Statement of William B. Gould IV Before the Commission on the Future of Worker-Management Relations

Testimony_Gould_092994.pdf: 255 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

Right to Travel and National Security

The right to travel has been deeply enmeshed in the Anglo-American tradition. In the relatively small country of England this need was particularly obvious, and there can be little doubt that both England and the United States owe a great deal of their commercial and intellectual growth to the freedom of international mobility

The Question of Union Activity on Company Property

Trade unionism is not an accepted principle in this country today... The National Labor Relations Act maintains an encouragement of its practice and procedure as a basic policy of the United States. Yet there is a pronounced disparity in atmosphere between many established collective bargaining relationships and industries or regions which are nominally unionized or unorganized. Since Congress has chosen to proscribe a good deal of picketing of an organizational and recognitional nature in the Landrum-Griffin amendments to the act it is quite likely that the grounds for union-management combat will shift in this area somewhat to less specifically regulated and, more important, protected organizational techniques. Already this is a process that seems to be in motion insofar as union activity on company property is concerned. A great majority of such union campaigns are primarily if not solely aimed at obtaining the worker\u27s allegiance. Thus, for the most part, this approach is free of the objections to picketing posed by Congress and the Supreme Court--the pressure or coercion brought to bear upon the employer through the public and outside non-employees as a result of conduct which bears no legitimate relationship to real campaigning to persuade the employees who have the choice of joining a union... Indeed, for a number of years the National Labor Relations Board and the courts have promulgated rules--frequently confusing, ambiguous, and, according to the thesis of this article, without a proper appreciation for logic or realistic analysis of industrial relations--within the broad scope accorded by Congress under the National Labor Relations Act. The pace is now a quickening one. It heralds an ever growing need for proper analysis and understanding of the realities confronting the parties in what is, more often than not, a hard struggle for some of the wage earners\u27 loyalties