Federal employee on his job yet grant him the political freedom to which he is inherently entitled under the Constitution of this great Nation.

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, we are grateful for this opportunity to appear before you at this hearing. May we assure you there is considerable interest among our membership on this legislation. We are very anxious to see a restoration of political rights to which we feel our members are entitled. For your support thereof, we would be extremely grateful. Again, we thank you for giving us this opportunity to express our sentiments on this legislation. If I may say so in closing, sir, it was our opinion that the statements here this afternoon would be more or less confined to H.R. 696, but in general the many members of our organization have on numerous occasions expressed themselves in favor of repeal of the Hatch Act itself. However, they feel that the one thing that they should have the right to is political freedom and the right to express themselves openly in political campaigns.

Mr. ASHMORE. Thank you, sir, a great deal.

Mr. LESINSKI. Mr. Chairman, one further comment here, Mr. MacKay. I am glad you are here. You mentioned about the restrictions of the Hatch Act which I do agree and do not argue with you on your point for political expression and so forth, but the Executive order has imposed the political restriction on activity of the Federal employees prior to the Hatch Act-postal employees.

Mr. MACKAY. The Executive order of the President prior to the time the Hatch Act was passed?

Mr. LESINSKI. Yes, sir.

Mr. MACKAY. That may be true but we feel that if the Hatch Act, if that section of it could be repealed, that it would set a precedent which may allow for the issuance of a subsequent Executive order that could possibly restore some of their political freedom.

Mr. ASHMORE. Those orders were made a part of the act.

Mr. LESINSKI. That is right. On the other hand, I think we had better be careful how we proceed because an Executive order may follow and tend to destroy everything we try to do here. Let's walk before we run.

Mr. ASHMORE. We ought to go slowly.

Mr. MACKAY. We understand that, Mr. Chairman, and for that reason we saw fit to prepare and submit our statement as it was pertaining to H.R. 696, as it was drafted.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee.

Mr. ASHMORE. Thank you, sir.

We will hear next from Mr. Paul A. Nagle, president of the National Postal Transport Association.

STATEMENT OF PAUL A. NAGLE, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL POSTAL TRANSPORT ASSOCIATION

Mr. NAGLE. Mr. Chairman, my name is Paul A. Nagle. I am president of the National Postal Transport Association representing 30,000 employees of the Post Office Department's Postal Transportation Service.

I want to express to you, Mr. Chairman, my appreciation for the opportunity to appear before you and to commend you for having followed through as you are doing on determining ways in which the Political Activities Act might best be amended. I would like to take an approving look or note of the fact that you are in company with your colleague from the State of Maryland, Hon. Richard E. Lankford, who is here this afternoon, and to point out, as several members of your distinguished committee already have, that this gentleman has identified himself closely with the objectives of your subcommittee. I would like, also, to follow in the footsteps of my colleagues, Mr. Hallbeck and Mr. Walters, in paraphrasing my statement in order that we might make the best possible time in concluding the deliberations of this subcommittee and say that basically we feel, the National Postal Transport Association feels, that H.R. 696 does provide for very desirable changes in the Hatch Act.

In full awareness of the statement made by the gentleman, the distinguished gentleman from Michigan, Mr. Lesinski, we recognize the hazards of going beyond what the White House executive branch might at any time feel to be acceptable and so we, too, are inclined to be temperate in our approach.

We think that the most important thing, the most important feature of H.R. 696, is section 2, of course, which would make two amendments to section 9. Section 2 of that bill might be liberalized without risk by striking out all after the first sentence. This again, I hasten to add, does not indicate that we believe the two basic amendments proposed by section 2 to be unwise or unacceptable. We think they are exceedingly good. But we also think that within the context of the statements made by the chairman and by the gentleman from Michigan, that we could go beyond that and strike out all of the first sentence in section 9. We also think that in that same vein, sections 15, 16, and 18 might be stricken from the act. H.R. 696 makes provision for changing certain parts of those particular sections of the Hatch Political Activities Act and we believe that if the bill, H.R. 696, were to be extended just a bit further in those several sections, the effect of the bill might be improved while at the same time risking no hazard of professional displeasure at the executive branch level.

As I say, our major concern is with section 9 of the act which would be amended by section 2 of H.R. 696. The liberalization contemplated by section 2 would remove from the Hatch Act the requirement that there be a minimum 90-day suspension for any violation, however slight. The 90-day provision, in turn, is an improvement over the Hatch Act's original requirement that any employee found guilty of violating the act be removed from public service.

Section 2 of H.R. 696 would also liberalize section 9 of the act by eliminating the requirement that a unanimous vote of the Civil Service Commission is required if a penalty short of removal is to be imposed. The National Postal Transport Association feels that the act should be amended by eliminating everything in section 9(a) except the first sentence. Section 9 (a) would then read as follows:

It shall be unlawful for any person employed in the executive branch of the Federal Government or any agency or department thereof, to use his official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with an election or affecting the result thereof.

H.R. 696 makes no provision for the amendment of section 15 of the act which prohibits public employees from taking any active part in political management or in political campaigns. The National Postal Transport Association feels that section 15 should be repealed and that no person-simply by reason of being a public employee should be deprived of the right of active political participation.

Section 4 of H.R. 696 is an improvement in the Political Activities Act in that section 16 of the Hatch Act would be amended to provide that under certain circumstances public employees may participate actively in partisan political campaigns up to the level of the State legislature, but participation at the Federal level would continue to be prohibited, and the National Postal Transport Association feels that section 16 should be repealed.

Section 5 of H.R. 696 would liberalize section 18 of the act by striking out the reference to that part of section 12 of the act which prohibits State employees from active political participation. Although this language is an improvement, the NPTA feels that all of section 18 should be repealed.

The National Postal Transport Association wholeheartedly supports the concept that Federal employees should be protected against improper solicitations. In our considered judgment these protections are accomplished by the first eight sections of the Hatch Act and we respectfully recommend that the balance of the act be amended by deletions or modifications as we have proposed in this statement.

Mr. Chairman, on behalf of the members of the National Postal Transport Association, I extend to you our thanks and appreciation for the opportunity you have provided for me to appear before your distinguished committee.

Mr. ASHMORE. Thank you a great deal, Mr. Nagle. We are always glad to have nice things said about us even though we have a lot of bad ones.

The next witness will be Mr. George D. Riley, legislative representative, American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations.

Mr. RILEY.

STATEMENT OF GEORGE D. RILEY, AFL-CIO LEGISLATIVE

REPRESENTATIVE

Mr. RILEY. The AFL-CIO joins its unions affiliated to the Government Employes Council in the position set forth in H.R. 696, and at the same time takes note of the fact that H.R. 876 also is pending before this committee.

We believe it important that Government employees be safeguarded from political abuses and at the same time have the rights of other citizens in exercising an untrammeled citizenship at the ballot box. There is need for relaxing the rigid penalties now provided in law for infractions of the act. In short, the Civil Service Commission needs the prerogatives of exercising discretion in invoking penalties in connection with State, county, and city employees whose pay is derived, in part, from Federal funds. It would seem most wholesomethat this broad and important group of public employees should be not subject to the so-called pure politics act generally referred to as the Hatch Act.

There has been no demonstration of the claim that Government employees vote as a bloc, any more than any other segment of our population, thus the votes so cast do not constitute any great weight in one direction or another. It, therefore, is evident that Government employees are by no means a "machine" voting bloc. The evidence extended over the years is ample demonstration that this is a fact. Good citizenship demands that Government employees have all the rights accorded them under the Constitution, not to be abridged by laws designed to hedge and hem them into a confined area. Their active interest in vital issues at whatever levels of government involved must be theirs without the artificiality of restraining statute.

It was said at the time the Hatch Act was being formulated that "clean politics" would result from the legislation. At the time that bill was being shaped, I recall there was much hurrah on the part of the Scripps-Howard newspapers in support of Senator Hatch. "Down the hatch with politics" was one of the tricky slogans in vogue to work up enthusiasm for the bill in 1939.

It will be remembered that the author of the Hatch Act legislation was having some political difficulty in New Mexico, his home State. This had an important bearing on Government employees wherever stationed. It is possible to say, therefore, that the political feuding which was going on in New Mexico was made the concern of all the other 47 States. A political brushfire in one State was made, by the Congress, the concern of the entire United States.

I had occasion upon enactment of the so-called clean politics act to examine the proposed regulations under that act. I recall that it was the general purpose of the regulations which were to interpret the act that unless the employing agency decided there was a violation by an employee that, in fact, there was no violation.

Contingent upon the agency's or Department's decision that there was a violation, the Civil Service Commission did not come onto the scene with its machinery. In other words, there was no violation unless and until the head of the agency so ruled there was a violation. It was not contemplated that the enforcing agency move until a complaint was lodged against the employee.

I cannot say that this is the situation today because I have not been the close observer of this phase of official life that I once was. But I wonder if the same is not still true. To me, this does throw light upon the basic concept of the act, or at least the administrative thinking behind the enforcement.

Under such arrangement, it is not difficult to realize that those who sinned on the "wrong" side could well be those who were to feel the sharp edge of the law. Those who committed wrongs on the "right" side could assume a coloration in harmony with their surroundings and not be suspect.

I think it is fair to say that the Hatch Act was and continues to be a bad-tempered piece of legislation. We still have the Corrupt Practices Act which, in some degree, enters into the Federal employee field. I know of no desire to change that law in any regard.

There are those who may say that persons who do not like limitations upon Federal employment should pack up and go looking elsewhere for jobs where they feeel more comfortable. Such attitude is easy to assume but difficult to defend. We have long since outgrown

such thinking which says if one would serve his Government, he shall first forfeit any rights to the same privileges enjoyed by other citizens. I wish to call attention to a case of considerable involvement, arising in 1952, of a Government employee who unwittingly became enmeshed in the intricacies and involvements of the Hatch Act. His group was affiliated with the central labor council which was a recognized labor city central body.

The central labor council endorsed certain candidates for political office in 1952, as is common practice for groups at that level in organized labor. The employee in signing his name as secretary pro tem of the central labor council did so only by instruction of the council and in so doing did not in any manner intend to be in violation of civil service rules, practices, or political inhibitions.

At no time did he take part in any positive political action which would have jeopardized his standing in the Federal civilian service, as the records of the council would show.

It is clearly understood that his name appeared upon the stationery of the central labor council as an officer of that council and not as a Government employee solely.

In working up a case against this clerk, it was entirely clear that animus was involved on the part of those who reported that he was politically active. Thus, the situation created was not one involving good faith. Nevertheless, bales of correspondence, hours and days and weeks of Federal and personal funds were spent building up the files against him. The facts showed he was at no time a member of any political organization, nor had he at any time actively participated in any political campaign.

The council is a labor organization and not a political organization. The council did not seek out candidates to endorse but, on the contrary, candidates sought the council's endorsement. I think it fair to say that mere endorsement still is not in violation of the law and does not constitute partisan politics because the council has friends in both parties.

The Hatch Act was primarily directed at Federal elections and in the area of this employee's job there were no Federal elections as such, certainly not for President and certainly not for any Member of the Congress.

This case was plainly one of mischiefmaking. I believe it could and has been multiplied many times and that the pernicious political law is in itself pernicious.

Involved in the council's activity, of which this employee was acting secretary, were such topics as teachers' salaries, teacher-pupil ratios, a $10 million school bond issue, minimum wages, increase in unemployment compensation and workmen's compensation. These are the subjects which the council covered in its questionnaires to various candidates. Of course such stuff are the prosecutions and persecutions under the Hatch Act made.

In closing, it can be said that H.R. 696 would remove some objections to the act and serve to advance the good cause of free exercise of citizenship.

Mr. ASHMORE. We are glad to have your statement.

Mr. John Bradley Minnick. Mr. Minnick, tell us whom you represent. I don't have it noted here for some reason.