The same is true on all other measures affecting workers as citizens, in housing, health, education, lower prices, cheaper power, and all the rest. The 83rd Congress nearly killed public housing, abandoned all rent controls and even standby price controls, gave away our offshore oil resources to a few states instead of preserving their income for our schools, and took other actions against the national interest.
Permit me to add that much of what I have been describing has particular importance for you as citizens and workers of New England. If we are to stop the liquidation of our plants and their migration southward; if we are to attract new industries to our one-industry towns; and if we are to protect adequately the jobs and security of our workers; then a great deal needs to be done. This has been a good year for New England and Massachusetts, certainly better than last. But you know that prosperity in New England is not yet permanently assured; that layoffs are increasing and plant closings are continuing. We still lag behind the rest of the country in our industrial growth; and if a recession strikes us, our loss will be even more severe than other parts of the country.
This means, as I stated to the Senate in presenting my program for New England, that the Taft-Hartley Law must be drastically revised to encourage the unionization of areas competitive with ours; our minimum wage raised and our other fair labor standards laws strengthened or $1.00/hr. , in order to discourage the runaway shops and prevent substandard wage competition. It means that those tax loopholes must be closed which encourage industrial migration; the tax amortization program carefully scrutinized; and greater consideration given to labor surplus areas in the awarding of defense contracts.
It means further that our natural resources must be developed so that our power bills will no longer be twice as high as those in the TVA area. It means that we must work for better programs of aid to small business, of retraining the unemployed industrial workers, and of providing security for the unemployed, the aged, and the disabled. Only in this way can New England continue to grow and prosper, and our jobs be free from the uncertainty and difficulty that unfair competition and our own position as an older area seek to press down upon us. The C.I.O., with many other labor, civic, and business organizations, has been most helpful in pushing this program; and I want to take this opportunity of expressing my appreciation.
At any rate, there's a long way to go in all fields of importance to labor. This is a clear example of a field where Democrats and Republicans alike who believe in a sounder economy for all, including labor, must oppose vigorously these attempts to hold back American progress.
Now, let's look at our second responsibility, the responsibility of offering a constructive approach to fill the gap left wide open by present delay and confusion.
My example here is our foreign policy. Never before have the uncertainties and power vacuums in world affairs called more clearly for positive American leadership and clear American policies.
But instead, what has been done? They have harassed, reversed, and rendered ineffective some of our most able public servants in this field. They have impaired Western unity by being indecisive instead of resolute; and by being quick to denounce and slow to understand. They have first cut our defensive strength in order to save money, and now talk of tripling it in order to save lives. They have reduced Point 4 to a pale and non-stimulating three point two. They have reorganized interminably and cut seriously our information program and the Voice of America, until the Voice is little more than a whisper. They have played politics on restrictive immigration policies, on the isolationist Bricker Amendment, and the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act. They have gone forward, then backward, then vacillated concerning Israel and the Middle East, Indian participation in the Peace Conference, human rights and genocide, and other issues.
This is a dangerous course indeed; for through it we have stimulated neutralism among traditional friends who now distrust our attempts at leadership. Let us hope after 1954, and certainly after 1956, our policies will again be positive, our programs comprehensive, and our principles reaffirmed.
We must not make political issues out of war and peace, and we must continue to recognize executive responsibility for the conduct of foreign relations under the constitution. But, nevertheless, we have a definite responsibility to check our present policies of drift and slide.
Indeed, the administration might do well to follow the vigorous example of the C.I.O. in its effective battle against Communistic exploitation. The I.U.E.-C.I.O., for example, has not lacked active and positive leadership both in this state and in the country as a whole in opposing Communist domination in a free and healthy trade union movement. The I.U.E. and the C.I.O. believe in individual rights and human dignity more than totalitarian power, in the free expression of opinion rather than slavish adherence to any party line: and in accomplishing their goals through peaceful and democratic methods, not by subversion and violence. That is why you have so successfully broken the foothold in labor which these Communist-dominated unions once held; and that is why I.U.E. will continue to do battle successfully. Thousands of patriotic members and local leaders of the UE, and other unions expelled from the C.I.O. in 1949 should not be charged with disloyalty. But the fact remains that the national leadership of UE has been characterized as one following "a tenacious conformity to the Communist party line through at least six major reversals" by Senator Hubert Humphrey's Senate Sub-Committee on Labor Management Relations and is presenting too great a security risk to be permitted to represent workers. The individual members and the union as a whole should take remedial action against such leadership which has brought down upon them these inequities.
Finally, and perhaps most important, those of us who seek a return to progressive and effective leadership must be responsible, as opposition and as politicians. If we now make promises we cannot carry out, the people will see we are no different than the Republicans. If we now blame the Republicans for ills which Government cannot control, the people will expect the impossible from a Democratic victory.
Democrats, labor, liberals, and all of those who join us must indeed "talk sense to the American people"; make only those promises we can carry out; and frankly state the difficulties and dangers which confront us.
We would be deceiving the people to deny that these are all difficult tasks.
We can provide in 1954 and 1956 a factor which has been generally lacking under the Republican regime, particularly since the death of Robert Taft – and that factor is leadership; in our case positive, purposeful, and progressive leadership; leadership to further the interests of America as a whole and not a favored few. I am certain that many, many Republicans, in and out of Congress, will be happier under Democratic leadership than under the kind of leadership they are getting now.
As Christmas approaches, I would recommend to our respected President and his able Cabinet of businessmen that they restudy the role of businessmen as Dickens set it forth in his "Christmas Carol." You all remember the words of Jacob Marley's ghost to his partner, Ebenezer Scrooge:
"But you were always a good man of business", said Scrooge...
"Business," replied the Ghost, "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance and benevolence were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business."
Let us hope that our businessmen's government will heed this advice. Republicans and Democrats, labor and management, men and women of all races and creeds and national origins, all must see that we are led by those who make mankind their business. Together we can demonstrate to a disillusioned nation that promises can mean performance – that responsible opposition can mean constructive legislation – and together we shall make real and meaningful the promise that for all of us is America.
Source: Papers of John F. Kennedy. Pre-Presidential Papers. Senate Files, Box 893a, "Massachusetts State C.I.O. convention, 3 December 1953." John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.