that complete mutuality of remedy is not always possible or even desirable, the refusal in this type of situation to secure for the employer the practical benefits of his promise to arbitrate offends one's sense of fairness and may be said to border on the preposterous. By agreeing to arbitrate unsettled grievances arising under the collective agreement, the employer trades a measure of his economic sovereignty for the union's promise to maintain uninterrupted production. When the union breaks that promise, the only effective remedy is an injunction against the strike; an order to the union to arbitrate, unaccompanied by an order to end the strike, is worthless.

We are thus led, ineluctably, to a final conclusion: the NorrisLa Guardia Act stands urgently in need of amendment. Fundamentally, however, this problem is only a part of a much larger one; the truth is that our present federal labor laws contain so many overlapping and conflicting provisions that they should all be replaced by a single comprehensive and internally consistent law.

Such thoroughgoing legislative reform can be achieved, if at all, only in the long run. It would require the appointment of a tripartite commission of tremendous prestige, charged with the formidable task of drafting the new labor law and supported by a competent staff and by an adequate budget. The commission would have to be allowed to work with complete independence and without limitations of time. Whether under these circumstances it could achieve unanimity, or even consensus, is doubtful enough, although there are grounds for optimism on that point; 286 but the most crucial test would lie still further ahead. Assuming that the commission were to produce a draft statute, all its work would go for nothing if the bill were then to be subjected to the normal legislative process. It is doubtful that the Sermon on the Mount, much less a complicated labor statute, could escape extensive amendment in the committee sessions and the floor debates of the Congress, and the amount of improvement to be accomplished by these means would be no greater in the one case than in the other.

Meanwhile, the situation created by the Sinclair decision is serious enough to require an immediate though partial remedy. This could be effectively accomplished in either of two ways. Congress could amend section 4 of the Norris-La Guardia Act so as to permit federal courts to enjoin strikes in violation of the duty to arbitrate. Alternatively, it could amend Norris-La Guardia by adding a provision similar to the section in the Pennsylvania anti-injunction law making it inapplicable in any case "involving a labor dispute

...

286 The Advisory Panel on Labor-Management Relations Law (see note 208 supra) was able to reach substantial agreement on a wide variety of issues.

which is in disregard, breach, or violation of, or which tends to procure the disregard, breach, or violation of, a valid subsisting labor agreement"287 arrived at between the employer and representatives of his employees, provided the plaintiff has not committed an unfair labor practice or violated the agreement.

287 PA. STAT. ANN. tit. 43, § 206d (1952).

V. The Airlines and the Railway Labor Act: the 1936 Amendments

When the airlines were brought under the Railway Labor Act in 1936, there was really no consideration given to overall labor policy and very little to the question of preventing strikes. Indeed, the only serious strike in the short history of that then fledgling industry had taken place in 1932 and had been lost by the employees involved.

Rather, in 1936, the airline pilots, seeking protection for their rights to organize, chose that offered by the Railway Labor Act, which was then considered the "last word in sound labor legislation."

The materials given here should provide some of the needed background for the consideration given below to the airlines' dispute with the Machinists' Union in 1966 (see XI).

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