Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
Not all secondary boycotts are unjustified. We must judge them on the basis
of their objectives. For example, boycotts intended to protect wage rates
and working conditions should be distinguished from those in furtherance of
jurisdictional disputes. The structure of industry sometimes requires
unions, as a matter of self-preservation, to extend the conflict beyond a
particular employer. There should be no blanket prohibition against
boycotts. The appropriate goal is legislation which prohibits secondary
boycotts in pursuance of unjustifiable objectives, but does not impair the
union's right to preserve its own existence and the gains made in genuine
collective bargaining.
A third practice that should be corrected is the use of economic force, by
either labor or management, to decide issues arising out of the
interpretation of existing contracts.
Collective bargaining agreements, like other contracts, should be
faithfully adhered to by both parties. In the most enlightened
union-management relationships, disputes over the interpretation of
contract terms are settled peaceably by negotiation or arbitration.
Legislation should be enacted to provide machinery whereby unsettled
disputes concerning the interpretation of an existing agreement may be
referred by either party to final and binding arbitration.
Point number two is the extension of facilities within the Department of
Labor for assisting collective bargaining.
One of our difficulties in avoiding labor strife arises from a lack of
order in the collective bargaining process. The parties often do not have a
dear understanding of their responsibility for settling disputes through
their own negotiations. We constantly see instances where labor or
management resorts to economic force without exhausting the possibilities
for agreement through the bargaining process. Neither the parties nor the
Government have a definite yardstick for determining when and how
Government assistance should be invoked. There is need for integrated
governmental machinery to provide the successive steps of mediation,
voluntary arbitration, and--ultimately in appropriate cases--ascertainment
of the facts of the dispute and the reporting of the facts to the public.
Such machinery would facilitate and expedite the settlement of disputes.
Point number three is the broadening of our program of social legislation
to alleviate the causes of workers' insecurity.
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