RAILROAD WORK RULES DISPUTE

FRIDAY, JULY 26, 1963

U.S. SENATE, COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, Washington, D.C.

The committee met, pursuant to recess, at 1:10 p.m., in the caucus room, Old Senate Office Building, Hon. John O. Pastore presiding. Senator PASTORE. Yesterday a question was raised as to the ambiguity of section 6 of Senate Joint Resolution 102.

I have a letter here from the Secretary of Labor, W. Willard Wirtz, addressed to me. I would like to read it into the record. Doing it this way, this matter will come to the attention of all parties, and they can make whatever observations they care to make if they so desire.

DEAR SENATOR PASTORE: As requested by Mr. Levin of your committee, I have reviewed the transcript of the hearings before your committee on Thursday indicating that questions were raised concerning the nature of an order of disposition of a nonwork rule issue submitted to the Interstate Commerce Commission under section 6, as well as the period of time that such an order would remain in effect. To clarify the legislation in these respects, I have prepared the following amendments to sections 6 and 8:

On page 5, line 18, after the word "appropriate," insert a new sentence to read as follows:

"Determinations arrived at under this section shall remain operative until the parties reach agreement regarding the matter involved or, if no agreement is reached, for 2 years following the date such determination becomes effective."

In other words, it places a 2-year limitation. It is only an interim order. There was a vagueness as to whether or not it would be a permanent order. We raised that point yesterday.

On page 6, line 17, before the word "continues," insert the phrase: “or a determination under section 6."

The letter is signed by Secretary Wirtz.

I will see that each of the members gets a copy of this letter. Our first witnesses will be the representatives of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers.

Gentlemen, you have submitted a statement to us. Please identify yourselves for the record and then proceed in your own fashion—I mean any way you want-to present your case.

I am going to ask the members of the committee to conform with the rule that we have all agreed upon-that witnesses be allowed to present their case without interruption, the members will make notes, and then we will alternate according to seniority in asking questions.

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STATEMENT OF ROY E. DAVIDSON, GRAND CHIEF ENGINEER; A. F. ZIMMERMAN, ASSISTANT GRAND CHIEF ENGINEER; AND MAX MALIN, ECONOMIC COUNSEL, BROTHERHOOD OF LOCOMOTIVE ENGINEERS

Mr. DAVIDSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Senator PASTORE. There is no limitation to the overall amount of time that each Senator can consume in questioning, but out of deference to other members I think after taking up 15 minutes you ought to pass to the next one.

This does not apply to witnesses. The witnesses can take as long as they like.

Mr. DAVIDSON. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, my name is Roy E. Davidson, and my position is that of grand chief engineer of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers which has just entered its second century of service.

With me today is Assistant Grand Chief Engineer A. F. Zimmerman, who is chairman of our national rules committee and as a former member of the Presidential Railroad Commission has had intimate contact with every stage of this dispute.

Also joining me here is Mr. Max Malin, sitting at my right, who has had many months of work with our committee through this dispute. He is our economic counsel and has had extensive experience in labor economics and statistics and has served as a top labor relations adviser in several agencies of the U.S. Government.

With the permission of the committee and in the interest of expeditious coverage of the salient features of this dispute and the proposed legislation, I will offer my own overall comments and Mr. Malin and Mr. Zimmerman will then supply supporting analysis and factual data in detail.

Each of us will be happy at the conclusion of our testimony to answer candidly and fully every question that the committee may desire to have answered.

There are several large questions which I know must be in your minds, concerning which I feel I must answer personally, based on my own experience going back over a period of some 45 years in the railroad industry.

Like every other officer of my organization, I served first as a helperfireman, then as a locomotive engineer. I believe I am familiar with the work of the men running this Nation's trains and their lives and their way of thinking.

I believe you are entitled to my frank response to these questions: Question. The first question: Can railway labor-leadership or rank and file--accept the proposal before you as a reasonable way out of this very difficult situation?

Answer. My answer is "No, emphatically no." In a free democratic union such as the one I have the honor to head, the rank and file through local committees represent the ultimate authority. I regarded it a great tribute to have been reelected by acclamation in our convention last year. Even if I had the temerity or desire to commend this proposed legislation to the members of my union, I am certain that there would be an even more enthusiastic acclamation for my removal from the union's leadership.

Question. The second question: Are there two sides to the study of the development of this crisis? Are the railway labor organizations really sticking their feet in the sand, so to speak? Are we blocking progress? Have we simply said no on every occasion, rejecting every reasonable proposal made for the termination of this dispute? Do we have a vested interest in procrastination, in interminable stalling and delay?

Answer. The answer to that must be that there are indeed two sides to this dispute. The side that you have already heard has the advantage of an astute, well-financed, constantly iterated public relations campaign conducted in an antilabor press. Public opinion is assailed by a one-way barrage of catchwords, misstatement, misinterpretations. We rarely have equal opportunity to be heard, such as we have before your honorable committee.

The truth is that railway labor is well aware-in my opinion, more aware than any other group that its job and welfare are dependent on safe, reliable, fast, frequent, economical service to the public.

The record of our productivity is one of unparalleled growth; no other industry can match it. At times we are the only group fighting to keep the railroads in shape to do the jobs which the railroads can do best and at the lowest cost.

Our work depends on a railroad system that is big enough and efficient enough and motivated enough to do the transportation job that a growing economy needs, to serve small business as well as big business, to serve the smaller communities along with the larger.

We are against wholesale abandonments of service, wholesale mergers for the purpose of reducing service and for the elimination of competition, wholesale layoffs, and unilaterally imposed conditions of work that impair safety, impair frequency, reliability, and speed of service, and impair the ability of the railroad system to handle growing traffic or to meet defense needs.

We are for collective bargaining with vigorous mediatory assistance to provide a fair and equitable solution to this dispute. We have rejected no proposal that would assure that result. On the contrary, we have repeatedly made the only proposals which have progressed the matter toward a fair and equitable termination.

And I should add that despite the carriers' public utterances to the contrary, there had been considerable progress toward the settlement of this dispute and-under the surface-the dispute is not nearly so hopeless as it might seem to the public.

We have been extremely forbearing in process our own demands to the point of creating an emergency. There is no reason why the carriers should precipitate a stoppage with their demands. What we need to do is to get back to the bargaining with the removal of incentives for not bargaining.

Question. The third question: Is there a better way out of this dispute than the one proposed to your committee?

Answer: I have no desire whatever to criticize anybody connected with the proposed legislation. I am sure that the motives of all connected with it were honorable. I am also certain that it would be hard to conceive a proposal more unsatisfactory to railway labor, more fraught with danger to our freedom, or less likely to result in ultimate harmony and cooperation between railway management and railway labor.

The proposal before you is compulsory arbitration. I respect the President and I respect the Secretary of Labor. I understand how difficult it must have been for the President-in the midst of problems that would overwhelm the capacity of any human being-how difficult it must have been for him to find even a little time for this complicated

matter.

The President's advisers are themselves extremely busy men, men with heavy responsibilities in other areas. I regret that under the circumstances there was pressed on the President and accepted by him a resolution which in haste and confusion actually sponsors compulsory arbitration.

Secretary Wirtz says otherwise, and I admire not only his loyalty but his talent and persuasive skills as well. But he never even made an attempt to explain to the labor organizations that this proposal is not really compulsory arbitration. And you alone can judge whether his appearance before you-convincing as it undoubtedly was of the forensic ability of the Secretary-was at all convincing concerning the thesis he was here to advocate.

Of this I am certain: I could never explain to the members of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers that this resolution is not compulsory arbitration. With my own people my record of persuasion is not too bad. But if I ever tried to persuade the good brothers that I could detect a difference between the resolution and compulsory arbitration, I think they would persuade me that my usefulness as chief executive was over.

Now, I will go further. I will say this to you in all candor and sincerity. The resolution is not only compulsory arbitration, it is compulsory arbitration with the added evil of an utterly unfair preferment for the demands of management.

Beyond that, the arbitrator which this resolution seeks to impose on us is about the last arbitrator to whom we would think of submitting our dispute. The Interstate Commerce Commission is far less competent to deal with this dispute than any other arbitrator previously suggested, formally or informally. And the record of the Interstate Commerce Commission conveys no sense of reassurance whatever concerning bias and prejudgment.

Mr. Chairman and members of the committeee, the resolution before you is harsh and unfair in the extreme, dangerous in the extreme, radical in the extreme. It is also unnecessary. There is the alternative of free collective bargaining guided by truly vigorous, insightful mediation. That alternative has been virtually unused in this case to date.

To the small extent that it has been used it brought this dispute close to peaceful negotiated resolution.

You have it within your power to maintain the advantages of the constructive creative forces of free collective bargaining in a free American society. Let us renew our faith and confidence in the American way of doing things.

Now, with the committee's permission, I would present to you Mr. Max Malin.

Senator PASTORE. All right, Mr. Malin.

Mr. MALIN. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, we have prepared also an outline statement which would assist the committee,

we believe, in understanding how this dispute reached the stage where it fell to the Congress to deal with it and what is specifically wrong with the resolution that is before you as we view it and what we propose is a better way for you, an alternative to this proposal for compulsory arbitration.

To understand how the dispute got this far, one must go back to the very beginning, because there was a stage which provided the basis for whatever else happened.

The carriers' original notices-which are still labeled as "fair and equitable" by Carrier Witness Wolfe, and which are still threatened as promulgations of the carriers to this very day-constituted a body blow to the effective bargaining relationship between the parties.

First of all, the carriers demanded a wage cut-I repeat a wage cut-of 33% percent for some road employees and a cut of 371⁄2 percent for other road employees.

Many of the men running the trains of this country were being asked to take cuts of that magnitude.

Now, it is obvious that this demand could not result in collective bargaining. We are living not in the medieval ages. We are living in a relatively advanced period of labor relations. I believe this is an unheard of proposal.

It was a demand that mocked the bargaining relationship of the parties. Wage cuts en masse and sizable reductions of the general wage level are unthinkable in our times, and I believe you will find support for that statement in the manner in which Emergency Board No. 154 reported on that question.

Secondly, the carriers in their demands asked the organizations to give up virtually every working condition that had been negotiated to the date of their notices.

Now, this was not a request to modify rules, to eliminate some, to replace some. This was the demand for the cancellation of virtually every rule covering the working conditions of the operating employees in the entire industry.

It was also demanded that the organizations agree to the demise of collective bargaining over these rules. Not only were the rules to be abrogated but there was to be no further bargaining concerning these rules.

And these rules in more general parlance are known in other industries as the working conditions of the employees.

Management demanded for itself exclusively the right to make, keep, revise, discontinue rules as it alone might determine, whenever they might choose or not choose to do so, all without collective bargaining.

Now, what does this mean? It means that this was not the usual evolution of collective bargaining where one party says to the other, "There are some changes we ought to consider. Will you discuss them with us?" This was revolutionary, not evolutionary.

At one stroke it was sought to eliminate from collective bargaining virtually the entire field of working conditions.

Now, this is obviously repugnant to the entire history and development of collective bargaining in this industry and to the express requirements, obligations of the Railway Labor Act.