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Show !; Washington . . . Up W Ity Juke iurn The Senate Human Resources Resour-ces Committee began consideration consid-eration )ast week on the Equal Treatment of Craft and Industrial Indus-trial Workers Bill, commonly referred to as tho Common Situs Bill. This legislation would legalize secondary boycotts boy-cotts in the construction industry, in-dustry, a practice made illegal by the passage of tho Taft-Hartley Taft-Hartley Act in 1947 and the liandrum-Oriffin Act of 1959. This change would permit a union to close down an entire construction project because of a dispute with on subcontractor subcon-tractor even though the other oth-er subcontractors were not involved in the dispute. It could even permit a construction construc-tion union to close an industrial indus-trial plant by enlisting a sympathy strike from a plant's unionized employees. The building trades unions contend that legalizing common com-mon situs picketing would give them the same rights industrial unions now have in pressing job grievances. They have been denied the coercive tactic since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1951 that involvement of neutral companies com-panies in a labor dispute amounted to an illegal secondary second-ary boycott. Organized labor has, in recent years, intensified intensi-fied its campaign to legalize common site picketing because be-cause of growing concern over the increasing use of nonunion non-union labor in the construction construc-tion industry, a trend encouraged encour-aged by high wage scales and non-productive work rules in the building trade unions. In other words, this bill is a carefully conceived mechanism mechan-ism to grant total control of America's largest industry, construction, and total control over all that industry's employees em-ployees to the Building and Construction Trades Department Depart-ment of the AFL-CIO. What is of grave concern to me is that the push for this legislation is not coming from the "people", but from union officials. A recent independent independ-ent survey shows that only 12 of the public -- including just ,'l()"o of the members of union families - favor the legislation of common situs picketing. What is equally alarming is the effect this legislation will have not only on the business community but on the workers work-ers in whose name the bill is being advocated. Unemployment Unemploy-ment is higher among the building trades than virtually any other occupation. Part of the reasons is that the high cost of construction in recent years has priced many people out of the market. Yet by using this measure, the unions will further increase construc tion costs which will inevitably inevit-ably lead to incrased unemployment unem-ployment in the building trades. This measure could severely damage economic recovery, re-covery, and could be disastrous disas-trous to organized labor as well as the rest of the nation. The issue of common situs picketing in the construction industry has been debated in the courts and in the Congress for over a quarter of a century. The prohibition against common situs picketing picket-ing has stood the test of time, the majority of the American people do not want the legislation, legisla-tion, and it should not become law. |