Speech of Senator John F. Kennedy on the Urgent Need for the Kennedy-Ervin Labor-Management Reform Bill, in the Senate, January 20, 1959

Mr. President, I introduce, for appropriate reference, the Labor-Management Reform Bill for 1959. It is my intention to hold prompt hearings on this and related bills, and seek early passage by the Senate and the Congress of an effective measure that will protect workers, employers, honest unions, and the general public from the unscrupulous or dictatorial tactics of the few racketeers. As this bill is considered, I hope several facts will be kept in perspective:

First. This is a bipartisan measure on a nonpartisan subject. Today’s bill is a revised version of the measure which passed the Senate last year by a vote of 88 to 1 – a bill which was supported by every Member of this body today who was here a year ago, regardless of party.

I also wish to pay tribute to the outstanding work of former Senator Ives, of New York, in connection with this measure. His contribution to labor-management reform legislation will be long and favorably remembered. His conviction as to the necessity for bipartisanship in labor legislation is a principle which should guide us all.

I am taking the liberty of quoting from a letter received by me this week from former Senator Ives:

I wish you every success in your effort to get this vital legislation on our statute books. This bill represents many months of careful study in committee, the collective judgment of the U.S. Senate as expressed in 5 days and nights of debating and voting, and many, many years of collective experience in the field of labor-management legislation.

Furthermore, it is designed to meet the objectives set forth in the report of the Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field. It is my firm conviction that this bill not only meets those objectives but does so in a fashion that makes it corrective rather than punitive legislation, a measure which will correct abuses without undermining the rights of working men and women.

It is my earnest prayer that, this time, the bill will go through both Houses of Congress without becoming a political football. Throughout my legislative career, I dealt with labor-management matters on a nonpartisan basis because I early learned that it was the only way with which to deal with such matters on a realistic, constructive and equitable basis. The Kennedy-Ives bill is such a nonpartisan measure and deserves nonpartisan consideration and nonpartisan action.

Second. This bill is stronger and clearer than the 1958 version. The Kennedy-Ives bill of 1958, even after it passed the Senate by a vote of 88 to 1, was subject to fantastic distortion by extremists on both sides. Fears of its effects, particularly among businessmen, were unnecessarily aroused by the misinterpretation of isolated sections. To allay such fears and prevent further distortion, the bill has been revised to make it clear that the employer reporting section cannot possibly interfere with normal personnel relations or communications, and that the section on bribes by employers cannot possibly include wage or other normal payments. At the same time, the bill has been strengthened and tightened in other respects – including, for example, the judicial remedies here made available to a rank-and-file member to recover misappropriated dues when his union will not sue; the wider applicability of the provision for union democracy and secret election of officers; and the increased reporting of improper payments to a union or its officers by an employer.

Third. This is primarily a labor-management reform bill, dealing with the problems of dishonest racketeering – it is not a bill on industrial relations, dealing with the problems of collective bargaining and economic power. The two areas of legislation should not be confused or combined. The McClellan committee has been concerned chiefly, as its title states, with “improper activities” – with corruption, conflicts of interest, unethical and undemocratic practices. We have not been concerned primarily with unfair labor practices, union security arrangements and collective bargaining rights, as long as the improprieties I have mentioned were not involved. There are, to be sure, amendments to the Taft-Hartley Act which are necessary to curb racketeering or to facilitate the NLRB’s action in this area, and which were approved by the Senate as a part of this bill last year. There are other amendments – such as those dealing with economic strikers and the building trades – which were included as part of last year’s package at the insistence of Secretary Mitchell and the Labor and Public Welfare Committee’s ranking Republican, former Senator Smith of New Jersey, and which, having wide acceptance as a part of that same package, are included in the bill again this year. But the broad, controversial issues of labor-management relations which that act poses are improperly the subject of an anti-racketeering bill, and can only impede its consideration and passage on its own merits.

I hope, therefore, that this bill will not again be criticized by either labor or management for what it fails to do by way of Taft-Hartley amendments and new collective-bargaining rules. Let us first consider labor-management reform. Let us first stop racketeering without becoming bogged down in the heated and complex issues raised by the entire Taft-Hartley Act. Then let us consider revising that law, proceeding in a manner I outlined in a statement issued last Tuesday – by convening a panel of labor-law experts who can give our committee a fresh but experienced and well-balanced examination of these issues, outline the alternatives and isolate the areas of agreement and disagreement. I shall have more to say on this procedure at a later date.

If this Congress, in its consideration of anticorruption legislation, becomes bogged down in acrimonious controversies over broad and controversial Taft-Hartley revisions, in technical and emotional issues such as boycotts, picketing, and the section 14(b) provisions enabling State right-to-work laws, all of which must be considered this year – if our immediate problem of antiracketeering, on which there is already wide agreement, becomes tied to these other issues before the McClellan committee has made its second report and before our panel of experts has reported – then we can only delay and defeat a vital measure already thoroughly considered and debated. Broad Taft-Hartley revisions, which have been neglected too long, and including such items as boycotts, picketing, and State right-to-work laws should definitely be considered by the Congress this year – and I can assure the Senate that a second labor bill will be reported to the floor this year with the recommendations of the McClellan committee, the Labor Committee, and our panel of experts. Then all issues can be debated and all amendments considered, with the best information available, and without endangering the passage of a strong anti-rackets measure.

So let us avoid these unnecessary controversies now – and let us also avoid, in considering this measure, unnecessary partisan politics or uninformed or deliberate distortions, or otherwise it should be clear from last year’s record, no anti-rackets bill at all will pass. The gangsters and hoodlums will continue to prey upon union members and the public. And this Congress will be responsible.

Failure to pass effective reform legislation at this session may please the Hoffas, the Dios, and their ilk. It may please those on the other side who are chiefly interested in keeping a whipping boy alive. But it can only harm our Nation.

Fourth. This is a strong, effective reform bill. It carries out all of the previously unfulfilled recommendations of the McClellan committee. It is aimed at ending the abuses revealed before that committee; and adds other legislative curbs on racketeering as well. It is based upon the bill drafted last year by two members of the McClellan committee, with the strong support of the distinguished chairman of that committee himself. It is broader and stronger than any alternative proposal in this area. It is a bill designed to permit responsible unionism to operate without being undermined by either racketeering tactics or bureaucratic controls. It is designed to strike a balance between the dangers of too much and too little legislation in this field.

I realize that it is always possible to find fault in any bill – to point out omissions – to read in other meanings – or to call indefinitely for further amendments. This is particularly true in the controversial field of labor – which is precisely why no major labor legislation has been passed in the last decade. The extremists on both sides are always displeased – the technical experts will always disagree. No doubt, each Senator, as the Senator from Arkansas [Mr. McClellan] pointed out last year, would draft his own bill differently.

But, as the Senator from Arkansas also emphasized last year, our most important responsibility is “to take what we know all of us want, and pass the bill, and then move on.” The Senate did that last year by a vote of 88 to 1 – demonstrating, in the words of Business Week magazine, how “wise guidance in the public interest can be substituted for concern over wide apart partisan positions.”

I wish to mention the key provisions of the bill introduced today – the basic weapons against racketeering which will be unavailable in the battle against corruption if such a measure is not enacted by the Congress this year:

First. Comprehensive detailed disclosure to members, press, and public and law enforcement agencies of union financial data.

Second. Full reports by union officers on any personal conflict-of-interest transactions.

Third. Criminal sanctions for embezzlement of union funds, false reporting, false entries on books, failure to report, or destruction of union books.

Fourth. Suits by union members for recovery of funds embezzled or misappropriated by union officers.

Fifth. Prohibition of loans by employers or unions to union officers.

Sixth. Secret ballot for the election of all union officers or of the convention delegates who select them.

Seventh. Due notice of all union elections, and real opportunity to nominate opposing candidates.

Eighth. Requirement that union officers be elected by secret ballot every 4 years, by international unions; and every 3 years, by local unions.

Ninth. Prohibition on the use of union funds to support candidacy of any union officer.

Tenth. Prohibition of service as union officers of persons convicted of serious crimes.

Eleventh. Power to Secretary of Labor to institute court action to set aside improper elections, and conduct new elections.

Twelfth. Strict standards for the imposition of trusteeships and a limit of 13 months on their duration.

Thirteenth. Mandatory annual report to Secretary and union members on every trusteeship, the reasons for its establishment, continuance, and operation.

Fourteenth. Prohibition on counting votes of delegates of trustee bodies unless delegates elected by secret ballot, and on transfer of funds from trusteed local union to international except normal dues and assessments.

Fifteenth. Power to Secretary of Labor to begin a court proceeding to break improper trusteeships.

Sixteenth. Prohibition of picketing for extortion or to secure payoff from employer.

Seventeenth. Prohibition of solicitation or payment of fictitious fees for unloading cargo from interstate carriers.

Eighteenth. Public financial reports of the operations of Shefferman-type middlemen; and a prohibition of channeling bribes and improper influence through such middlemen.

Nineteenth. Elimination of the “no-man’s land” problem which prevented NLRB action on local labor racketeering by directing the NLRB to exercise its full jurisdiction under the Taft-Hartley Act.

Effects of the Bill on the Teamsters Union

Consider, for example, some of the effects of this bill on Mr. James Hoffa and his hoodlum associates now dominating the vital Teamsters Union. Under our form of government, no act of Congress can specify the elimination of Mr. Hoffa. Like every other citizen, he is entitled to the protection of the fifth amendment, trial by jury, and other constitutional guarantees which he may find it possible to abuse. But passage of this bill will close to Mr. Hoffa and his ilk most of the racketeering opportunities they have exploited – it will stop those practices which, based upon the testimony before our committee, it would appear Mr. Hoffa’s career and power are based – and it will, in short, virtually put Mr. Hoffa and his associates out of business:

First. It will no longer be possible for the dues of Teamster members to be paid out to hoodlums posing as business agents, to be invested in improper or risky racetrack or real estate deals, or to be used by Mr. Hoffa and other officers to build their own personal financial empires without the knowledge of the members themselves – or without investigation by the press and public authorities.

Second. Mr. Hoffa would be required to disclose all of his business dealings with insurance agents handling the union’s welfare funds, his private arrangements with employers, his hidden partnerships in business ventures foisted upon his members, and all other possible conflicts of interest.

Third. This bill would summarily force from office the extortionists, embezzlers, bribe-takers, and other criminals who have left the penitentiary to find refuge in high positions of trust in the Teamsters Union.

Fourth. Placing a Teamster local in trusteeship would no longer be available as a means of exploiting the dues and privileges of the local members; and Mr. Hoffa would have difficulty repeating power plays such as that at Pontiac, Mich., where as a trustee, he appointed as business agents the very same officials who had been ousted by the local membership on grounds of corruption.

Fifth. Provisions in the Teamster constitution to safeguard free elections and democratic conventions will no longer be a farce, to be waived or ignored at will. Paper locals under Johnny Dio will no longer be able to cast votes in the names of nonexistent or unaware members.

Sixth. The Becks and Hoffas will find future collusion with employers vastly restricted – with no more loans from employer groups, no more attacks on rival unions through middlemen like Nathan Shefferman, and no more secrecy shrouding the use of union funds to bail out a collaborating employer.

Seventh. There will be no more shakedowns and tribute for unloading interstate trucks, no more destruction of union books, and no more falsification of union reports anywhere in the Teamster empire; and honest rank-and-file members will be able to recover funds embezzled or otherwise misappropriated.

Conclusion

This is, in short, a strong bill – a bi-partisan measure – a bill that does the job which needs to be done without bogging down the Congress with unrelated controversies. Without a doubt, the future course of our action in this area will be plagued with the usual emotional arguments, political perils, and powerful pressures which always surround this subject. But I am confident that our committee will have an effective bill before the Senate early this year; I am confident that the Senate will consider and pass such a measure in the same constructive spirit with which it passed the Kennedy-Ives bill by a vote of 88 to 1 last year; and I am equally confident that such a measure will pass the Congress and become law in 1959.

Source: David F. Powers Personal Papers, Box 31, "Labor Reform, Washington, DC, 20 January 1959." John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.