Memorandum on the Atomic Energy Labor-Management Relations Panel.

Memorandum to: Director, Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service; ,Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission; Chairman, Atomic Energy Labor-Management Relations Panel

The uninterrupted functioning of our atomic energy program, without strikes or lockouts due to labor-management disputes, is essential to the national security. In achieving this we must, of course, place primary responsibility upon the parties to such disputes to make every effort to effect peaceful settlement through collective bargaining and the full use of mediation and conciliation. Prudence, however, dictates that we have special facilities available which may be used voluntarily to assist in arriving at peaceful adjustments of disputes which would imperil the program when the normal process of collective bargaining and mediation and conciliation have been fully utilized without constructive results. The Atomic Energy Labor-Management Relations Panel exists for this purpose.

Because of the importance of the work of the Panel, I requested you to confer from time to time with one another in the interest of the Panel's maximum effectiveness. The Panel has functioned well in the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service. You have, however, reported to me your conviction that the Panel's special role as an aid to settlement only after the regular conciliation and mediation process has failed to bring about agreement, would be better understood, and the Panel's effectiveness as a supplementary facility to assist settlement thereby further advanced, if the Panel ceased to be an instrumentality of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service and were established in the Atomic Energy Commission. You recommend that this be done.

I concur in your recommendations, and request that you work out the necessary administrative arrangements and submit them to me before you put them into effect.

DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER