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Amendment No. 5, in favor of deletion. A
vote No is a vote against Amendment No.
5, against deletion.
Cast your votes.
Has every delegate voted? Delegate
Boileau.
DELEGATE BOILEAU: Mr. President,
please record me as voting No.
THE PRESIDENT: Delegate Boileau
votes No. Has every other delegate voted?
Does any other delegate desire to change
his vote?
The Clerk will record the vote.
There being 69 votes in the affirmative,
and 69 in the negative, the motion is lost.
Amendment No. 5 is rejected.
You now have before you section 1.17
open to amendment. Amendment GG has
been distributed. It will be Amendment
No. 14.
Delegate Adkins.
DELEGATE ADKINS: A parliamentary
inquiry.
THE PRESIDENT: State the inquiry.
DELEGATE ADKINS: I understand by
the vote just taken that section 1.17 was
just deleted. Am I correct in that state-
ment ?
THE PRESIDENT: No, sir. The effect of
the tie vote was to reject the amendment
and leaves before you section 1.17 subject
to amendment.
DELEGATE ADKINS: Then I do wish
to offer amendment GG.
THE PRESIDENT: This will be Amend-
ment No. 14. The Clerk will read the
amendment.
READING CLERK: Amendment No. 14
to Committee Recommendations R&P-1 and
R&P-2 as amended by S&D-9 by Delegate
Adkins. On page 4, section 1.17, Collective
Bargaining, in line 40 after the word "bar-
gain" add the words '"individually or".
THE PRESIDENT: The amendment is
offered by Delegate Adkins.
Is there a second?
(The motion was duly seconded.)
The amendment is seconded by Delegate
Cardin.
The Chair recognizes Delegate Adkins to
speak to the amendment.
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DELEGATE ADKINS: Mr. President
and ladies and gentlemen, the substance of
this amendment is quite simple in its lan-
guage implications. It simply would insert
the word "individual" in section 1.17 in
order to make constitutionally clear the
right of an employee to bargain on his own
behalf, as well as his right to select a col-
lective bargaining unit other than himself.
I think there is no great reason to debate
the matter at considerable length, except to
say that I think the amendment is one that
practically every delegate would at least
subscribe to in theory, and I would hope
that after consideration they would realize
if the Constitutional Convention sees fit to
make this a constitutional right that at
least they will protect the right of the indi-
vidual to conduct his own affairs should he
elect to do so.
T.hat, I think, is the sole substance of
this amendment, and I would urge the Con-
vention to adopt it.
THE PRESIDENT: Delegate Sickles.
DELEGATE SICKLES: Mr. President, I
rise in opposition to the amendment, and I
do it reluctantly, not as far as the sub-
stance of the amendment is concerned, but
because I had hoped that as a result of a
lot of work by many of us in the past few
days we had come to some language which
clearly showed that we were talking about
a concept of collective bargaining with a
minimum guarantee in the constitution, but
that we were allowing the legislature broad
latitude. I subscribe to everything that
Delegate Scanlan has said with respect to
the limitations of the language that we
currently have in this section, but I think
that the mischief of this amendment, and
I really question whether the sponsor in-
tends the mischief, but the mischief is that
as it reads, the basic concept of collective
bargaining has implications far beyond
what those of us who have had some ex-
perience in this field can really imagine,
because what we are talking about really
is not an individual right. The reason we
want the right to bargain collectively is
because we want to respect and understand
that there is this class right, and the prob-
lem over the years has been that individual
bargaining has been a device which has
been very, very divisive.
There was a time in our history when
the employers required individual employ-
ees who were about to work for them to
sign contracts which said that they would
not form labor organizations; that they
would not try to bargain collectively. These
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