"10% Deduction"

For 17 tiresome days proposals for railway wage cuts bumped across a long, white-clothed table in Chicago's Palmer House with counterproposals for increased railway work. On one side of the table sat nine railroad presidents representing the management of 210 carriers, hard-pressed to meet their fixed charges. On the other side of the table sat the chiefs of the 21 standard railroad unions, no less hard-pressed to supply employment for their 1,500,000 members. Scattered about the smoky red-paneled room were some 150 other union representatives who made up the Railway Labor Executives' Association.

Last week the bumpings finally ended in an agreement by union workers to accept what they called a "10% deduction" in their wages for one year. By this cut the railroads saved some $210,000,000 in operating expenses. Baltimore & Ohio's Daniel Willard, chairman of the Presidents' committee, declared the agreement was "the greatest single step toward the reconstruction of American business and industry since the Depression."

The rail presidents went to Chicago to meet the unions with the single purpose of negotiating a 10% wage reduction. The labor chiefs were sanguine enough to hope the Chicago conferences would produce "something to take home to the boys." But the railroads, staring bankruptcy in the face if they failed to meet $400,000,000 worth of obligations maturing this year, had little or nothing to give "the boys."

The play-by-play score of the Chicago meetings indicated that the unions did most of the proposing. The management executives sat tight, batted the proposals back in the following manner:

P: Labor asked for a joint study of the feasibility of a six-hour working day. Management refused but in Washington the U. S. Senate ordered the Interstate Commerce Commission to look into the matter.

P: Labor asked for a joint study of retirement insurance, elective workmen's compensation, amount of wages to be paid an employe upon dismissal. Management agreed.

P: Labor asked a guarantee that as much work would be made available in 1932 as in 1930. Management refused.

P: Labor asked management jointly to petition Congress for a $1,000,000,000 Federal bond issue to eliminate grade crossings. Management refused.

P: Labor asked that it be protected! against loss of employment from railroad consolidations. Management could not comply.

P: Labor proposed that employers establish railroad employment bureaus in New York, Chicago and Washington. Management agreed.

P: Labor asked assurance that the lines would discourage "company" unions. Management refused.

All this arbitration could have been got through in a day. The prime point, wage reduction, developed into a bitter, inch-by-inch retreat of the employes' representatives.

First the unions offered to take a 5% "deduction," so called because base pay remains theoretically unchanged. They next consented to a 7 1/2% cut, then to one of 10%, if the roads would use 3 1/2% for unemployment relief, or if they would promise to request no other reduction for 24 months. To all this President Willard shook his grey head. What the lines did with the $210,000,000 they would save in wages was, he insisted, their own affair. He assured the union leaders, however, that an upturn in railroad economy would put men back to work not only in the railroad industry but in many another industry as well.

The conferees had reserved rooms at the Palmer House for a week. The week ran out. They rented them for another week. That week ran out too, but by this time something had been accomplished. Ten of the 21 unions involved agreed to the 10% cut, fearing that if they did not do so the roads might gain actual reductions in the base pay rate by recourse to the Railroad Labor Act. Later six more unions swung into line. The Longshoremen's Association withdrew from negotiations, determined to adjust their difficulties separately with the half dozen roads that employ them. Then two more unions went with the majority. That left only two of the Big Four Brotherhoods, the trainmen and the firemen & enginemen still outside the agreement.

President of the trainmen is ponderous Alexander Fell Whitney, who began railroading as a news butcher and later became a brakeman on the Illinois Central. The firemen & enginemen look for leadership to David Brown Robertson, onetime engine-wiper on the Pennsylvania. He is suaver, smarter, more conservative than most union executives. As "final answers" and "last appeals" began to occur almost daily on both sides, it became evident that Trainman Whitney and Fireman & Engineman Robertson were engaged in playing Alphonse-&-Gaston to each other. Each wished to be the last to capitulate. In the end Fireman & Engineman Robertson, who is also chairman of the Railway Labor Executives' Association, tendered the honor to Trainman Whitney.

Grim in defeat, Mr. Whitney said: "In view of the circumstances now confronting us, for which we are not responsible, we feel that . . . the Brotherhood should join the representatives of the other standard railway labor organizations dealing with the wage matter and undertake to make the best settlement possible."

Close to midnight the agreement between Management and Labor was signed. The conferees scattered, a tired lot. "Uncle Dan" Willard, having let his 71st birthday slide by almost unnoticed in the thick of the discussions, was glad to announce: "While the proceedings were necessarily slow, the discussion was in a pleasant manner." Not once had Labor raised the threatening bludgeon of a rail strike to mar the proceedings.

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