Danger Signal

In a week dark with threats of labor trouble, an angry, faraway hoot from the railway unions announced that they would tie up the nation's rail systems with a strike on Dec. 5.

No one really thought they would. But the announcement was a danger signal. The danger was less likely to be a strike than seizure of the railroads by the Government.

The unions, with one eye on the rising cost of living and the other on increased railroad revenues, whistled for a wage boost last spring. The five independent brotherhoods (engineers, firemen, conductors, trainmen, switchmen) demanded a 30% raise. Some 900,000 non-operating employes (shop workers, clerks, mechanics, laborers, etc.), members of 14 A. F. of L. unions, demanded a 30-c--an-hour increase.

So union bosses and railroad chiefs sat down like the old antagonists they were to an amiable discussion. But as arguments dragged through July and August, they be came more acrimonious. The unions maintained that their wages were sinking below the rising tide of wages in other industries. Railroads, wailing over "featherbed" rules (requiring them to pay the operating personnel for work not performed), said that wages were too high, if anything. As for increased productivity, that was the result of management spending millions of dollars to improve the efficiency of equipment. The railroads also declared hotly that the wage boost would cost them $900,000,000 and send them to the cleaners.

When direct negotiations collapsed, the regular mediation machinery took hold. Last week the President's fact-finding board recommended, among other things:

>7 1/2% increase for the operating brotherhoods.

>9-c-(equivalent to an increase of 13 1/2%) an hour boost for the non-operating employes, and one week's vacation with pay.

> 7 1/2-an-hour for employes of the Railway Express Agency.

> These increases to be retroactive to Sept. 1, 1941, and to last until Dec. 31, 1942 (on the theory that by that time the railroads may have sunk back into parlous dumps).

> The commission also suggested that the Government should give the roads permission to raise their passenger and freight rates.

Railroads, disappointed, said they would accept the proposal. But chiefs of the five operating brotherhoods, more disappointed, flatly rejected it, declared that they would, by gum, strike at the expiration of the 30-day waiting period required by the Railway Labor Act.

Next step was up to Franklin Roosevelt. For a long time he has had on his desk an executive order creating a defense Office of Transportation Coordination. Under various authorities he could take over the railroads. But there was still more than a possibility of a reasonable compromise.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.