there. They will unload that for you, and then you bring the empties back here and put them in this siding and take your train and go on to Ogden." He probably will get in there just under the scratch of the 16-hour law. The application of that double class or combination service rule would mean that he did all this work for nothing, except there might be some additional miles in it going back there. Maybe he made 3 or 4 hours time doing it. All he would get would be the miles he ran over and above 248. That is one of the issues in this controversy today. This matter of running men long miles and running them without any limit to where you are going is the question we have now before us in this interdivisional-run question. I think I said when I was on the witness stand before that if we were now running between A and B and the carrier said, "We would like to put certain trains on running them through to C," which we will say is only 40 miles further, we might settle that in conference, or if it got so bad we might even arbitrate; but when they say, "We want you to run from A to Z through half a dozen terminals and back," or wherever they want us to run, then that raises a question in your mind whether or not there isn't a limit beyond which I don't want to go in arbitration. I have That is about what we are confronted with in arbitration. told these carriers and tell them again, tell them for the record, sure, we will seriously consider arbitration if we know what we are going to arbitrate. We say on the interdivisional run, you people have never brought in here any specific matters on this except that you want a blanket rule that we have to do anything and everything, and we don't know what it means. If you will go back home and institute what you think you want to do about interdivisional runs and you put those runs on the board, if you serve notice on our committee you want to establish four runs running between A and C, and the men know what you are going to do and you have set up the runs how the men are going to operate, that if a man goes down on No. 1 he comes back on No. 2 or No. 4, whatever it is, so the men will know what the conditions are that are going to be imposed on them there and know how to arrange their homes accordingly, then they will talk to you about that. If you can prove to the men that it is not a little bit inhumane and out of line to ask men to do this sort of thing, they may agree to arbitrate that with you. But if you say you are going to run us from A to Z and you don't care what the conditions are, the men won't arbitrate that sort of thing because I don't think they should. To some extent this December 21 proposition suggests that they do that, that they go back on the property and for a period of a year bring to the attention of our people what they want to do under this blanket rule they are seeking now. We will talk to them about it. We will even bring the chief executives in and they will undertake to help to work it out. If they can't, then the point in it is that we have got to go to Dr. Steelman and he will tell us what to do with it. You see, we have a principle involved in some of these declinations to arbitrate. Some of us worked long and hard to get the Railway Labor Act established. We came in here with a labor board up in Chicago that both the carrier and ourselves had refused longer to appear before. We had to have something. We came down here and took the Newlands Act. We revised it and we set up what we call the Howard-Barkley bill, which didn't pass the first time. Then we got the carriers together and agreed on the Railway Labor Act, and it passed. It is not compulsory arbitration; no; and we thought it would work out all right. I still think it will work out all right if neither side attempts to inject something which is beyond the limit of what we might consider fairness and then say, "We are going to insist on arbitrating." That is where we stand on that particular feature. I want again to say it doesn't matter about personalities with us. We don't think it is fair or that it is fair treatment or fair application of the Railway Labor Act that either party to one of these disputes say, "If we can't get on this thing" We haven't gotten into the merits, we don't know what the merits of this interdivisional run is yet, you know. They want the right to run crews anywhere. We haven't got the merits before us on it. "If we can't agree on what we set up, then you have to agree with us it has to be arbitrated, and the arbitrator must be so and so." We think the principle of voluntary arbitration, as set up in the Railway Labor Act, is due to be wiped out with that sort of agreement, because that means we are agreeing to write into the Railway Labor Act compulsory arbitration, and at the same time we are asked to accept the principle that a certain person will be the arbitrator. I thought that was reserved and I know it is reserved in the Railway Labor Act that if we can't agree on the arbitrator, the Railway Labor Act provides machinery for naming the arbitrator. I have said before on this witness stand that I am more in favor of arbitration than I am emergency boards, and I think that we ought all of us to be persuaded in that direction, particularly when we have a national emergency. We have as much interest in this national emergency as anybody. I said we had 11,000 members out of our Brotherhood alone in the last world war and we lost 400 of them. We have 1,000 men in this war, and we have buried some of them too. So the public outside of the railroad industry is not alone with the interest that centers around war. We want to help it all we can. I had nine nephews in the last world war. They didn't all come back, either. I want to say one more thing about the situation of separation between the organizations. There was no written agreement between the organizations about our cooperating. It was a mutual cooperation that no one was tied to by anything more than just a moralˇobligation. We entered into it. The trainmen had been a year or more ahead of us in an effort to settle their differences. We were ahead of the engineers a little, and we all finally found ourselves wound up in the White House under Federal control. We did the best we could. We had mutual interests in all of these four rules. We had mutual interest in the 40-hour week and in the wage increase for the roadmen. Everybody had the same interest there because carriers put us on the same level with those four rules they wanted settled. We put ourselves on the same level with the 40-hour week and the increase in pay for the roadmen. When the last proposition was made to us on February 21 by the Board of Mediation they just handed us a document with three paragraphs in it, which we rejected. They didn't seem to point the way to anything very much, and we couldn't go along with it. We had made several propositions, at their request most of the time, after we got into mediation. Our February 6 proposition as far as our Brotherhood was concerned was as near to bringing us together as anything we had written prior thereto. Subsequent to that we addressed and filed with them this February 13 document which said Put all the rules, those the carriers had suggested and those the employees were seeking" we were not seeking any put them in moratorium for the time being. Put the 40-hour week into effect now, and then give these men an increase that is somewhat comparable to the increases being granted to employees in other industries where they have similar skills and responsibilities. That was our third and last proposition. Of course the next we got was the proposition from the Board of Mediation on February 21 that tied us in again with the December 21 proposition and offered us 212 cents more. I think it would up at 2712 cents instead of 25 as we started in. But it tied in with the thenrising cost of living. So when we got the 22 cents it would just absorb the cost-of-living increase. Senator MORSE. You mean February 21 or 24? Mr. ROBERTSON. February 21. We never had any February 24 as far as our brotherhood is concerned. That was a proposition affecting only the trainmen. That is my understanding. Senator MORSE. That was never subsequently submitted to you by the Mediation Board? Mr. ROBERTSON. The February 24 proposition that was put in the record by Mr.. Loomis contained three paragraphs, and those three paragraphs were identical with the three paragraphs which constituted a total proposition filed with us on February 21 by the Board. Senator MORSE. That clarifies it. Mr. ROBERTSON. We didn't go along with that. However, I am not familiar with what took place after the trainmen's organization withdrew from our joint handling. It was not a matter of whether we would agree with the trainmen to withdraw. I didn't feel, as one of the cooperating organizations, that I had anything to say about it. Any organization had a right to withdraw and go its own way and make the kind of settlement that they felt they were justified in making. I have no criticism to find with that. We met in Cleveland on January 4. The trainmen and our organization met in the same hotel. We adopted resolutions, they did and we did, with respect to declaring the attitude of our respective organizations on the proposition that we had taken back. Both rejected it. I know nothing as to the extent to which the trainmen's brotherhood bound itself by the action of its committee to the particular matters involved and covered in the December 21 proposition, but I know now our people expected us to handle it. We were not in a position to indicate any sympathy with accepting these three paragraphs which the Board handed to us on February 21 and which are embodied in the February 24 proposition made to the conductors and trainmen. So, on the evening of the 23d of February, when Mr. Kennedy advised us that he would like to have a meeting of the chief executives and our subcommittees, we met, and Mr. Kennedy told us in very plain language what they expected to do; that they had decided to undertake to make a settlement, and they were going to make the best settlement they could, and they thought the time had arrived that they should tell us that is how they felt, that they were going to undertake to make a settlement for themselves. When he finished, knowing that they were working jointly with the conductors, I said to Mr. Hughes, of the conductors, "Mr. Hughes, does that also express the views of the conductors?" I wanted to know how many more were left in this joint discussion. He said, "No." Then I turned to Mr. Kennedy, and I said, "How about the hearings that are going on with the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare on this proposition? Are you folks withdrawing from that, too?" He said, "Oh, no, we are going to go right along with that." That is all the questions I was interested in. I said no more, and the meeting adjourned. Senator MORSE. I suppose that matter would not be within the discretion of any of you to withdraw, would it? Mr. ROBERTSON. That is what I had in mind. We were here at your suggestion, not our own. Senator MORSE. I would like to ask one question, Mr. Robertson. You have referred here to the desire to work out an honorable settlement. Speaking hypothetically now for a moment, I presume that in due course of time we shall move out of this very dark international picture that presently confronts us, into a period of time when we are at least not endangered by the threat of war and we return to what is called normal economic conditions, more or less, and the railroads return to private hands. Do you think that the experience of the brotherhoods in this case, and the failure to reach an agreement which you think is fair, will be conducive to a greater desire developing on the part of the workers for the use of economic action against the carriers in times of peace than otherwise would be the case if you could reach what you call an honorable settlement now in this case? Or, to put my question in different form, do you think there is a serious danger within this industry that the failure to settle this case is building up a resentment in the membership of the brotherhoods that will express itself in the form of a danger of a greater degree of economic action in the future, once we return to more or less normal conditions? Mr. ROBERTSON. No, sir; I do not. Senator MORSE. You do not think that the workers will be more inclined to strike in the future because of their experience in this case, once you get back to peaceful conditions? Mr. ROBERTSON. I don't think so; no, sir. Senator MORSE. You think they will be perfectly willing to let bygones be bygones? Mr. ROBERTSON. Oh, yes. They generally do. Senator MORSE. So we do not have to worry, in the settlement of this case, as to the future effects of it on labor relations? Mr. ROBERTSON. I don't think so, Senator. I believe, Senator, if I may add one word, notwithstanding that we have had Government control, if the White House itself were not exercising some degree of, shall I call it, watch or observation over this thing, and the carriers were just as free to negotiate with us as they were when we first started in, I will say as they are usually in negotiations, I think we would have settled this before now. Senator MORSE. That being true, if that is true, do you not think it would be a pretty good idea to get the case out of the White House? Mr. ROBERTSON. I wish you had it out of there tomorrow, and these railroads were not sheltered by the long right arm of the Government; yes, sure. I can't speak for the carriers, but judging from the impressions I got from the Secretary of the Army, I would interpret his statements, some of them, rightly or wrongly, as indicating that they are not so free to deal, themselves. He is the gentleman. He had to send someone to Pittsburgh to settle the Monongahela connecting railroad. I haven't talked to these gentlemen about it, but it would seem to me that in addition to having Government control along with Army control, I don't know how much of their power to settle these things is taken away from them. Senator MORSE. Would you be in favor of a recommendation of this committee that the railroads now be returned to private operation, and Government seizure cease? Mr. ROBERTSON. Yes, sir, I would endorse that 100 percent. Senator MORSE. Could that be done with an understanding you would not resort to strike action during the emergency? Mr. ROBERTSON. Yes, sir. We would not resort to strike action. We would first start in and spend all the time we could, trying to settle this question. Senator MORSE. I am not talking about first. I am talking about final. For the period of the international emergency that confronts our country, are you willing to enter into a no-strike agreement with the carriers for the present time, with the understanding that these railroads be returned to the carriers, and the White House step out of the picture, and you resort to the collective-bargaining table, it being well known that you will do your best to work out an agreement, but even if you failed, you still would not resort to strike action? Mr. ROBERTSON. Without strike action, Senator. I tell you frankly, so far as I am concerned, while any emergency is on, we can't have a strike in our brotherhood without the sanction of the international president, which will not be given while this emergency is on. We will try to work these things out ourselves, and if the carriers are free to work them out, and we are, I don't have much belief that we can't do it. I understand there have been two things standing in the carriers' way here. They may say I am all wrong, but that is my view. Through the White House they negotiated a settlement for the switchmen's union, with a moratorium clause that they wouldn't undertake to improve their rates of pay or working conditions or rules for a period of 3 years. They didn't give them any consideration whatever for any change in our economy in that 3-year period. They set up certain rates of pay that they should have. Whether any of the carriers or ourselves are willing to admit it, there has been that barricade to get over. No one wants to do any better for us, apparently, than they did for the switchmen away back in October last year. 1 |