I guess it depends on what kinds of methods you are interested in using,
but you can get a list from a regional office. We've got a regional
office and a board in Winston-Salem, we've got one in Atlanta.
Winston-Salem covers the Carolinas and that's a good one to pick. You
can can get a list from them, I assume, of all certifications. That
would be the boards, successful completion and certified bargaining
agents or units. And then I suppose that it would be possible, either by
writing the internationals, which could be a chore, or maybe in some
other way, maybe by some government report form. We have the report
forms from local unions are required. Financial report forms. The
intitial labor-management report forms go into the constitution of the
local and the by-laws and etc. You only put that in when you are in
business, usually. You are
Page 41 collecting dues, or
maybe that might show you where it worked, in other words, where they
got a contract. Or, I think that most labor unions would be responsible
enough so that if you had a list of the certifications for say, a six
year period, …
[unclear] … if you had the
list of those certifications, you eliminated the ones which you wouldn't
want to get involved in, of which would be some. Probably some cases
that would be automatic …
[unclear] …
these building trades units that might appear and disappear, you know.
And then you selected what you wanted to take a look at and you listed
those by international, the name of the company and the date of
certification and you collected all the ones from the Steel Workers,
let's say, and then you go to the research director of the Steel Workers
and said, "Would you tell me whether you have got contracts in these
plants?" That might be a way of beginning. The IUD has a statistical
thing, we talked to them about this. Now, all this is is a survey of
important bargaining settlement agreements. You know, they put it out.
Not the AFL-CIO. And they have got some of this stuff on computers. Now,
we talked to them about doing something like this, which they haven't
done because I don't think that they have the budget to do it or the
time or whatever. But there are some significant things. We brought
before Congressional committees, sub-committees, the House Education and
Labor Committee that the destruction of unions by these methods is
characteristic of lawyers. Whenever Blakeney gets one of these clients …
he doesn't bargain with any live unions and doesn't represent any
company that has a contract. When they get to a contract, that's it. So,
he's really a union buster, either in the election or in the bargaining.
I've been down the road four or five times since 1965, with people
advised
Page 42 by him. The statistics of the companies
that take on unions is almost 100%. They win almost 100% of the time and
that's one reason why Oneida is a big thing for us. It's the first
strike of that kind by a company of that kind that we've won since 1963.
Ten years, exactly ten years. The last one before that was Canton ([unknown]) Canton Mills in [unknown]. So,
just publicizing this fraction of employers conduct and making a big
thing out of it, I think would be a significant contribution. And
somebody ought to find out from the Labor Board, you know, they do some
kind of research, but … the regional director here will admit to me,
he'll say, "Scott, if a company has enough money and they want to bust a
union, they'll bust it." Well, that's not what the Act set out to do.
That's a very frank admission by a guy. So, that whole aspect, I think
that it is the least publicized or researched area of labor-management
relations.