Mr. POWELL. Will the chairman yield for a unanimous-consent request, that all mention of tariff be stricken from the record?

Mr. DENT. Well, you know, we have different opinions as to what constitutes discrimination.

Mr. Hill, there is one question I would like to ask.
Have you read this proposed draft?

Mr. HILL. Yes, sir.

Mr. DENT. Do you agree with its present form?

Mr. HILL. I think in its broad outlines it is a good draft. We, of the association, have some hesitations, and we have some suggestions on specific things, and we are going to formulate a statement. We plan go into detail. We think this matter is so important that we are going to go into some detail, point by point, provision by provision, in a written document which we hope to submit within the next 2 weeks to the subcommittee.

to

But on the whole, we think it is a good draft.

Mr. DENT. There is one phase of it that disturbs me a little, having had some little experience in the drafting of Pennsylvania's law.

I note that they have a breakoff point here, of 25 employees. Is discrimination measured by degree? Is it a question of how many people are employed? Do you find that discrimination is practiced more in institutions with over 25 employees, or do you find it to be a universal setup, regardless of number of employees? To what advantage would we be working in establishing at this point, in the first act that we hope to get through with some teeth in it, as the chairman put it what advantage do we get by limiting it to a 25-employee breakoff point?

Mr. HILL. No advantage whatsoever, sir. I would be for having five, at best. I would make the floor five.

Mr. DENT. Do you see any greater degree of difficulty in the administration of this act when you break it off at 25 or 20 or 15 or 9, or any set figure?

Mr. HILL. I think some people have an illusion that it matters and that somehow we will be able to get it passed this year or next year or 5 years hence if we have all these exclusions and things of that sort. But I think it is an illusion. I have worked with practically every State and municipal commission, I think, and in practical terms it really makes no difference.

I would be for having a minimal coverage of an enterprise with five employees.

Mr. DENT. Has anyone made a study as to the number of employees in the country who come within a certain specific employee group? For instance, how many employers in the country have 25 or more, and how many have 25 or less, and how many have 100 or more? Have you ever made that study?

Mr. HILL. I have not, but I believe that there is data. I believe that the Department of Commerce has such data on an industrywide basis. I think that would not be too difficult to get. I think that information is available.

Mr. DENT. Thank you very much. I was very interested in that point.

Mr. Goodell, you were not here for the testimony, but if you have any questions pertinent to it, we would be happy to have them.

Mr. GOODELL. Yes. Mr. Hill, this proposed draft includes discrimination on the basis of age and on the basis of sex. Do you have any comments on that, as being combined with the civil rights feature? Mr. HILL. Yes. The NAACP believes that it is a mistake to include the question of old-age discrimination in a Federal fair employment practices bill. We do so for the following two reasons. And as I said before, we shall amplify this point in the written document we shall submit.

First, we think it weakens the services on both the old-age question as well as on the issue of discriminatory racial employment practices. The State commissions that have this responsibility have found it to be difficult. They have found that it draws off manpower and money, and it limits the ability of a commission to concentrate on the question of racial discrimination.

And at the same time, I would say that the handling of age problems has become a very specialized matter. The whole new science of geriatrics and the many important insights in psychology and psychoanalysis, dealing with the problems of older persons, of what has become known as our senior citizens-this requires people with specialized training, specialized skills.

And I think it is just unfair to everybody, both the older folks and the people who are the victims of racial employment discrimination, to throw all this together. I think it weakens the ability of such an agency to concentrate effectively and fully on both questions. And I think that it is an administrative error to include them together. We shall amplify this with some further background in our written statement.

Mr. GOODELL. You were directing your comments mainly to age. Did you mention sex?

Mr. HILL. No, I didn't. I think that it has become the practice in most places to include the issue of discrimination because of sex in the purview of such commissions. I think that is probably correct. And I would not make the same comments on this issue as I did on the old-age question.

Mr. GOODELL. I understand, Mr. Hill, as I reviewed your statement here, you made an appeal for bipartisanship in reference to this legislation; and I know our subcommittee chairman has done this in the past, and it has been a bipartisan approach. As you are well aware, I know, particularly with reference to your comments about the statements of Senator Kennedy in the campaign in 1960, he said that civil rights was going to be among the first orders of business in January, civil rights legislation. We did not hear anything about this in January 1961, or all last year.

Now he has put a reference to it in the state of the Union message. As far as I am concerned, he will have bipartisanship on the civil rights bill. I support it, and I know a great many other Republicans support it.

But would you not agree with me that we are going through a rather futile exercise here unless we get some rather strong and aggressive Presidential support on this, as far as getting legislation is concerned?

Mr. HILL. I said in my prepared statement, sir, that support or nonsupport from the White House will be the decisive factor in

determining passage or nonpassage of this legislation. And I believe that is the case.

Mr. GOODELL. Certainly lipservice is not going to be enough, or mention of the state of the Union message is not going to be enough, in view of the past battlegrounds and the amount of bloodletting that has gone on, particularly in the Senate. We know it is going to take some leadership on this issue. As a matter of fact, that was one of the strongest points that President Kennedy made in his campaign, that it takes Presidential leadership to do it.

Well, while I will not say I agree with that a hundred percent, I hope we are going to get it.

Do you have any thoughts about the question here of making this either an unfair labor practice or an unlawful labor practice, in connection with discrimination?

Mr. HILL. I think there are certain questions that directly relate to the National Labor Relations Act. For instance, I think that a union that engages in discriminatory practices because of race and color should be denied certification by the National Labor Relations Board. I believe the NLRB should establish as one of the criteria for certification a clear understanding that the union that is to be certified as the collective bargaining agent will fairly and equitably represent all the workers in its jurisdiction.

There are also some other aspects of this. As I indicated in my testimony, it is especially true in the building trades that building trades unions are operating closed hiring halls. They are closed unions operating closed hiring halls, which leads to closed shops. These unions exercise a very high degree of control over the job market, over access to employment. The employers of this country in the building and construction industry have turned over certain managerial functions to trade unions in this field.

It seems to me that there is a clear governmental responsibility here. The NLRB has not enforced the anti-closed-shop provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act. There is a tacit agreement between the construction industry, the managers of that industry, and the leaders of the Building Trades Council of the AFL, that this will not be done, and hence it has not been done; and as a result of this, Negro workers from one end of this country to the other in the building and construction industry have been victimized and denied employ

ment.

The most vicious kinds of discriminatory employment practices go on in the construction industry of this country.

The time has come once and for all for public intervention to put an end to a series of practices which are antisocial and which hurt the entire community.

Mr. GOODELL. This is another area where I presume sincerely the national labor leadership has given lipservice and in some respects has worked hard to try to change this policy. I think we can be critical of the respects in which they have tried to change. They say they are in favor of it, but at the working level there doesn't seem to be very much change. Would you agree with that?

Mr. HILL. I would certainly agree with that. I would say it is a basic characteristic of the American Federation of Labor that it says one thing and does something else on the treatment of Negroes.

There is a disparity between the AFL's public ritual on civil rights and what the day-to-day practices are of affiliated unions throughout this country, not just in the building trades.

In the railroad industry you have the Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen, which took out the "Caucasian only" clause from its constitution in 1959, but continues to exclude Negroes in many places.

The Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen still has the lily-white exclusion clause in its constitution.

In 1959 Negro workers went into the Federal district court in Cincinnati and the union defended its right to exclude Negroes, and the federation refused to say a word-refused to issue even a public

statement.

This is the famous Oliphant case, where the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen successfully defended its right to exclude Negroes. The printing trades unions, the metal trades, the papermakers, the seafarers union and others engaged in a vicious. series of discriminatory practices; which do harm to the economic base of the whole Negro community. This is true of New York City as well as Atlanta. It is true in Chicago. It is true in Cleveland.

In Cleveland there is the Brotherhood of Railway Clerks, a major international union of the Federation. And this international union, in its Midwest operations, for instance, maintains segregated locals and includes separate racial seniority lines in its collective bargaining agreements.

The reason that you have never seen a Negro as a ticket clerk in a railway station in this country is because Negroes are in a different seniority line in terms of the collective bargaining agreement.

Negroes are in a seniority line known as the freight handlers, and the white workers are in the category of baggage clerks, and eventually they become ticket agents.

In Chicago you have a segregated local. You have separate racial seniority lines, which means the Negro is limited to the unskilled, menial jobs. The Negro does the hard, backbreaking job as the freight handler. He can never become the baggage clerk and eventually come into good, white-collar and clerical positions. This is codified in the collective bargaining agreement. This is in Northern communities, and this is certainly one of the important practices to which a Federal commission must address itself to.

We have told this to the American Federation of Labor for years. We have called this to the attention of George M. Harrison, by the way, who is the president of this international union, the Brotherhood of Railway Clerks, who is not only a vice president of the AFL-CIO but also, ironically, a member of the civil rights committee of the federation. We have documented all this for the past 6 years. We have documented all of this in great detail. They have done nothing. Negro workers have filed affidavits with the Civil Rights Department of the AFL-CIO. They have done nothing with them, often not even answered these workers.

It has become a kind of a pathetic game the federation plays in terms of creating a public image of liberalism and responsibility on the race question while their affiliated international unions in the North as well as in the South go their own merry way in their traditional anti-Negro practices.

Mr. GOODELL. We agree on the need for legislation, Mr. Hill, and we agree that perhaps the most critical factor of all is going to be the role the President chooses to take. And I did not mean to make any loose statements about Mr. Kennedy's position on this matter, and just in conclusion, I would like to quote precisely what I was talking about, and this is a critical factor for the future, in this session, of any legislation of this nature.

This was on September 9, in Los Angeles, speaking to a Negro audience, Senator Kennedy said, and I quote, September 9, 1960:

The President must give us the legal weapons needed to enforce the constitutional rights of every American. He himself must draft the programs, transmit them to the Congress, and fight for their enactment, taking his case to the people if the Congress is slow in acting. Such legislation is already being prepared. I have asked Senator Clark of Pennsylvania and Congressman Celler of New York to prepare a bill citing all the pledges of the Democratic platform, and that bill will be among the first orders of business when a new Congress meets in January.

September 9, 1960.

January and February and March and April all passed, and finally the President's press secretary was asked, in May, if there was going to be civil rights legislation with the President's endorsement, and Mr. Pierre Salinger said:

The President has made it clear that he does not think it is necessary at this time to enact civil rights legislation.

And then the President himself was asked about it a week or two later, and he said:

When I believe that we can usefully move ahead in the field of legislation in civil rights, I will recommend it to the Congress.

So we got nothing. And we will get absolutely nothing this year unless he aggressively recommends something to the Congress.

Mr. DENT. In passing, I might observe that this is the kind of legislation that will not only have bipartisan support, which Mr. Goodell has pledged, but I am sure that it will have bipartisan opposition.

In this area, where the impact of the legislation reaches into the realms of emotional and regional influences, it may be best for all of us to make this a matter of conscience, rather than political and partisanship persuasion.

The test on the President will come when the Congress has performed its duty. Speeches are one thing, but actions are another. No amount of speeches by the President or by a Member of Congress can remove from either a Member of Congress or the President the responsibility which is his under the Constitution and under our form of government.

I believe that if as great a proportion of Republicans vote for this legislation as Democrats, the President will have an opportunity to fulfill not only his natural inclinations and beliefs in this matter, but also his political promises.

The question of the right time or the proper moment for congressional action on this thing is one that remains entirely in the hands of the Congress of the United States.

I have always been one who believes in separation of powers. Throughout my whole political legislative career, which goes back over a quarter of a century, I have resented undue pressures from the executive branch on any matter, and I have, of course, represented