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University Daily Kansan Tuesday, March 13, 1962
Featherbedding Decision May Face Kennedy
By Lyle C. Wilson
WASHINGTON —(UPI) —The report of the Eisenhower Railroad Commission to President Kennedy spotlights the 1947 effort made by Congress to deal with featherbedding labor contracts.
The effort was made during the 80th Congress during development of what became the Taft-Hartley Labor Relations Act. The House adopted a strong prohibition against featherbedding. The Senate forced the House to back down on that and substituted some less inclusive language.
THIS SENATE SUBSTITUTE was a pretty good example of double talk, maybe triple talk. It was loose and invited loose interpretation by the courts. It forebade labor contracts that required an employer to pay for work not performed or not to be performed, and the employment of persons in excess of reasonable requirements. This provision has been accepted by some persons as a solid prohibition of featherbedding. For example:
Lawrence Fertig, a columnist-economist-industrialist wrote in his recent book, "Prosperity Through Freedom," that "the Congress of the United States has expressed itself in no uncertain terms about feather-bedding . . . that no employer should be forced to employ or agree to employ any person or persons in excess of the number required to perform actual services."
Fertig concedes, however, that this language is washed out by agreements forced by big unions supported by friendly judges who construe the phrase "reasonably required" in a way favorable to featherbedding. Full crew laws affecting the railroads also support featherbedding in many states. The featherbedding practice, however, extends to most of the large industries, notable steel, transportation, publishing and entertainment.
FRED A. HARTLEY JR. wrote a book, "Our New Labor Policy" after enactment of the Taft-Hartley Act of which he was co-author. He wrote of his regret that the strong House provision against featherbedding was scuttled. Of the Senate substitute, Hartley expressed doubt as to how it would work in practice. The late Sen. Robert A. Taft wrote a foreword to Hartley's book. Taft explained why the Senate balked at the strong House prohibition of featherbedding.
"The attempt to prohibit feather-bedding," Taft wrote, "requires an elaborate Federal investigation of conditions in each industry and the exercise by the government of an expert opinion of the number of men required to do each job. The extreme case of paying men for doing nothing, made an unfair labor practice by the new (Taft-Hartley) law, can be more easily dealt with, but there are literally thousands of borderline cases different in every industry which would require a vast extension of government regulation of labor and industry."
Former President Dwight D. Eisenhower established the Railroad Commission in November 1960, leaving it like a time-bomb on President Kennedy's doorstep. It should be noted that the commission has met one of Taft's stipulations with respect to the prohibition of featherbedding. The commission just completed an elaborate investigation of conditions in one industry. railroads.
Taft also stipulated the exercise of expert opinion by the government. A decision whether featherbedding actually exists in a given industry may confront the Kennedy administration. It could be easier to avoid it than to make it.
Students Travel Via Bathtub
LONDON — (UPI) — Four British university students last night reached London after sailing down the Thames in a bathtub from Abingdon, 80 miles away.
Spring Must Be Near
MOUNT VERNON, Ill. — (UPI) — There was snow in the air here yesterday but Mr. Elnora Wilbanks reported a harbinger of Spring—someone stole her lawn mower.
FROM WASHINGTON TO COSTA RICA—Six KU students are among students who will spend their junior year at the University of Costa Rica. They left KU Feb. 18, spent four days in orientation training in Washington, D.C., and arrived in Costa Rica Feb. 23. They will stay there until the end of the academic year in November. They are pictured with five Kansas congressmen.
The group includes:
Front row, left to right: Eileen Maddocks, Lawrence; Charlene Edmondson, Lawrence; Liss Chauvin, Univ. of Calif. at Santa Barbara; Beatrice
Thompson, Univ. of Calif. at Santa Barbara; Elizabeth Elmblade, Univ. of Wyoming; Marilyn Caskey, Independence, Mo.; Loretta Jewett, Colorado Springs, Colo.; Christine Schell, Des Moines, Iowa; Katherine Gardener, Univ. of Calif. at Santa Barbara; Rebecca King, Emporia.
Back row, left to right: Congressman Robert Ellsworth; Robert D. Tomasek, assistant professor of political science, traveling with them; Barry Isaac, Mankato; Congressman Floyd Breeding; Donald Wilson, Larned; Congressman Garner Shriver; Gary Gossen, Wichita; Congressman Robert Dole, and Congressman Walter McVey.
Coed Solves Problems With Scooter
One KU woman solved her problem of cutting eight o'clock classes last fall. She bought a motor scooter.
Jill Kennett, Poplar Bluff, Mo., sophomore, finds the scooter more practical than a car because it maneuvers easily. And when she arrives at class, she can park it in the bicycle racks.
Miss Kennett has put 800 miles on her scooter since last fall. A trip to Lone Star Lake was the longest jaunt.
SHE SAYS SCOOTERS are easy to learn to drive and that her worst problem is keeping it from dying while driving up hills.
On hills, she explains, it is necessary to keep the scooter in low gear and then "when you get about halfway up the hill you feel as if you're going over backwards."
Miss Kennett remembers the first time she got on the scooter. She
32 College Bowl Teams Selected
Thirty-two teams have been drawn from a hat and matched for the first round of the College Bowl contest.
Alpha KappaLambda vs. Alpha
Phi Alpha; Acacia vs. Delta Tau
Delta; Pearson vs. Alpha Phi;
Alpha Tau Omega vs. Grace Pearson;
Gertrude Sellards Pearson vs.
Douthart; Sigma Alpha Epsilon vs.
Delta Upsilon; Chi Omega vs.
Stephenson; Templein vs. Kappa
Kappa Gamma; Jolliffe vs. Sigma
Nu; Gamma Pi Beta vs. Corbion;
Kappa Alpha Theta vs. Corbin counselors; Lewis vs. Foster; Phi Delta
Theta vs. Alpha Chi Omega; Sigma
Phi Epsilon vs. Joseph R. Pearson;
Beta Theta Pi vs. Miller, and Pi Beta
Phi vs. Alpha Omicron Pi.
Results of the first-round drawings were:
Seven members of the faculty will assist the Intermediary Board in the bowl project. Calvin VanderWerf, professor of chemistry, Marilyn Stokstad, associate professor of art, and James Seaver, professor of history are preparing the questions.
FIRST ROUND competition will be held in the Kansas Union, March 18, from 2:30 to 5 p.m. Rooms and time schedules for each team will be announced at a later date.
used the hand brake instead of the foot brake and was dumped off in the middle of an intersection. A few minor cuts and bruises were the result.
During the recent heavy snow-storms, she said, the scooter's usefulness vanished. It remained in the yard in front of Miss Kennett's rooming house until the snow thawed.
Miss Kennett hears many comments about her scooter because she is the only girl on the campus who drives one to class.
"MEN'S COMMENTS," she says, "range all the way from surprise to disgust."
One male student questioned her
at length about the cost of a scooter, its upkeep and advantages and disadvantages because he was interested in buying one.
Another time a man who met her walking asked incredulously,
"Aren't you the girl that rides the motor scooter?"
Miss Kennett thinks her funniest experience on the scooter occurred when she took her roommate to the grocery store.
"My roommate was perched precariously behind me holding two sacks of groceries," she says. "When we were almost home, one of the sacks split. Milk and bean soup were running all over the street in front of the apartment."
Father-Son Team Featured In 'Architecture and Music'
A father-son duo from Amsterdam, Netherlands, will present the second of two scheduled joint lecture-recitals at 8 tonight in Swarthout Recital Hall.
H. Th. Wijdeveld and his son Wolfgang will present the theme "Architecture and Music." They are sponsored by the department of architecture and architectural engineering.
The father is a pioneer in contemporary architecture and art. His
Wolfgang, his son, studied piano with William Andriessen and composition with Sem Dresden and William Piper. He was director of the Municipal Music School of Zwolle from 1936-46, and since then has been a professor at the Conservatory of Utrecht.
art magazine "Wendingen" was one of the first to publish Frank Lloyd Wright's works in 1922.
HRC to Hear Greeks Tonight
A fraternity president will appear before the Human Rights Committee at 7:30 tonight to uphold his fraternity's right to have a discriminatory clause in its national constitution.
Stephen Brawner, Merriam senior and Commander of the Sigma Nu fraternity house, will be the first to uphold the positive stand for the clauses to HRC, Brian Grace, Lawrence sophomore and chairman of the HRC said last night.
A Monday afternoon performance was attended by a capacity audience in Room 303, Murphy Hall.
Grace said that Brawner would present his views, then discussion would be open to those attending the meeting, to be held in the Big Eight Room of the Kansas Union.
Patronize Your Kansan Advertisers
Grace said that the HRC will decide what to include in the questionnaire to be sent to all Greek houses concerning question of the discriminatory clauses.
NOW!! 7 & 9 p.m.
Fun is Back . . . Laughter is
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Playmates Are Back
Stevenson Lashes Extreme Rightists
WASHINGTON—(UPI) - Adai L. Stevenson today criticized "extreme rightists" for over-selling communism and under-selling America.
Jr. co of Fe
Stevenson, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, denounced criticism of government policy in a speech to the 12th annual conference of national organizations sponsored by the American Association for the United Nations.
"The critics do not spell out what they want, and so we do not know whether they accept the basic facts of our age—that in a nuclear war, there would be not only, no win, but no winners," he said.
Stevenson hailed Lt. Col. John H. Glenn's space flight as having "joited us into a new awareness of confidence and hope."
"SOME OF US," he said, "have talked as if mankind were at the mercy of the drift of history, powerless to influence his fate, moving like a sleep-walker to some apocalyptic atomic doom—a mood as far removed from the earlier youth and optimism of our republic as is St. Paul from Jeremiah.
"I suggest that, in lashing out at a vast, overwhelming, irresistible communist take over, the rightists are not only over-selling communism. worse, they are under-selling America—and under-selling as well the stubborn will to be free which is communism's worst obstacle in every continent."
Stevenson pointed out that the U.N. outer space committee will start work next Monday with Russia ending a two-year boycott.
"Before we succumb to pessimism about the chances of any agreement on these measures, let us remember that, two years ago, a year of scientific cooperation on geophysical problems between all the nations of the world led to a treaty of neutralization and national self restraint in Antarctica," he said. "This treaty was a substantial effort to bring all the nations into war-reducing activities. Now it provides a model for the broader attempt to free outer space from the burdens and horrors of the arms race."
CHICAGO — (UPI) — Twenty-two Concordia college students jammed themselves into the bucket of a construction crane recently and then claimed the world's record for the feat.
Booths To Buckets
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