tor for 13 years and was then transferred to the Milwaukee Road Lines East at St. Paul, Minn., in 1925; became a member of Division 336, Order of Railway Conductors, in 1916, in which I held various local offices, and in 1929 was made secretary of the General Committee of Adjustment on Milwaukee Lines East. In January 1932, I was elected chairman of the General Committee of Adjustment, Milwaukee Lines East, and served in that capacity for 8 years and 3 months; in 1943 I was appointed grand division trustee of the Order of Railway Conductors, and on April 1, 1940, was appointed vice president, serving in that capacity until Í succeeded Mr. F. H. Nemitz as president of the order on August 1, 1950. As vice president, I participated in a number of national wage and rules movements in 1941, 1945, 1947, 1948, and our present dispute in 1949 and 1950. All of my adult years have been closely connected with the railroad industry, both as a worker and as a representative of conductors. In particular and this I would like to emphasize-ever since early 1948, as vice president of our organization, and since August 1 of this year as its president, it has been my duty to function as principal officer of the conductors in the formulation and handling of the dispute in which your committee has so rightly interested itself. The factual statements expressed in this document and the opinions offered for your consideration are thus based upon an intimate and intensive acquaintance with the dispute extending from its very inception to the present time, a period of 2 years and a half. The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Hughes, I would like to ask: Have you served your organization by appearing in proceedings of this kind heretofore involving problems such as this? Mr. HUGHES. I have. Knowing in only the most general way that your committee has undertaken an investigation, and having had as yet no specific questions put to me by the committee or its staff, it is necessary that the information which follows give you the high lights of the events and of our position. Any statement of reasonable length about our dispute with the railroads must be but a short summary of the principal features of a controversy which commenced formally on March 15, 1949, and which is still unsettled. I now offer into the record the Report to the President by the Emergency Board dated June 15, 1950, as ORC exhibit No. 1. The CHAIRMAN. The report will be received and marked as an exhibit and made a part of the proceedings. (The document referred to was marked "Exhibit ORC No. 1," and is on file with the committee.) Mr. HUGHES. The proposals of the Order of Railway Conductors and of the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen, advanced jointly by service upon the carriers on March 15, 1949, had for their purposes throughout the adjustment and correction of major inequities-inequities in treatment of the railroad employees represented by these two labor organizations. The program of the ORC and BRT began taking shape early in 1948 with the adoption of a tentative rules change program. Between that time and March 1949, developments within the railroad industry itself created further gross inequities which required amendment to, and expansion of, the original tentative pro gram. I might add that that development was the adoption of the 40-hour week for the nonoperating employees. It can be said that the main and most important purpose of our joint-rules proposition is to eliminate unjust discrimination and inequities that now plague yard- and train-service employees. The ORC and BRT were encouraged to present their program by a long history of precedents in the railroad and other industries, all of which point to the necessity for the correction of basic inequities between workingmen. These precedents may well be characterized as expressions of the basic public policy of the United States in relation to wages, hours, and working conditions of employees of the railroads of this country. Upon assuming control of the railroads during World War I, the Director General quickly realized the need for revision upward of wage rates, and on January 18, 1918, he created what became to be known as the Lane Commission. That Commission reported on April 30, 1918, and the substance of its report became official in the famous General determined to create and quickly did create the Board of Lane Commission's report and General Order No. 27, based thereon, increased lower-paid employees' wages by greater sums and higherpaid employees' wages by lesser sums. Accordingly, and simultaneously with the promulgation of General Order No. 27, the Director General determined to create and quickly did create the "Board of Railroad Wages and Working Conditions because of "tremendous" discontent throughout the railroad industry caused by the unequal wage increases and the consequent distortions of established wage relationships. The new Board was directed to hear and investigate matters presented by the. railroad employees or their representatives affecting three specific conditions, the first and most important of which was 1. Inequalities as to wages and working conditions whether as to individual employees or classes of employees. * A principal and first task of that Board was to consider the complaints of the organizations representing railroad operating employees, generally speaking the highest-paid workers, that the adherence of General Order No. 27 to the Lane Commission's theory of unequal wage-increase treatment had imposed grossly unfair treatment upon those operating employees. The deliberations of that Board resulted in explicit and early correction of the distorted relationships, the correction being ordered in and becoming effective through supplements 15 and 16 to General Order No. 27 (issued April 10, 1919, effective retroactively as to wage rate to January 1, 1919). When the Government turned the railroads back to private management in 1920 the Congress enacted the Transportation Act of that year, which in title III created a Labor Board whose decisions as to wages and working conditions were to be governed by criteria set forth specifically in that statute, as follows: (1) The scale of wages paid for similar kinds of work in other industries; (2) The relation between wages and the cost of living; (3) The hazards of the employment; (4) The training and skill required; (5) The degree of responsibility; (6) The character and regularity of the employment; and (7) Inequalities of increases in wages or treatment, the result of previous wage orders or adjustment. These seven factors were referred to as Guides and Standards for the Presidential Boards by Mr. J. Carter Fort, vice president, Association of American Railroads (pp. 989-990, report of proceedings) in his statement in a hearing before Subcommittee on Railway Labor Act (amendment of the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, S. 3463). The temporary situation mentioned by Mr. Fort as applying to the seventh specified consideration named in the Transportation Act, 1920, quoted above, was eliminated by supplements 15 and 16 to General Order No. 27, both effective January 1, 1919, over a year prior to the termination of Federal control and enactment of the Transportation Act of 1920. In other words, supplements 15 and 16 corrected certain then existing inequalities as to wages and working conditions to individual employees, or classes of employees, in train and engine service. But, contrary to the impression sought to be given in Mr. Fort's testimony, the Congress expressly realized that further inequalities and inequities would continue to creep into the railroad wage structure, particularly as the result of piecemeal wage adjustments, and Congress therefore expressly provided for their removal in the seventh criterion listed in the act of 1920. The so-called seven standards were the basic dogma of the Railroad Labor Board, and ever since have continued to receive recognition as sound criteria for wage-rate adjustments from both the employee organizations and the railroads themselves. While it is true that since 1926, when the Railway Labor Act was adopted, the seven standardsand particularly the seventh standard relating to the correction of inequalities-have not found specific expression in that particular act, their fundamental validity has never been challenged and indeed their substance may be seen as governing numerous awards and recommendations of arbitration tribunals and emergency boards functioning under the Railway Labor Act. Furthermore, the railroads and their employees were governed during World War II by the Stabilization Act of 1942, though procedurally their adjustments were differentiated from those of other industries. That statute permitted the President, among other things, "to adjust wages or salaries to the extent that he finds necessary in any case to correct gross inequities. On the day following the enactment of the Stabilization Act President Roosevelt issued Executive Order No. 9250, implementing and giving specific content to the legislative recognition of the necessity for correction of inequities, even during a period of stringent wartime wage control. The order permitted the War Labor Board and other stabilization agencies to raise wages to the extent "necessary to correct maladjustments or inequities [and] to correct gross inequities." With minor change, the act as thus applied by President Roosevelt, governed the railroads and their employees throughout World War II and inequalities and gross inequalities were corrected by direct nego tiations, by recommendations of emergency boards, even by arbitration awards of the President himself, corrections which received the approval of the stabilization authorities. * * ** We of railroad labor are of course aware of the Defense Production Act of 1950. I believe it to be most significant therefore, that in an address to the Nation on September 9, 1950, President Truman made the particular point that— Existing inequities in wage rates, of course, can and should be corrected * * *. The still-existing dispute between our two labor organizations and the railroads is concerned with exactly what President Truman singled out for mention after the Defense Production Act had been approved by him-"existing inequities in wage rates." We believe that it is sound industrial-relations doctrine that inequalities and inequities among working people be corrected; that this principle is public policy of the United States; that the principle has been applied even under the compulsion of an all-out war economy; that the Defense Production Act of 1950 and the President's views thereon foreshadow application of that principle in our current defense emergency; and that the inequities and inequalities which caused our organizations to serve the notice of March 15, 1949, must and shall be corrected. Elimination of unequal treatment of the employees for whom we speak will terminate our current dispute. Any solution which permits these bitter inequalities and inequities to remain is in the most realistic sense no solution whatever. Let me illustrate by reference to two important proposals we have advanced on behalf of train-service employees. We seek to correct a situation under which we are paid single daily rates in each class of road and yard service, while engineers and firemen enjoy upward adjustments in their daily rates depending upon the increasing size and capacity of the locomotives used. We also seek to correct a situation under which conductors and brakemen in road-passenger service must deliver 150 miles of transportation for a basic day's pay, while engineers and firemen in that same service receive their full daily rates for service of 100 miles. The McDonough-Watkins-O'Malley Board was appointed by the President to investigate this present dispute. As background information concerning the members of that emergency I offer into the record ORC exhibit No. 2, which exhibit I feel is self-explanatory. The CHAIRMAN. The exhibit will be received and placed in the record. (The document referred to was marked "Exhibit ORC No. 2," made a part of the record, and is as follows:) ORC EXHIBIT 2 MCDONOUGH, ROGER I., associate justice, Utah Supreme Court: Address: Office-State Capitol Building, Salt Lake City. Home-1516 Harvard Avenue, Salt Lake City, Utah. Birth and family: September 29, 1892, Park City, Utah; father-Bartly; mother Mary Josephine (Power) McDonough; married-Mildred Anne Devine, May 14, 1932; children-Roger James, Anne Devine, John Vincent, Edward Joseph, Gerald Michael. Education Park City High School, 1908-11; Notre Dame University, 191415; University of Utah Law School, 1923-25. Career Admitted to Utah Bar, 1925; county attorney, Summit County, 1925–27; practiced Park City, 1927-29; elected district judge, Third Judicial District of Utah, 1928, for term 1929-33; reelected for terms 1933-37, 1937-41; elected associate justice Utah Supreme Court for term 1939–49; chief justice Utah Supreme Court 1947-49; reelected associate justice in 1948 for term 1949-59. Bar memberships: American; Utah State. Associations: American Judicature Society; American Law Institute. Politics: Democrat. Religious affiliations: Roman Catholic. Labor cases: Referee National Railroad Adjustment Board-First Division, Novem- Member emergency boards: Presidential (under sec. 10, Railway Labor Act) River Terminal Presidential (under sec. 10, Railway Labor Act) Chicago, Rock Member fact finding board: (Presidential) United States Steel WATKINS, GORDON S., professor of economics, University of California: Education: Fargo (N. Dak.) College, 1911-12; A. B., University of Montana, Career With University of Illinois, 1917-25, was associate professor of economics there, 1920-25; since 1925, professor of economics, University of California, Los Angeles. Other activities: Advisor to Danish Commission on Public Monopolies, 1912-22; member editorial board American Economic Review, 1924-26; contributing editor Social Science since 1925; personnel counselor, Title Insurance and Trust Co., Los Angeles, 1927-29; director, Prudential Building and Loan Association, also of Institute of Los Angeles Stock Exchange; trustee, Haynes Foundation since 1943. Public service: Member Alien-Enemy Hearing Board, U. S. Dept. Justice Associations: American Economic Association; American Association for Author: Survey of the Revenue System of Delaware County, Pa., 1918; Labor Religious affiliation: Congregationalist. |