practical consideration of the local problems peculiar to each newspaper operation affected.

Since the present ITU administration took office, the ITU laws have been broadly amended, so that they now infringe much more drastically than ever before on the normal prerogatives of management. Furthermore, local unions have become much more subservient to the international union, and it is now extremely rare for any local typographical union to assert or exercise any degree of local autonomy in respect to ITU "laws" or to demands by the ITU president for contract provisions which are even more restrictive than required by ITU "laws".

The procedure in a number of recent contract negotiations between newspaper publishers and typographical unions is about as follows: The local union drafts a tentative contract proposal, which is presented to the publisher only after it has been reviewed by ITU headquarters and approved as meeting at least the minimum requirements of all ITU "laws". The publisher then negotiates with the official committee of the local union for days or weeks, and reaches a tentative agreement which the committee submits to the entire local union for approval or rejection. In some cases the local sends the committee back to negotiate for additional concessions. Such concessions are granted by the publisher, or a compromise is reached which is approved by the local. But that is not all. Even though the original contract proposal of the union has been approved at ITU headquarters, and no changes affecting ITU "laws" have been made during the negotiations, officers of the local union do not sign the agreement. They obtain the signature of the publisher, and copies of the document are sent to ITU headquarters for further examination. The local union is promptly informed by an officer of ITU that certain changes must be made in the document before it can be signed by the local union or underwritten by the ITU president. The letter of instructions from the ITU official to the local union may state "section blank must be deleted, and section so and so must be changed to read exactly as follows:" (setting out the exact phraseology demanded).

Under such circumstances, the publisher has the choice of submitting to the mandate of the ITU official or declining to do so and almost certainly being confronted with a strike, even though he has previously reached complete agreement in good faith with the local union on all provisions of a contract.

The publisher has no recourse whatsoever to normal collective-bargaining procedures, but can only submit to or defy a mandate issued by an international union official in a distant city, with whom he has no direct contact. The publisher has no opportunity to sit down at the bargaining table with the official who issues the peremptory order, and reason with him man to man, although either submission to or defiance of such order may conceivably put the publisher's newspaper out of business.

The process described above is even less tolerable than industry-wide bargaining. It amounts to submission on an industry-wide basis to the mandate of a union official who deliberately spurns true collective bargaining.

Recently the National Labor Relations Board held that when a union refuses to bargain collectively, its employer is relieved of his duty to negotiate. I pre sume that this ruling would relieve most newspapers today from the obligation of bargaining with the typographical union. But this ruling gives little comfort to a small newspaper faced with the prospect of a strike. The exercise of organized coercion on a, Nation-wide scale is not prevented by permitting individual newspapers to defy this powerful organization. Today this economic coercion has developed to such an extent that individual newspapers are afraid even to protest publicly because of fear of retaliation.

This powerful absentee control over a service essential to every newspaper cannot be defended. Each month that it continues puts an additional handicap upon the rapidly disappearing small independent newspaper.

I am aware of the fact that there is a general controversy going on with respect to every aspect of union power. The danger, however, is that the plight of the independent newspaper now trying to operate under the dictation of the typographical union will be lost in the larger issues. This committee is not primarily concerned with labor controversies. However, I believe that a campaign to destroy the efficiency of the composing room is more than a mere labor controversy. The practices which I have described, it seems to me, have nothing to do with any of the legitimate objectives of a labor union; that they should be treated apart from general legislation governing labor disputes and terminated forthwith by specific legislation.

STATEMENT OF THEODORE A. SERRILL, ASSOCIATE MANAGER IN CHARGE OF THE INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS DIVISION, PENNSYLVANIA NEWSPAPER PUBLISHERS' ASSOCIATION, HARRISBURG, PA.

Mr. SERRILL. Thank you, gentlemen, and I appreciate the opportunity to appear before this committee.

My name is Theodore A. Serrill. I am associate manager in charge of the industrial relations division of the Pennsylvania Newspaper Publishers' Association, a non-profit-business corporation, chartered under the laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

I have been requested, and by a representative of this committee, to appear before this committee and to submit a prepared statement in advance, in answer to questions placed before me by this committee, regarding the effect of union contracts upon smaller city newspaper printing and publishing in Pennsylvania."

Senator, if you want me to read this into the record, I will be glad to do so.

Senator CAIN (presiding). Not necessarily. I would encourage you to either summarize it from what you have written, or pursue an entirely different tack, if you would care to. We would like to have your statement in the record, and if you think it can best serve as an instrument for argument and questions, by ourselves, we would like to have you proceed in that way. It is a matter of how best you can give us the information that you know we are desirous of having, namely, the problem as it appears to be in your experience in Pennsylvania.

Mr. SERRILL. I believe it would be best to follow this and interpolate. Senator CAIN. That will be perfectly satisfactory. Go right ahead, sir.

Mr. SERRILL. I have here a table which shows the make-up of daily newspaper publishing in Pennsylvania. It will be apparent that prac-tically all newspapers in Pennsylvania are small business. In fact, with the exception of the three in Philadelphia, and the three in Pittsburgh, all papers in Pennsylvania could be so construed. Therefore, it is a State-wide problem with us, and I would say that because we represent nearly 10 percent of the daily publishers in the country, it is a problem facing the Nation rather than just our State. The daily newspaper press in Pennsylvania currently comprises:

The Pennsylvania Newspaper Publishers' Association is the only State-wide newspaper association in Pennsylvania.

It represents 127 dailies ranging from 1,415 circulation to more than 700.000 circulation; 124 weeklies and semiweeklies ranging upward from 800 circulation; and 6 legal journals, 2 of which are dailies.

Among my responsibilities with the membership of this association is the task of assisting the nonmetropolitan-or smaller-city-daily and weekly newspaper publishers with respect to their labor and industrial relations problems and to help them negotiate their initial and renewal contracts with union locals that represent groups of their employees.

In Pennsylvania, a definition of a nonmetropolitan, or a smallercity newspaper could include all daily and weekly newspapers other than those published in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, the two metropolises of this Commonwealth.

The problems which this statement will discuss affect these smaller newspapers in more pronounced form conversely in proportion to the Size of the communities and the publications' circulations.

Just as a matter of memory, I might point out that one of our six large metropolitan papers, with approximately 300,000 circulation, employs 66 situation holders in the composing room. Yet one of our 30,000 dailies employs over 30 situation holders in the composing room. You see, it is a greater proportion as the circulation decreases.

In fact, I might point out that in this small field approximately 50 to 60 percent of the total over-all cost of operation is pay roll, and of that, 60 percent, or more than half of the pay roll, is in this one department of which we speak.

Mr. MEREDITH. May I ask a question?

When you say a "situation holder," you mean an employee?
Mr. SERRILL. An employee; that is the term.

My statement will confine itself to the possible direct and indirect effect of union contracts upon the average smaller-city newspaper, bearing in mind that 100 daily papers in our State possess a circulation of less than 20,000.

And that is in a highly industrialized State.

As I say, the problem is not one of the more industrialization, the bigger the newspapers. It might be conversely as to that particular point.

Because of the wide field to be covered, I should like to confine my remarks to this one major craft union, that union's locals having contracts with 82 of the 130 daily newspapers in this State.

This union, the International Typographical Union, an affiliate of the American Federation of Labor, also has contracts covering the publication of about a score of weekly newspapers in Pennsylvania. I might interpolate that the problems affecting the dailies are the same problems that affect our weeklies in lesser degree.

The next greatest number of contracts by any union in the newspaper printing and publishing industry in Pennsylvania affects not more than 35 dailies; that is, the Pressmen's Union, the international union covering that craft. And these pressmen's contracts are primarily in the metropolitan field and in the larger of the smaller-city

areas.

As a matter of record, I might point out that the smaller-city newspaper publishers do not usually have contracts with many of the other AFL or CIO affiliate unions, such as do many of the metropolitan newspapers.

ITU, through the membership of its 47 locals in Pennsylvania having contracts with 82 daily newspapers, comprises more than half of

the newspaper composing-room employees in Pennsylvania. A good many, sir, of our very small dailies are open shop-have no contracts with the union.

The last report of this union, issued in midsummer 1946, shows that its membership in Pennsylvania comprised 5,414 journeymen, 308 apprentices, and 337 pensioners at the end of the ITU fiscal year May 20, 1946.

This includes printers employed in commercial printing shops. Senator CAIN. What does the pensioner mean in the sense in which you use it there?

Mr. SERRILL. It means a man who has retired from the trade and who is on the pension rolls of the international, and at the present time receives a pension each month from the international, that pension to which he has subscribed through dues during the period in which he has been a member.

I have said that the ITU locals represent the largest mechanical department of newspaper publishing, and I again have gotten ahead of my story when I say that a survey conducted by this association last year, and rechecked last month, shows that more than 50 percent of the total expenditures by small-city newspapers went to wages. salaries, and commissions for all departments, and approximately three-fifths of this 50 percent, or 60 percent of the 50 percent, went to mechanical department pay roll.

I want to emphasize that it has often been said in small-newspaper circles that publishing profit, if there be any, lies within the sound operations of a composing room. If you get off balance in your costs within this one department, which is the primary manufacturing department in newspaper operation, then you are very likely to go from a profit into a loss status.

The ITU, through its locals, makes contracts with newspaper management concerning a wage scale and the working conditions in composing rooms in which their members are employed.

Officers and members of these locals are under obligation to submit to newspaper management proposed contracts which embody ITU general "laws."

And as has been said before, these general "laws," as my predecessor has said, should be in direct quotes. They are laws imposed unilaterally by an international union upon an industry, and they are not laws such as have been enacted between the employer and the employee.

These are the minimum working conditions under which ITU members shall be employed in union composing rooms. They are regulations enacted by an international convention of delegates, named by locals of the ITU."

These conventions are held every year. These "laws" are enacted by ex parte action of the union membership without agreement or consultation with management. Management is not present when these "laws" are enacted. Management is not consulted in any respect. One of these "laws" reads:

No local union shall sign a contract guaranteeing its members to work for any proprietor, firm, or corporation unless such contract is in accordance with international law and approved by the international president. No member holding acitve membership in any local union shall sign an individual or private contract with any employer, agreeing to work for any stated length of time, wages, or conditions. The union alone has the power to contract for conditions, wages, and hours.

Thus, it can be said that these "laws" bear directly upon contractual relationships.

Selected laws, and their effect upon smaller-city newspaper publishing are given herewith.

Then, if you will care to have me do it, I shall go through each one of these clauses as I see that they affect smaller newspaper publishers. Senator CAIN. Go right ahead.

6-YEAR APPRENTICESHIP PERIOD

Mr. SERRILL. Article I, apprentices, section 1, requires that apprentices

shall serve an apprenticeship period of 6 years before being admitted to journeyman membership in the union

* *

While there has been some modification of this requirement, extremely long-term apprenticeship has proven a stumbling block to smaller-city newspaper publishers who would upgrade their learners or trainees as rapidly as their skill and mental capacities would permit. In its last convention, ITU modified this law to permit upgrading of 1 year within the 6-year apprenticeship term.

Senator CAIN. That means, in effect, bringing it down to 5 years. Mr. SERRILL. That means bringing it down to five, or they could bring it down more. That has been loosely interpreted, and I would say that in my observance, the only effect of that law in Pennsylvania has been to upgrade some few apprentices for a period of about 6 months.

Many smaller city newspaper publishers feel that this requirement is costly, because it prevents them from training individuals within the composing room; for example, in the operation of a linotype machine, a casting machine, or hand composition, or some other part of the over-all trade of printer.

You will recall, sir, that during the war, when we were terrifically short of manpower, many operations were broken down into specific segments and personnel were trained in that particular operation, and an over-all supervisory group of personnel, familiar with the whole craft, observed and watched and controlled the whole operation.

We are not permitted to do that in newspaper composing rooms, even though there is a tremendous scarcity of help in that particular composing room.

Some publishers have discovered that they can train printers much more repidly in their smaller, more elemental composing-room operation that ITU law allows. There is the feeling that this law was instigated at the request of larger city locals whose membership is accustomed to being employed in highly departmentalized operation. Senator CAIN. That law governs all operations, be they small or large or medium-sized?

Mr. SERRILL. I might pause for a minute and tell you a little bit about the history of ITU.

It might be said that the typographical-union movement started in Philadelphia, Pa. The first contractual negotiation, or in fact the first typographical strike in the country was in Philadelphia.

At that time, Philadelphia was the biggest city in the United States. These unions have spread through the metropolitan areas first, and thence to the smaller and smaller communities.