Rabbi HERSHMAN. It may be illegal to vote for a union shop, but it does not preclude the unions from going out and selling these nonunion members on the benefits and advantages of the union shop.

Mr. THOMPSON. No, of course not. We don't contend that that is so, but there is a form which many of us feel to be a perfectly acceptable form of union security agreement which is beyond their reach. Rabbi HERSHMAN. But you would believe that this is in repeal of 14(b) though?

Mr. THOMPSON. Of course I do. If those statistics are correct, and I don't believe them to be, then there need be no fear of a union shop in any of those areas because only 33 percent of the workers want it. Sixty-seven percent will vote it down and therefore they can't bargain for it.

Rabbi HERSHMAN. But, on the contrary, I would say this, Mr. Chairman. I would say give to the unions the same privileges that business has and let them go out and sell the advantages of their union shop to these other 67 percent.

Mr. THOMPSON. That is what we want to do precisely, Rabbi. In 19 States we want to give the union the right to campaign for and sell a union shop.

Rabbi HERSHMAN. But they have the right today.

Mr. THOMPSON. No; they have not the right. They do not have the right.

Rabbi HERSHMAN. Under the right-to-work law they do not have the right?

Mr. THOMPSON. Absolutely not.

Rabbi HERSHMAN. They do not have the right to go out and sell the individual workers?

Mr. THOMPSON. For a union shop, no. You didn't know that perhaps.

Mr. Scheuer, do you have any questions?

Mr. GRIFFIN. Mr. Chairman, I believe I still had time. I was glad to yield to the chairman.

Mr. THOMPSON. Oh, excuse me.

Mr. GRIFFIN. It seems to me the chairman is making a rather novel and amazing argument. There isn't any question that in any of the States, right-to-work or non-right-to-work States, the unions have the freedom to sell unionism to individual workers, and that if they can sell, even in a right-to-work State, the union to 100 percent of the workers they will have a union shop, but they must do it on an individual basis and not by compulsion.

When we talk about rights of the minority we are talking about something basic which is not in conflict or necessarily imposed on the rights of others. To say that an individual has a right to support the religion of his choice and to respect that right even though he is in a minority certainly does not give any basis to argue that therefore a minority ought to be able to impose, say, a religion on others because they are a minority and we must protect minority rights.

That is not the nature or the extent of the minority right that we are talking about. Each individual has a right to join a union or not to join a union, and surely to protect the minority right is not to say that therefore the minority ought to be able to impose a union shop on the majority.

I don't even follow the argument.

Rabbi HERSHMAN. Frankly, with all due respect to the chairman, I don't follow the argument either. I think that the matter of whether a man may join or may not join or whether a union has a right to sell is the question of whether he sells it on the job or whether he sells it after working hours, and this is where I draw the difference. Mr. GRIFFIN. I have no further questions.

Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. Scheuer.

Mr. SCHEUER. Rabbi, I would much prefer to be addressing you as mister in your former capacity as former president of the Joliet Association of Commerce, in which case I would respect your views, however much I might disagree with them, but as a member of your faith, Rabbi, I must say I think it is unfortunate for you to come in here and invoke before this body the ancient wisdom of the teaching of Torah and the Ten Commandments and the Judeo-Christian ethics as militating against

Mr. GRIFFIN. Mr. Chairman, I wonder if you want to leave that statement in the record.

Mr. SCHEUER (continuing). Yes.-as militating against the morality of our passage of this legislation. Members of your faith have played distinguished leadership roles in creating and giving legal structure and recognition to the union shop. Surely you would not state that they were abandoning the laws of their fathers and the Torah and Ten Commandments.

Rabbi HERSHMAN. No, Mr. Scheuer. It is perfectly all right if you wish to let your statement stand as previous. I see nothing wrong in that statement. If you wish to address me as mister that is your prerogative.

Mr. SCHEUER. No; if you come here as rabbi I must respect the fact that you wish to testify as a rabbi. I would have preferred if you had come to testify as the former president of the Joliet Association of Commerce, if that is your interest and your real status. I think that would have been entirely appropriate.

Rabbi HERSHMAN. Mr. Chairman, I respectfully submit, and Mr. Scheuer, I respectfully submit, you are a Member of this august body and I am a member of the faith of Israel and am also a rabbi in Israel. I prefer to be addressed that way.

Mr. Scheuer, I certainly do not wish to presume nor do I wish in any way to cast any allegations of immorality on such outstanding people as you have mentioned.

On the other hand, I respectfully submit that I too have a right to differ and I believe too I have a right to invoke the Judea-Christian teaching of our Torah, with which I am, and I respectfully submit, quite familiar, and I respectfully submit, in the Book of Deuteronomy a man has been given freedom of choice and freedom of choice is one of the basic concepts of Judaism, and I do not wish to get into any argument or any discussion with you as to which branch of Judaism to belong to. Whichever it is I am sure you can prefer to belong to that which you do and I belong to the particular branch of Judaism that I have.

On the other hand, Mr. Scheuer, I respectfully submit and I respectfully submit to you that it is difficult for me to find that you wish to invoke the wisdom of people who have been instrumental in

passage of existing legislation, whether it be labor or in any other area of legislation, to invoke their wisdom to be completely covering any future thoughts or actions by any other people who come afterward.

Of course, I recognize that Judaism has within its bloodstream a very great and a very, very vital concern to liberal thinking and moral concern for the freedom and the welfare of man. I have that concern too.

On the other hand, I respectfully submit to you, Mr. Scheuer, that I find it a little difficult where you wish to include the omniscience of all of these people whom you mention to the point where it would preclude any further negotiations of any further thought of any further concept toward bringing about a better society.

You seem to feel that I have come here today for the people who are opposed to repeal of section 14 (b). You seem to feel that we want a new law. This isn't a question of a new law. The question is this: That the existing law as it stands today is in my opinion fully competent to contend with the areas of labor and management and that the moral issue involved here is protected by the existing law.

I am not coming here to change the law. I have come here not to change, as another Jew said, even one jot or tittle of the law; I have come here only to try to offer whatever insight-I am not even going to use the word "wisdom"-whatever insight I might be able to, to the point of strengthening existing law as it stands today and it is on this basis that I respectfully submit that I can come as a rabbi, that I can come and argue for the moral choice that a man should rightfully have given to him as his inalienable right as a freeman.

Mr. SCHEUER. No further questions.

Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. Andrews?

Mr. ANDREWS. Rabbi, I thank you very much for your testimony. I am in a field in which I don't quite know just where we stand. My distinguished colleague has indicted your auspices as a rabbi and on the contrary when questioning you further on these particular auspices felt it necessary to identify himself as a member of your religion. I am a Protestant and I don't understand.

Rabbi HERSHMAN. I frankly don't understand either, Mr. Andrews. I saw no reason for the injection of that particular comment. Mr. ANDREWS. That is all.

Mr. THOMPSON. Thank you very much, Rabbi.

Rabbi HERSHMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. THOMPSON. Our next witness is our colleague from New York, Mr. Dulski.

STATEMENT OF HON. THADDEUS J. DULSKI, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW YORK

Mr. DULSKI. Mr. Chairman, I appear here today in support of the proposal to repeal section 14(b) of the Taft-Hartley law. To make my position crystal clear in this matter, on January 7, 1965, I introduced a bill in the House of Representatives (H.R. 2027) calling for outright repeal of section 14(b) of the National Labor Relations Act.

This selection of the law has resulted in the enactment by various individual States of legislation banning union shops by prohibiting

management and unions from freely negotiating and executing union shop provisions in collective bargaining agreements. At the present time, 19 States have now on their statute books laws preventing union security provisions in contracts. Five States have experimented with such banning provisions, found out that they did not work, and have repealed them.

This fact that 19 States have taken advantage of the policy outlined in section 14(b) and that 31 States have rejected or refused to consider enacting such laws is not a true indication of the general popular acceptance or rejection of such a restriction when the population totals of the States involved is considered. The 19 States referred to have a population of 50.5 million and can be generally defined as agricultural States. The balance of 31 States who have rejected such laws contain 128.5 million Americans. This is a substantial majority when considered in this light, who by their refusal to enact such banning provisions through their State legislatures, are indicating that they do not feel that section 14 (b) is necessary.

My own State of New York has never considered adoption of such restrictive legislation. I am disturbed about the one particular aspect of this provision when it is used by some States as an added inducement to attract new industry to their States by hampering the development of unions in those States and thus weakening the worker's economic strength with the resultant lower wages and benefits, and security and dignity on the job.

Such a device to be used as a selling point is immoral and should be removed to protect the jobs and the industries that are established in the States who understand the dignity of the workingman and his family, and his inherent right to association, and his right to band together to provide better economic benefits as the fruits of his labor. Let the individual States vie with each other in the effort to attract new industries by using the established rules of the free enterprise system, such as markets, management, efficiency, natural advantages of climate, location to materials, and so forth, and not to deal in the field of human misery generated by depressed climates for organization and maintenance of decent unions, freely selected by the democratic process of the ballot.

Section 14(b) which creates the avenue whereby legislation by States prohibits management and labor unions from freely negotiating and executing union shop provisions in effect creates a legislative umbrella under which a minority group of employees may scurry, and such employees are referred to by union members as "free riders." These employees are able to set in the shade and enjoy all of the benefits negotiated and provided for them by a union, including their own job security, without them assuming any of the obligations or responsibilities of union membership, including the fundamental one of paying dues. And to compound the injustice of this legislative umbrella, such unions are mandated by Federal law to bargain for, and represent all employees of any company for which they have been designated through the elective process as sole bargaining agents.

To put this issue in simple basic terms, it is merely whether an individual employee, for any reason at all, either real or imaginary, should have the right to have the privilege of not paying dues to support a union that a majority of his fellow employees have chosen to

represent all of them, and at the same time, have the protection of law to receive all of the benefits.

I should like to address my attention to the fervent advocates of the retention of section 14(b) who have banded together under the misnomer of "right to work" organizations. Such a slogan has been characterized by Secretary of Labor Willard Wirtz as a "corruption of the English language."

From my viewpoint, a more accurate and honest title for these groups should be "antiunion security" organizations, for that, and that alone is the able intent and purpose of "right to work" advocates. Actually, there is no such thing as "right to work." Nowhere in section 14(b) is there any mention of such right of employment as a provision. Work opportunities are based upon economic laws of our system and the law of supply and demand. Jobs and job opportunities are not created by the stroke of a legislative pen for private enterprise, but by the consumer and his insatiable human desires which create demand for products and services.

If there were such a thing as "right to work," I am confident that, long before this, such programs to provide it would have been sponsored by the workers themselves through their unions. But such is not the case. Some of the prime advocates and major effort behind retention of section 14(b) is concentrated in employers and their associations; that is, National Association of Manufacturers, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, American Farm Bureau, National Tax Équality Association, Southern States Industrial Council, private power company lobby. It is strange to see such groups so overly concerned about preservation of what they term as "freedom for the workingman" when their past history is replete with opposition to almost every single piece of legislation, either nationally or locally, which was of benefit to the working men and women in this country.

The evident basic philosophy of the so-called right-to-work advocates is that individual persons have an inalienable right by individual freedom of choice to veto actions of a substantial majority which was determined by the democratic elective process. According to their philosophy, a couple who do not have children should have the right by individual decision to exclude themselves from paying school taxes. Or that a person with a fireproof house, could by individual decision, refuse to pay taxes to support the local fire department. Or that a pacifist could exclude himself from paying Federal income taxes because he did not believe in war, and that 180 million Americans would have to get his individual permission to make any moves determined by the majority to be necessary and advantageous.

In my study of this entire matter, I am impressed by the reports from a number of commissioners of the State department of labor in some of the States which have had or still have such restrictive legislation on their statute books. These reports reveal that the actual experience in States under these laws is not too good and that these laws do not produce the results expected of them. I offer for your consideration some statements made by various commissioners:

Commissioner Bastemeyer of Nebraska: "Right-to-work laws have the net effect of legalizing the existence of parasites."

Commissioner Lowe of Iowa: "Most of the right-to-work States have increased industrially on a par."