alent of 2 hours' pay at the straight-time or regular hourly rate of pay for carpenters, plus cost of transportation. (d) When men are specifically ordered out from New York, Brooklyn, Hoboken or Jersey City to Leonardo they shall receive the equivalent of 3 hours' pay at the straight-time or regular hourly rate for carpenters, plus cost of transportation, unless transportation is provided by the employer. 10. All traveling expenses and time shall be allowed to men being transferred from one port to another to work, from their time of departure until their return at prevailing rate. 11. All men must be paid not later than 24 hours after their work ends. If men are given overtime on payday, they must be paid on jobs or be given sufficient time to go to the office to get their pay. If men are working on payday, they must be paid between the hours of 1 p. m. and 5 p. m.; when waiting after 5 p. m. for their money, they must be paid for waiting time at the prevailing rate. 12. Each member of the party of the first part shall at all times be the sole judge of the number of men needed for the conduct of the work and shall assign their positions and duties in its own discretion. 13. There shall be no beer or other intoxicating liquors brought upon the property of the party of the first part; for a violation of this provision, the guilty person may be discharged and given no further employment by the party of the first part. There shall be no smoking in the cargo spaces of the ship or on deck near open hatches or on the pier of the party of the first part; for a violation of this provision, the guilty person shall be discharged and given no further employment by the party of the first part. The union recognizes the danger of this offense and agrees to cooperate in every way to eliminate it. It is clearly agreed that no men are to be allowed to leave the pier during working hours for the purpose of obtaining drink, or for any purpose whatever, except with the express permission of the person in charge. 14. (a) Any dispute or controversy which may arise as to the interpretation or application of any of the provisions of this agreement shall be referred to any arbitration committee for adjustment or decision in the manner hereinafter provided. Pending such adjustment or decision, as provided for herein, the men shall continue to work. (b) The matter in dispute or controversy shall by notice, in writing, be submitted by either party to the New York Shipping Association which shall promptly notify the other party to the dispute or controversy and shall arrange for a meeting of the arbitration committee at a time and place mutually satisfactory. (c) The matter in dispute or controversy shall be submitted to an arbitration committee of four, two of whom shall be representatives of the party of the first part and two shall be representatives of the party of the second part; a decision of the majority of the arbitration committee shall be final and binding upon the parties. The arbitration committee of four shall meet not later than the Tuesday following the pay day after the matter in dispute has arisen, unless otherwise mutually agreed. In the event of failure on the part of the arbitration committee of four to reach a satisfactory adjustment or decision they shall proceed to select a fifth member, satisfactory to both sides, as chairman, and the decision of the majority of the arbitration committee as thus composed shall be final and binding upon the parties. The fifth member shall be selected within 5 days, unless otherwise mutually agreed, after the date of the failure of the arbitration committee of four to reach a satisfactory decision. (d) The arbitration committee of five shall proceed to decide the dispute or controversy as expeditiously as practicable, and shall render its decision in writing. (e) In the event that several disputes or controversies are pending at the same time, priority in handling shall be given to such disputes or controversies as involve discharge, suspension or other disciplinary action. (f) The parties shall bear the expense of their respective representatives to the arbitration committee and shall share equally the expenses of the chairman, if any, and shall share equally all other agreed upon expenses. 15. No steamship company or contracting marine carpenter and no official. district council, or local of the International Longshoremen's Association, shall make any change in this agreement nor render any interpretation of any provision thereof which shall be binding on any of the parties hereto. A difference of opinion regarding the meaning of any provisions of this agreement, which cannot be amicably adjusted between the parties, shall be determined only by an arbitration committee appointed in accordance with clause 14. 16. The party of the second part shall not uphold incompetency, unauthorized stoppage of work, shirking of work, pilfering or broaching of cargo; the commission of any of the above offenses shall be sufficient cause for the dismissal of the guilty person and such action shall not be regarded as discrimination. If any man is convicted of theft, he shall be expelled as a member of the party of the second part. 17. There shall be no discrimination by the party of the first part against any members of the party of the second part, nor shall the party of the second part discriminate against the party of the first part. 18. Any member of locals 901, 901-1, and 958 of the International Longshoremen's Association who receives from members of the New York Shipping Association payment for 1,350 hours or more for the fiscal year from October 1, 1947, to September 30, 1948, irrespective of whether such hours were paid for at straighttime or overtime rates, is to be granted one week's vacation with pay (40 hours straight time). 19. Either of the parties shall have the right to reopen, for consideration at any time, the provisions of all clauses of this agreement establishing the regular or normal working day and the provisions for overtime payment in the event that the method of applying the overtime provisions of the "Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938," as presently interpreted throughout the port, is changed by the courts or by administrative regulation. 20. This agreement shall be effective from August 21, 1947, to midnight, August 21, 1948, except as to the revised wage rates which shall be effective from October 1, 1947, to midnight, August 21, 1948. Mr. MASON. Mr. Chairman, we have Mr. Hasselgren, who has come here from New York. He wants to make a few brief remarks on this overtime-on-overtime question. He is one of our longshoremen who works on the docks, and he may be helpful in pointing out some of the problems that they have. Mr. KELLEY. Very well. TESTIMONY OF HARRY R. HASSELGREN, SECRETARY-TREASURER, ATLANTIC COAST DISTRICT, INTERNATIONAL LONGSHOREMEN'S ASSOCIATION Mr. HASSELGREN. Mr. Chairman and members of Congress: I have come down to give you a real picture of what this overtimeon-overtime decision has done to our industry. My name is Harry R. Hasselgren. I am secretary-treasurer of the Atlantic Coast District, International Longshoremen's Association. Our agreement expired on August 21. We started negotiating with our employers the new wages and conditions, and the first thing we were met with was this decision handed down by the Supreme Court. We were told we could no longer work under the conditions that we had previously been working under. I will say, as a representative of organization, we brought our wages up from 25 cents an hour for all hours-there was no 40 hours; there was no restriction as to what they were however, through collective bargaining, we were able to bring our wages up from 25 cents an hour to $14.64 a day. That was from 1917 to the present time. our This decision was handed down; the employers confronted us that they could not enter into an agreement the same as we had had, that we would have to go under section 7 (b) (1), to try to get along until such time as that law was amended. Naturally enough, when this decision was first handed down, our membership thought that it was a grand thing, that we were going to some extent get some more extra money that they had not bargained for and that we had not expected to get; but we soon found out that our employers were limiting our work to 40 hours in any given week wherever they could. In our industry, we have to get work when we can get it. If our employers would guarantee us 40 hours every week, all right, we would go along with that; but they do not. We will have some weeks where we may have 5 hours or 10 hours; other weeks we will have 20 hours. Then in another week we may be able to have 100 hours. We have to make our earnings on those 100-hour weeks, and we have to make up for the other hours. This Supreme Court decision has curtailed that and stopped that, stopped our earnings; and we think that we should have some relief, and that this law should be amended. Let us go back to where we were prior to this decision so that our membership can make and earn whatever is in the cards for it to earn. Otherwise, we think somebody should give us relief and guarantee us 2,000 hours a year, which we have not had up to the present time. That is the situation in which we find ourselves. We have done everything possible to try to get around it. I was down when we met with the Secretary of Labor and the representatives from the employers and the representatives from the CIO, and we tried to work out something that we thought would bring us back to the situation prior to the Supreme Court decision. That is all we are asking for in the ILA, to bring us back where we were before the Supreme Court decision and let us do our bargaining between the employers and ourselves. Thank you, gentlemen. I think that is the whole case of the ILA. Mr. KELLEY. Are there questions? Mr. LUCAS. Are you in favor of the retroactive provisions of this bill? Mr. HASSELGREN. We have nothing to say about that. We entered into an agreement in good faith, and we expect to live up to that agreement. Mr. LESINSKI (presiding). Are there any other questions, Mr. Lucas? Mr. LUCAS. None. Mr. IRVING. I just want to say that I compliment Mr. Waldman on his very earnest presentation of the subject. However, I disagree sincerely with his position on allowing the Administrator to lower the minimum except possibly in a very drastic national emergency. It has been the objective of labor unions ever to raise the standards of living for all of our citizens, and I see a restriction on those efforts to improve living standards by setting up what we would now consider a minimum living standard. We will say that we can lower them; and, even though the cost of living goes down, we are automatically lowering this standard that we have set here. I cannot subscribe to that. We are going to have technological advances that will give us an opportunity to improve even further in the standard of living. Naturally, I fear greatly that some administrator might be influenced by some chamber of commerce or somebody else in setting this standard of living not high enough to achieve the objective of this bill. I am not in favor of that. We want to eliminate slums, disease, illiteracy, and inade quate educational and medical conditions, and so forth, for all of our citizens. I have great faith in our system to survive and always to go upward and forward, and that is the reason I would object to any pushing down of the minimum. That is not our goal, to go backward. We had an illustration of that here a year or two ago, when we lost considerable ground, I think. We are not in favor of that; at least, I am not. Mr. MASON. Congressman, I agree with you entirely. I wish to clarify Mr. Waldman's statement. Mr. Waldman was speaking for himself. Mr. IRVING. I understand that. Mr. MASON. He was not speaking for the American Federation of Labor or for the ILA with respect to that particular question. Mr. IRVING. His testimony will carry a good deal of weight, I think, because he was capable of presenting the subject in a very fine and impressive manner. Mr. MASON. He was out in left field, where he did not belong. He came down here to discuss only this overtime-on-overtime question. Mr. KELLEY. I do not think it was his fault but the committee's fault that he got off on that. Mr. LESINSKI. Mr. Perkins? Mr. PERKINS. Mr. Hasselgren, are you satisfied that this committee's passage of this committee print here will accomplish what you want? Mr. HASSELGREN. I believe the committee print will give us what we are after. That is, the same place where we were prior to the Supreme Court decision. Mr. LESINSKI. Mr. Sims? Mr. LESINSKI. Thank you, Mr. Hasselgren. Now, who else have you got, Mr. Mason? Mr. MASON. I have discussed only one subject here so far. The next question is the problem of "Chinese overtime." I do not know whether the committee has discussed that. There is another aspect of the overtime problem which merits serious attention by your committee. I am referring to the problem of what is called "Chinese overtime," under which salaried employees are systematically deprived of their rightful overtime compensation. This problem arises when salaried employees work a so-called fluctuating workweek. Overtime compensation for these employees is determined in the following manner. Let us assume an employee receives a salary of $40 a week, normally works 40 hours weekly but occasionally works longer hours. In a week during which he works 50 hours, his total weekly compensation is computed as follows: (1) $40 basic salary. (2) Additional compensation of 10 hours half-time or at half of the 80-cents-an-hour rate ($40 divided by 50 equals 80 cents; half-time rate equals 40 cents) or $4. (3) Total compensation of $40 plus $4, or $44. The comparable factory employee for the same period of time would earn $40 plus time and a half for the additional 10 hours, at a rate of $1 an hour (40 divided by 40) or a total of $15 overtime compensation. He would earn $11 more than the comparable salaried worker. To correct this injustice, we feel that the regular rate for any employee on a salary basis should be calculated by dividing his salary by not more than 40 hours if he is paid on a weekly basis, and by not more than 173 hours if he is paid on a monthly plan or basis. Mr. LESINSKI. Will the gentleman yield there? I always understood when a man was working 40 hours and working at $1 an hour, it is $40. But if he works an additional 10 hours he gets time and a half, or he should get $15. Mr. MASON. In the case of salaried employees, particularly in banks, they have a fluctuating workweek. They might work 40 hours this week, and maybe it is 50 or 60 the next week, and in computing overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act, they would have a different straight-time rate in which overtime is computed each week. And for the overtime hours, he is not given time and a half over 40 hours; but it given half-time over 40 hours. That is one of the injustices that I think this committee should give serious consideration to. When I was a member of the National War Labor Board we had similar cases of this kind, where salaried employees would come in with a dispute with respect to the computation of overtime. To determine the rate we used to divide it by 173 hours, or 413 weeks in a month, which would be 160, and a third of 40 hours, another 13 hours. And that is how we would arrive at the regular rate. And then the overtime after 40 hours would be time and a half on that regular rate. The Administrator is not interpreting the law that way. I think that it is still within his prerogative to do so, but he is not doing it, and I think that legislation is needed to protect the interest of these employees that are treated so unjustly as far as overtime is concerned. It does not only happen on 60 hours a week, because some of them are required to work 70 and 80 hours. If they work 80 hours and the basic rate is $40 a week, they get only 50 cents an hour, and they get 25 cents an hour for all overtime over 40 hours, instead of getting time and a half. Mr. LESINSKI. How can they get away with that? Mr. MASON. They are getting away with it by the administrative ruling. I have a statement here from the International Office Workers Union. An office workers' representative was here to testify this afternoon, but he left. I would like to have the statement put in the record. Mr. LESINSKI. If there are no objections, the statement will go in the record. (The statement is as follows:) STATEMENT OF PAUL R. HUTCHINGS, INTERNATIONAL PRESIDENT, OFFICE EMPLOYES INTERNATIONAL UNION, AFL I want to thank the committee for having this opportunity to affirm on behalf of the Office Employes International Union, AFL, the general position of the American Federation of Labor, and to discuss briefly with the committee the specific problem of overtime rates as they relate to salaried employees and spe |