reward, or discipline other employees, or responsibly to direct them, or to adjust their grievances, or effectively to recommend such action if, in connection with the foregoing, the exercise of such authority is not of a merely routine or clerical nature, but requires the use of independent judgment.'" This provision is not contained in S. 1119.

The Brotherhood is the lawful collective bargaining representative under the Railway Labor Act for approximately 10,000 employees embraced within the categories of clerical, office, stores, fleet, and passenger service employment on 5 major trunkline air carriers and 2 other aviation companies. The air carriers involved are Braniff Airways, Capital Airlines, Northwest Airlines, Pan American World Airways, and Western Air Lines. The Brotherhood also represents employees of Air Cargo, a ground service corporation jointly owned by air carriers, and Allied Aviation. This representation is governed by and performed within the framework of the provisions of the Railway Labor Act which is made applicable to common carriers by air engaged in interstate and foreign commerce by title II, section 201 thereof. The Brotherhood therefore has a vital and substantial interest in any proposal to amend the Railway Labor Act. The Brotherhood appreciates this opportunity to make its views known to the committee on the proposed amendment.

Section 48 of S. 308, if enacted into law, would affect the application of the Railway Labor Act to the air transport industry in two ways. (1) It would extend the coverage of the act which is now limited to common carriers by air to include "contract" carriers by air; and (2) It would restrict the coverage of the act so as not to include a large class of employees doing other than routine work. The primary interest of the Brotherhood is in the second part of the proposed amendment, which it must strongly oppose on the grounds set forth below.

The apparent purpose of the restrictive proposal in section 48 is to eliminate so-called supervisory personnel from the scope of the Railway Labor Act. We respectfully submit that no showing has been made which would warrant interference with and restriction of the present definition of "employees" covered by the Railway Labor Act which has existed for nearly three decades.

The definition of the term "employee" for the purpose of specifying the coverage of the Railway Labor Act is derived from section 1, fifth thereof (151 U. S. C. A. 5th) which reads as follows:

"Fifth. The term 'employee' as used herein includes every person in the service of a carrier (subject to its continuing authority to supervise and direct the manner of rendition of his service) who performs any work defined as that of an employee or subordinate official in the orders of the Interstate Commerce Commission now in effect, and as the same may be amended or interpreted by orders hereafter entered by the Commission pursuant to the authority which is hereby conferred upon it to enter orders amending or interpreting such existing orders: Provided, however, That no occupational classification made by order of the Interstate Commerce Commission shall be construed to define the crafts according to which railway employees may be organized by their voluntary action, nor shall the jurisdiction or powers of such employee organizations be regarded as in any way limited or defined by the provisions of this act or by the orders of the Commission.

"The term 'employee' shall not include any individual while such individual is engaged in the physical operations consisting of the mining of coal, the preparation of coal, the handling (other than movement by rail with standard railroad locomotives) of coal not beyond the mine tipple, or the loading of coal at the tipple."

This definition was continued in pertinent part by the provisions of sections 201 and 202 of the Railway Labor Act which extend the applicability of that act to airline operations. The distinction provided by these definitions is not between supervisory and nonsupervisory employees, as suggested by the proposed amendment, but between executives and officials on the one hand and subordinate officials on the other hand. Persons in the latter category are included within the coverage of the act.

The inclusion of subordinate officials (including supervisory personnel) along with other carrier employees in procedures for the settlement of labor disputes involving rail carriers dates back to the Transportation Act of 1920 (41 Stat. 457). That statute provided an early framework for the settlement of such disputes and section 300 (5) thereof treated subordinate officials as employees for the purpose of the statute. This definition was taken over in section 1 of the original Railway Labor Act which came into effect May 20, 1926 (44. Stat. 577)

and has been continued unchanged through other revisions of the statute during the past 30 years. The definition was made applicable to the airlines when the Railway Labor Act was extended in 1936 to cover employee-management relations in the air transport industry (49 Stat. 1189).

This definition as well as the other basic provisions of the Railway Labor Act was developed in a joint conference between representatives of the principal rail carriers and labor organizations involved and was submitted to the Congress as a joint management-labor proposal.

There thus exists a situation in which labor-management relations in transportation have been built up over a period of 35 years upon the basis that subordinate officials (including supervisory personnel) are to be treated as employees for the purposes of the Railway Labor Act. Countless agreements have been signed, and scores of mediations and arbitrations have been successfully conducted on that basis. During nearly 20 of those years the air transport industry has successfully functioned under the Railway Labor Act as it now stands. In these circumstances a basic change of the kind proposed should be made, if at all, only upon the basis of the strongest kind of showing. Nor should it be made as an incidental part of legislation which in large measure concerns itself with the regulation of the economic and safety aspects of air transportation but only after full consideration of the operation of the Railway Labor Act with hearings devoted solely to that purpose.

It has been suggested that the existing stable situation should be changed because the present coverage of the Railway Labor Act creates administrative and disciplinary problems for the airlines and because the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947 attempts to draw a distinction between supervisory and nonsupervisory personnel.

The problem for the airlines is asserted to flow from the fact that a person may be represented by a labor organization who at the same time is a company representative at a station or in a shop, thus giving rise to a divided loyalty or interest. It is therefore argued that such an employee should be deprived of his long standing rights under the Railway Labor Act. In Packard Motor Co. v. National Labor Relations Board, 330 U. S. 485 (1947), the United States Supreme Court characterized this argument as follows:

"There is nothing new in this argument. It is rooted in the misconception that because the employer has the right to wholehearted loyalty in the performance of the contract of employment, the employee does not have the right to protect his independent and adverse interest in the terms of the contract itself and the conditions of work," (p. 490).

Moreover, the Railway Labor Act specifically protects the authority of the carrier with respect to its personnel as it makes the act applicable to carrier employees only "subject to its (i. e. the carrier's) continuing authority to supervise and direct the manner of rendition of his service."

The fact that the matter has been treated differently in the industrial, nontransportation field by the Labor Management Relations Act is not only of little value as a precedent here, but indeed an argument against the proposed amendment. The handling of labor-management relations in the transportation field has long been recognized as requiring special treatment and procedures different from those applied to industry in general. It is for this reason that railway and airline labor-management problems have continued to be covered by a separate statute which differs in many vital respects from the National Labor Relations Act, as amended by the Labor Management Relations Act. The emphasis in the Railway Labor Act is on voluntary procedures, while the emphasis in the National Labor Relations Act is on compulsory decision of labor issues by a Government agency. This difference is strongly indicative of a greater maturity in labor relations in the transportation field, with less of acrimonious strife and sharply divided loyalties than may be experienced in other areas of activity. When the air transport industry was beginning its great expansion in the 1930's, Congress believed that its labor situation and the problems thereof were more closely akin to those existing in the railroad field than in the industrial field and so placed airline labor-management relations under the Railway Labor Act. The wisdom of this choice is evidenced by two decades of harmonious labor-management relations in the air transport industry during which period the industry has experienced a minimum of labor difficulties and a phenomenal growth which continues at an accelerated pace. The proponents of section 48 would now borrow from other fields where strife has been much greater than in the air transport industry. This, in our opinion, would represent a backward step rather than progress in airline labor-management relations.

Finally, since the proposed amendment is only to section 201, it would give rise to a precedent of separating the airline industry from the railroads and giving the two industries different treatment within the framework of the Railway Labor Act. This can only lead to confusion and disruption of stable labormanagement relations. Organizations such as the Brotherhood represent employees in both the rail and air transport fields. Such representation is governed by one statute with the same basic features. If this 1 statute is now in substance to be split in 2, the advantages of uniformity disappear. If, on the other hand, a proposal such as the present one is to lead to a revision of the coverage of the statute in both the rail and the air transport field, it clearly gives rise to problems of such scope that it should be considered only as a separate piece of legislation after full hearings and consideration with respect thereto.

Senator MONRONEY. The next witness is Mr. Ramsay Potts, president of the Independent Military Air Transport Association.

You may proceed, Mr. Potts. We appreciate your coming before the committee and giving us the benefit of your views.

STATEMENT OF RAMSAY POTTS, PRESIDENT, INDEPENDENT MILITARY AIR TRANSPORT ASSOCIATION

Mr. Ports. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I greatly appreciate this opportunity to come here and make a statement on behalf of our member carriers.

I have just come back from a week in Nevada where I participated in Operation Miss Cue. We went out into the desert 4 times early in the morning and 4 times we had to come back; but the exercise did impress one thing on me, and that is that if we have an atomic war or a hydrogen war, we are certainly going to need the airlift resources of all of the carriers in this country, both to conduct the war and to help in any emergency conduct of aiding cities in distress, speeding supplies to vital points, and so on.

I represent and speak for the member carriers of the Independent Military Air Transport Association, otherwise known as IMATA. We appreciate the opportunity to present our views on S. 1119, introduced by Senator Magnuson, and S. 308, introduced by Senator Bricker.

We believe that these bills contain desirable features but that additional amendment is needed to achieve the goal of a stable but dynamic air transportation industry that can serve the best interest of our commerce and national defense.

With the lapse of time and with changing conditions in the economy and the air transportation industry, the basic act of 1938 naturally requires continuing amendment. We believe these changing conditions can be met by the amendment process rather than by a complete rewriting of the act, but since the proposed amendments create an essentially new status for the independent carriers, our members have more than a normal industry interest in this legislation.

The member carriers of our association are as follows: Aerovias Sud Americana, Inc., St. Petersburg, Fla.; All American Airways, Inc., Miami, Fla.; American Air Export and Import Co., Miami, Fla.; American Flyers Airline Corp., Fort Worth, Tex.; Associated Air Transport, Inc., Miami, Fla.; California Eastern Airways, Inc., Oakland, Calif.; Capitol Airways, Inc., Nashville, Tenn.; the Flying Tiger Line, Inc., Burbank, Calif.; Overseas National Airways, Oakland, Calif.; Purdue Aeronautics Corporation, Lafayette, Ind.;

Seaboard and Western Air Lines, Inc., New York, N. Y.; Slick Airways, Inc., Burbank, Calif.; Trans-Caribbean Airways, Inc., Transocean Air Lines, Oakland, Calif.

You will note that this list of carriers contains the principal allcargo carriers who have pioneered and developed the air-freight business in this country and those large irregular air carriers who have made such notable contributions to the defense effort since World War II and during and since the Korean war.

Perhaps the best way to summarize the status and contribution of these carriers is to quote from a recent ICC examiner's report. This is from the report of Examiner Burton Fuller, ICC Docket No. 31451, in a hearing in a case which has just been concluded insofar as the hearing before the examiner is concerned. And on the basis of all the evidence before him, he made his findings in part as follows:

Irregular and independent air carriers of the class represented by the association came into being shortly after the end of World War II. They represent standby value for time of emergency, and also in day-to-day continuing service for the Department of Defense in time of peace.

One of the association members supplied the air logistics in the carriage of personnel and supplies to Greece to implement the Truman or Marshall plan aid to Greece.

That was in 1947.

Members of the association flew a substantial amount of flights in the Berlin airlift. One of the member carriers lifted 37 percent of the total material across the Atlantic in 68 flights, together with a total of 77 shuttle flights between Berlin and Frankfort.

Members of the association were the first carriers to devote planes, equipment, personnel, and facilities to the Korean airlift. During the first 39 months of the Korean airlift, five of the member airlines accounted for approximately 55 percent of the total ton-miles performed by all commercial contractors, amounting to 752 million ton-miles of high priority freight.

That was in the early stages. In the latter stages the military were able to take over for themselves.

In addition to the movement of group military passenger personnel in the domestic field, association members have conducted substantial charter and contract cargo operations for the military establishments. From 1950 to 1952, one of them

Slick Airways

and from 1952 to 1954, another—

Flying Tiger Air Lines—

conducted a contract cargo charter air service for the Navy Department, during which period over 13 tons per day were moved over a 3,200-mile route from the New York area via Philadelphia, Washington, Norfolk, San Diego, and Los Angeles. During the period involved, more than 52 million ton-miles were operated.

One of the members has been operating an average of 5 aircraft under a contract with the Air Force for the movement of high priority freight, primarily jet engines, between Texas and California, operating an average of 9 million ton-miles per year. Since April 1954, another of the members has been operating a similar cargo contract service for the Air Force, amounting to close to 17 million ton-miles per year.

Senator MONRONEY. Is it not a fact that the air logistics are planning to turn over much of the flying and transport of high priority parts and freight to private contract carriers?

Mr. POTTS. Since this report of the examiner, the Air Force has inaugurated an overseas jet-engine lift to shorten up the pipeline and to prevent having to stock a large inventory of jet engines.

They figure that will result in a considerable saving, and three of the member carriers of our association have been awarded those contracts. Its first increment for the 3 months ending June 30 has not been very large, but if it works out as they expect that it will, they intend to enlarge the engine airlift; and we expect that three of our members will be engaged in that.

In addition to that, these domestic airlifts of engines and critical parts between bases and depots and the same two carriers who have performed so well have had their contracts extended for that.

Those two carriers are American Air Export and Import Co. in Miami and Capitol Airways in Nashville, Tenn.

In addition to the achievements of the IMATA members summarized by ICC Examiner Fuller, IMATA carriers have developed an extensive freight service across the North Atlantic, have been moving critical supplies, dependents, and troops to Europe, North Africa, and the Far East, have been supporting the build-up of the DEW line radar screen project in northern Canada, and have provided airlift for the relief of Haiti following Hurricane Hazel and for the emergency movement of food to Iceland made necessary by the general strike now in progress there.

The carrier who has built up this service across the northern Atlantic is Seaboard and Western. They have been recommended by the Civil Aeronautics Board for a Trans-Atlantic cargo certificate, we are told, but action on that certificate has been held up in the White House for a considerable time.

These are only a portion of the airlift activities of the IMATA member carriers and are summarized to indicate the variety of services being performed by these carriers and the worldwide geographic scope of their movements.

In performing these operations in 1954 the member carriers operated a total fleet of 101 aircraft, of which 34 were 4-engine and 67 were twin-engine planes. Thirty of these 4-engine planes are committed to the Civil Reserve Air Fleet, and in the event needed all of the remaining twin- and 4-engine planes in the combined fleet would be made available for the defense effort.

They are actually engaged in very large measures in the defense effort now when needed.

In terms of volume the member carriers operated a total of 117,929,386 ton-miles and 557,957,100 passenger-miles.

Although all of the amendments proposed by Senator Magnuson and Senator Bricker would to a greater or lesser degree affect one or more of the member carriers of our association, I shall confine my recommendations to, and focus my statement on, those proposed amendments which are of most vital concern to us.

The first topic I would like to discuss is the new class of supplemental service air carrier. One of the amendments proposed by Senator Magnuson to S. 1119 provides for the issuance by the Civil Aeronautics Board of supplemental service certificates.

This class of carrier is defined, and the Board is empowered to include in such certicate "such terms, conditions, and limitations as are