I stand before you today as a fugitive from the most restrictive closed shop in the country – the United States Senate. We have a guaranteed annual wage for six years – but we have no job security, no pay for overtime, no unemployment compensation and no assurance that our contract will be renewed. The strange part about our closed shop is that there are many "scabs" who want to take our place – but none of our current members ever wants to go out on strike. I am not certain what union has jurisdiction over our shop – possibly we should belong to the USTTA – the United Stemwinders and Tub Thumpers of America.
In any event, I hope that I can – in the words of the old time orators – claim kinship here and have it allowed. I have been associated with the leaders and members of this union for twelve years, while serving on the Labor Committees of the House and Senate. I have, like so many members of Congress, and like so many progressive Americans of all walks of life, come to have a deep admiration and sincere respect for your distinguished President, Jacob Potofsky. And I have been particularly fortunate in being able to work in Massachusetts and New England with a warm friend and a devoted servant of the labor movement, Joe Salerno.
It is this kind of leadership – typified by Jacob Potofsky and Joe Salerno – that has made the American labor movement a strong and respected force – a responsible voice on behalf of a better America for all of its citizens. It is this kind of union – and other unions like the Amalgamated – which have demonstrated to the Congress, to the general public – even to management – that a responsible labor union is a constructive, beneficial member of the American economic community.
I wish that some of my colleagues in the Senate could be here with me this morning. I wish they could see this union convention in action – I wish they could talk with your leaders and your rank and file membership – I wish they could become familiar with your splendid record over the past two decades. If they could do these things which I have done, then they would see that here – here at this convention – is the true picture of the American labor movement – and not the parasites and leeches that have paraded before the McClellan Committee.
I know that I need not make any apology to you for helping to get those people out of the labor movement. They are not laborers – and they have never been interested in the movement. Most of them have never worked in a factory or frozen on a picket line. They were hoodlums and racketeers who infiltrated into union ranks – and I congratulate the AFL-CIO, and the leadership of Jacob Potofsky among others, for helping to throw them out.
I realize that the bad odor of a few wrongdoers has poisoned the atmosphere in which all of you must operate. I realize this is a difficult period for the labor movement – when many in the Government, the press, and the general public draw from these few instances a general condemnation of the whole movement. I do not expect you to rejoice in these disclosures – or even in any legislation framed to prevent their recurrence. I realize that there are some who at one time would have preferred to let the trade union movement work out its own problems.
But it is apparent now that this cannot be done. It is apparent now that those of us concerned with the best interests of the labor movement cannot leave a vacuum – for if we do, that vacuum will be filled by repressive measures.
Three weeks ago today they made their first move – attempting to attach a series of restrictive amendments to the pension and welfare fund disclosure bill which all responsible labor supported. We beat them back last month – on roll call after roll call – on one amendment after another. But I need not tell you that a month from now we will in all likelihood face an even more powerful assault.
They will not be able to say that we have refused to hold hearings on their bills – for we have held intensive hearings on every pertinent measure introduced in the Senate.
They will not be able to say that we have advanced no legislation as a consequence of the Select Committee investigations – for we shall offer a fair, thoughtful, constructive measure that both responsible labor and management can live with.
When they make those charges of covering up corruption or shielding wrongdoing, those charges will fail. But when they charge that we have not been sufficiently anti-labor – when they charge us with failing to curb the innocent as well as the guilty – when they charge us with offering a bill which will permit responsible, honest trade unionism to continue and flourish – then I am willing to admit that we will have to plead guilty to those charges.
I do not believe they will be able to accuse me of any sympathy for the racketeer who has misused the dues of union members. I am a member of the Select Committee and I am familiar with its recommendations. And those recommendations do not in any way justify the punitive, wholesale legislation they are trying to impose upon the labor movement.
Permit me to state four facts about this Report, four facts which are not recognized by labor's enemies in the Congress, the press, and the business community today – four facts which those with whom we will do battle in the Senate next month have refused to recognize.
Fact Number One: There is no factual basis for any general denunciation of labor based upon our Committee’s findings. There are roughly half a million local union officials in this country, another half a million business agents, lawyers and other paid officials, and another 750,000 shop stewards and others employed in serving the labor movement. Of these nearly two million labor leaders, the Select Committee has neither investigated nor received complaints about more than the tiniest fraction – considerably less than ⅟₁₀₀th of 1 percent.
The union movement, like any other part of American life, has its share of wrongdoers and corruption. But when we hear about bankers who embezzle funds, or financiers who misuse trusts, or politicians who betray the public, we don't condemn all bankers or financiers or politicians. Why, then, should we penalize the labor movement as a whole – why should we blacken its name and restrict its legitimate activities simply because a few bad apples have been found in the barrel?
Fact Number Two: There is no factual basis for any sweeping, unrelated anti-labor legislation. The findings of the Select Committee have been wholly misinterpreted by those who see extortion in every proper union attempt to bargain collectively – by those who see a conspiracy in every boycott permissible under the law and traditional in our history. And these forces will offer on the Senate Floor next month – as they did last month – some repressive anti-labor measures which have been around for a long time without success – measures which their sponsors now hope to advance at a time when the headlines and the campaign oratory distort a proper perspective – but measures which have little or nothing to do with our Select Committee's report.
There is no indication whatsoever, for example, that the financial manipulations of Dave Beck would have been prevented by the passage of a national right-to-work law. There is no indication whatsoever that the questionable tactics of Jimmy Hoffa would have been prevented by legislation placing unions fully under the anti-trust laws.
There is no indication whatsoever that union members should be denied the right to their own choice, Republican or Democrat, since it is apparent that racketeers have other means of obtaining their goals.
These unwarranted and unworkable measures do not come about as a result of the Select Committee's recommendations. They have been around for a good many years while their sponsors have looked for some new excuse to sell them to the Congress and the American people. I can assure you that the Subcommittee of which I am chairman will not be precipitated into reporting any unsound and unworkable measures of this kind. Nor do we intend to rush into any shotgun legislation that is aimed at a few racketeers but ends up injuring the honest activities of the whole labor movement.
Fact Number Three: The burden for the exposure and ouster of labor racketeers has been assumed by the labor movement itself. The critics of labor, the sponsors of punitive legislation, choose to ignore or forget that the labor movement has gone further than any other group in the country to clean its own house. Our top labor leaders – and that particularly means Jacob Potofsky – have ousted corrupt unions and unsavory officials, regardless of the cost. And they have taken what I consider to be the most significant and admirable step in the history of the American trade union movement – the adoption and enforcement of an excellent, hard-hitting set of Ethical Practices Codes.
I repeat – I know of no other group in this country – politicians, businessmen, lawyers or anyone else – which has gone this far in setting up proper fiduciary standards to govern their own officials. It is this kind of cooperation and constructive action which makes much easier the job of responsible Senators and Congressmen in the next few months.
Certainly it would be a grave mistake for the Congress to undermine the position of these responsible labor leaders by rushing through some excessively restrictive legislation. That course of action would only give aid and comfort to the racketeers who have denounced George Meany and Jacob Potofsky for trying to work with the Congress.
Fact Number Four: Employers and the business community bear a major share of the responsibility for these unsavory rackets. Some of you may have preferred a greater emphasis on this aspect – and there are some who preferred that we ignore it entirely. But the hard facts of the matter are that our Committee found numerous employers, large and small, collaborating in these racketeering practices – engaging in collusive deals to prevent legitimate unions from entering their plants – using labor mobsters to force their competitors out of business – concluding arrangements for sweetheart contracts, kickbacks, or fake unions and welfare funds – financing the racketeers and their illicit operations in order to obtain their help in breaking strikes or forcing out competitors. I think it clear that we are not going to get rid of the Dave Becks and Jimmy Hoffas in this country unless we also get rid of the Nathan Sheffermans.
In short, I don't believe in tarring with a broad brush either all labor or all management. I don’t believe in either repressive legislation or no legislation at all. I don't believe in letting either a few wrongdoers or a few anti-labor laws wreck an overwhelmingly honest union movement. I don't believe that either the members of Congress or a handful of selfish racketeers should tell helpless rank and file union members how their dues should be spent. And that is the course I intend to follow, whatever may be the pitfalls in the months ahead.
Of course, I realize that these anti-labor bills are all advanced in the name of helping the working man. I am not deceived by these claims – I know what destroying the labor union movement would do to the working man who has benefited so much from it. But these members of the Congress who proclaim so loudly their friendship for the working man will be given an opportunity to demonstrate that friendship. They will have a chance to repeal the strike-breaking provisions to the Taft-Hartley law. They will be given an opportunity to curb the abuses of employer middlemen who are out to block labor progress.
But these opportunities will not come in the field of labor relations alone. I want to see their voice raised on behalf of extending minimum wages to those millions of American working men and women who do not now receive even that fundamental protection of our economy. If they are so interested in the rights of the working man, then surely they will join me in an effort to get that bill out of committee. And even more important today, I hope they will demonstrate their concern for the welfare of working men and women by supporting some real improvements in unemployment compensation.
Our unemployment insurance system today is too weak to meet the current economic crisis. Its benefits are too inadequate to enable the average worker and his family to get by. We do not need just a temporary, stopgap, patchwork solution. We do not need a wholly deceptive and ineffective bill such as that which passed the House of Representatives and is now embraced by the President. We need permanent nationwide standards that discriminate against no state and no worker – that enable each unemployed worker to draw benefits for 39 weeks, if he cannot find a job in the meantime – that boost those benefits for every worker to one-half of his weekly wages up to a maximum of two-thirds of the average wage in his state. We need to extend coverage and ease eligibility requirements. And we need to do it now.
This is a measure on which these announced friends of the working man can demonstrate their concern. And I intend to give them an opportunity to do so.
We who are working on such legislation need your help. We will need your support and determination. But I am confident that we are going to go ahead.
To paraphrase the words of a great son of Massachusetts, William Lloyd Garrison, "We are in earnest – we will not equivocate – we will not excuse – we will not retreat a single inch – and we will be heard."
Source: Papers of John F. Kennedy. Pre-Presidential Papers. Senate Files, Box 901, "Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, Atlantic City, New Jersey, 14 May 1958." John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.