evidently trying to stampede them into joining up in their cause. The following day, before the commencement of work, I served notice on the striking employees who had remained in the plant overnight to either vacate the plant or go back to work. In the event of their exercising neither of these alternatives I told them they would cease to be employees. The rowdyism of the day before was repeated and the plant finally closed down by the company in order to avoid possibilities of injury to workers. The sit-downers remained in the plant, a total of about 80 out of 415 production employees, for 3 days, until they slipped out a few minutes before the police arrived with warrants to arrest them. The following day the plant got back into operation, on a curtailed basis at first, and gradually on an increasing scale.

The plant had been closed down for approximately 3 days, but due to the fact that some of the stock in process is in a perishable condition, the loss to the company due to the stoppage of work amounted to $74,000. I mention this to show the terrific loss which is so quickly possible in this industry through an illegal stoppage of work. There was a great deal of violence around the plant gates each morning when the employees came to work, and in the evening when they left, the strikers on some occasions throwing rocks through the windows of the automobiles of the workers. At times there were as many as 100 police attempting to keep order around the plant, which they were frequently not able to do. The need for so many police was in part due to the crowds of spectators and sympathizers. The officers of the independent union went to the local office of the Labor Board at least twice during these trying days to enlist the aid of the Board in upholding the result of the election which it had conducted and which had established this independent organization as the bargaining agent. Instead of receiving help, Mr. Brophy, the field examiner whom they talked to on one occasion, and Mr. Rissman, the Board's attorney, on another occasion made it their business to attempt to talk these men into giving up their rights and joining the strikers. Until I had heard these facts I had been under the impression that the purpose of the Labor Relations Act and of the Board was to eliminate strikes and labor disputes as far as possible, but in this case where the strike actually appears to have been against the election conducted by the Labor Board or against its results there was absolutely no attempt to uphold the results of that election, but on the contrary effort was made to help the C. I. O. union upset that result.

On December 2, 1937, the Board actually joined the attack on the company by issuing a complaint charging the company with unfair labor practices in alleged discriminatory discharge of five employees and against the independent union as being company fostered. A peculiar fact in regard to these alleged discriminatory discharges is that one of them is a case of a foreman who simply failed to appear for work the third or fourth day of the strike, and had not reported for work since, and had never given the officials of the company any explanation of his absence. Another of those discharged was an assistant foreman who was discharged about a week after the beginning of the strike for attempting, while he was at work, to discourage and intimidate employees working in his own department

from continuing to work and, in fact, urging them to join the strikers. He had not joined at that time. His testimony was that he had joined the C. I. O. union in May but had quit it after he found that he was an assistant foreman, so he had resigned, and he was at work in the plant during the strike and was attempting to make the other workers in his department quit and go home by frightening them.

On December 20, 1937, a hearing was begun before Trial Examiner William Seagle which lasted about 3 weeks. The examiner conducted himself in an extremely biased manner, obviously favoring the C. I. O. at every point, and frequently refusing to admit pertinent testimony presented by the company. In his findings, for example, he found that I, as an officer of the company "undoubtedly studied ways and means of evading the Wagner Act," and he gave as evidence of this fact that the company kept on file and I had frequently_read the literature of such associations as the National Association of Manufacturers, the National Industrial Conference Board, and the Tanners' Council of America. As most everyone knows, these organizations are not usually considered to be attempting to encourage their members to break the laws of the land. In his intermediate report the examiner made it clear that he considered all the individuals who testified in favor of the C. I. O. to be fine, upright, and upstanding citizens whom he believed 100 percent, while those who testified for the company or for the independent union were of a rather low order of human beings whom he disbelieved 100 percent.

The employees who had been intimidated from coming back to work at the beginning of the strike kept drifting back from day to day. After first inviting all strikers except those guilty of serious violence to return to work, we hired about 50 new workers and by January 1938 we had about 350 of the normal 415 employees back on the job.

On March 30, 1938, the strike was settled by an agreement that the company would take on as additional employees-that is, without discharging any present employees-all the former employees when, as, and if work was available, with the exception of some 15 employees whose violent actions during the strike were such as to make them unfitted for future employment in the plant. Under this agree ment the union withdrew its charges against the company, and stipulated that the Labor Board dismiss the complaint against the company. Although the C. I. O. union's petition to the Board requested the dismissal of the complaint, no such order was ever issued, but the Board did enter an order April 7, 1938, "that the charge and petition of the union, may be withdrawn."

I should like at this point to say that if the charges filed by the C. I. O. union after the strike commenced were in fact justified, that the whole strike was still entirely unnecessary because of the fact that the union could have brought these charges before the Labor Board and secured in an orderly fashion any redress to which they were entitled. The employees who were allegedly discharged for union activity would have been adequately reimbursed for their lost time if the charges had been upheld, and the independent union would have been disbanded if the Board had so ordered after the hearing. In view of these facts I can conclude that the strike was ordered in protest because the Board had not seen fit to issue

a complaint on the evidence furnished by the C. I. O. union previous to the strike, and that the strike was called in the hope that the Board would act on those charges after the strike was in effect, which indeed proved to be the fact.

To show you all the extent of the injury to our regular workers suffered largely through the union's refusal to use orderly methods of handling the situation, I wish to point out that at this date, over a year after the settlement, there are still 75 of the former strikers who are unemployed and largely on relief because of this wanton attempt to organize our employees by force.

The CHAIRMAN. You are operating in Wisconsin now, under a new law, aren't you?

Mr. GALLUN. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Does that change the situation at all?

Mr. GALLUN. We haven't had an opportunity to see what that new law is going to do.

The CHAIRMAN. Did you have anything to do with sponsoring the new law?

Mr. GALLUN. No, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Did any of the associations you are connected with?

Mr. GALLUN. I believe not.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you.

Do you want the other gentlemen to appear?

Mr. GALLUN. Yes; I would like to have Mr. Manikowski appear

next.

The CHAIRMAN. Very well.

STATEMENT OF LEONARD MANIKOWSKI, EMPLOYEE OF A. F. GALLUN & SONS CORPORATION, MILWAUKEE, WIS.

Mr. MANIKOWSKI. I am 29 years old; married, and I have two children. I have lived in Milwaukee all my life, and I have worked for A. F. Gallun & Sons Corporation ever since June 1933. I have been a toggler and now I am a feeder on the belt knife machine.

While the Gallun Employees' Representative Association was in operation (the G. E. R. A.), I was on the council as the toggling and Slocomb-staking department representative.

When the Wisconsin labor-relations bill was pending in the Wisconsin Legislature I learned from the newspapers that any association in which management representatives sat with employee representatives would be classed as a company union. Therefore, we decided to dissolve the G. E. R. A. early in April 1937.

A lot of us employees wanted an independent union. So we hired our own lawyer, and he helped us organize the Independent Union of Gallun Employees. I have been the president of that organization since it began in May 1937.

I was one of the observers for the independent union at the National Labor Board election which was held July 28, 1937. In that election the independent union got 225 votes out of 403 votes cast. From the date of the election until the C. I. O. commenced a sitdown strike on October 27, about 75 more employees joined our union. On October 27, 1937, a group of about 60 or 70 C. I. O. employees began a sit-down strike. They paraded around the plant and made

it unsafe for other people to work. To protect other workers from being hurt by the moving machinery, the company shut down the plant.

On Friday, October 29, 1937, Charlie Jones-who is a finish mixer-and I went down to see a newspaper reporter at the Milwaukee Journal, because he had left word at my house that he wanted to see me. I asked him for advice as to what we could do to mediate the strike so we could get our members back to work. He suggested that we see Mr. Nathaniel S. Clark, regional director of the National Labor Board. Mr. Jones and I went over there.

Mr. Clark was out, but we were referred to Mr. Edward J. Brophy, field examiner, who was one of Mr. Clark's assistants. We saw Mr. Brophy in the Labor Board office. We asked him if any charges had been filed against the company or against the independent union, and he said "no." We told Mr. Brophy that we didn't think the C. I. O. had the right to strike because the election proved that they were in the minority. In answer to this, Mr. Brophy turned to us and said, "Why don't you all join the C. I. O. and end the strike right then and there?" He also said if we joined the C. I. O. we wouldn't have any more trouble. Then he asked us why we ever tried to organize an independent union, and he said that an independent union wasn't any good, that it didn't have any power and that we couldn't expect to get anything from our employer through an independent union. What he said to us and his entire manner discouraged us very much and we left after being with him about 10 minutes.

The next day after our interview with Mr. Brophy the plant was reopened and we went back to work. The picketing continued. During the month of November the operations in the plant became smoother every day, and in the early part of December, with a large number of employees at work every day, one or two of our women workers who are married, complained to me that pressure was being brought against their husbands by the unions they belonged to. The purpose of this was to force the husbands to get their wives to stop working at our company. One of these ladies was Viola Faytus. Her husband was a C. I. O. man. She told us that her husband was being laid off through the influence of the C. I. O., because she was working during the strike. I went down to the Labor Board with Ervin Wegner, who is a sorter at the plant. We wanted to see the regional director, Mr. Clark, but they said he was busy and we saw Mr. Robert Rissman, the regional attorney.

We told Mr. Rissman about the pressure being brought against Mrs. Faytus. While discussing Mrs. Faytus' case, Mr. Rissman stated that the unions could do as they pleased. We then asked him why concerns were charged with unfair labor practices if they laid anyone off for union activities, pointing out that the situations were the same. He gave some incoherent answer, and changed the subject. Mr. Rissman kept us in his office for over an hour and a half. During practically all of this time he talked against all employers generally, and tried to convince us that we could not expect fair treatment from any employers unless we forced fair treatment out of them through joining an international union. He asked us why we had organized an independent union and how we could ever

expect to get any good out of it. I told him that our company had been very fair with us, that we received a 2 weeks' bonus at Christmas. time and another 1 week's bonus in July, and we received two raises during the year, amounting to about 15 percent, and also a week's vacation with pay, and that all of our members felt that our employers were fair men who were trying to do the right thing by us, and that we felt we could get along very well with our employers through an independent union. Mr. Rissman said that the company was giving us these raises and bonuses only because of the activity of the international unions, and that if that activity quieted down we would soon find out that all of these benefits would be taken

away from us. He asked us whether we thought it was right for any employer like Mr. Sloane, of General Motors, or Henry Ford, and he named a lot of other very big corporations, to make the large amount of money every year that they made, and his whole talk was along this line, to make us feel that no workingman could ever get a fair deal from his employer.

Mr. Rissman said, during our talk, that charges had been filed against the company and against the independent union, and that there would be a hearing on this pretty soon.

Actually when I left his room after this long talk I felt that maybe he was right, because I believed at the time that being a Government employee it was his duty to try and be fair. Since then I have read many things about the Labor Board, and I saw myself how the Labor Board representatives acted during our hearing, and I realized that many of the things Mr. Rissman said are not true. I believe that our employers are trying to treat people in our factory in a fair way.

Within an hour or two after the strike started on October 27 I called up our attorney, told him about the strike. He asked me why they called the strike, and I told him because they claimed three men had been fired for union activity. Mr. Burke asked me if the independent union had talked to the three men, and when I said "No," he told me we were the bargaining agents for all, and that it was our duty to talk to these men. So I got the independent directors together, and all of us except one went across the street and talked to these three men who were standing there. One of them, Frank Rupaner, told us that he told the C. I. O. union that they shouldn't go out on strike for him, because he could get another job, but that the union leaders said they wanted to strike in order to force the company to recognize the C. I. O.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Manikowski.

Mr. Mann?

STATEMENT OF LEO MANN, ATTORNEY FOR A. F. GALLUN & SONS CORPORATION, MILWAUKEE, WIS.

Mr. MANN. My name is Leo Mann.

I am a lawyer, practicing in Milwaukee, and a member of the firm of Lines, Spooner & Quarles.

I have represented a number of employers in labor matters, including hearings before the National Labor Relations Board. I rep