The Railway Labor Act

Transportation during the 1920s was the domain of the railroads, which carried nearly all of the intercity passengers in the nation. The railroads delivered essentially all of the freight of the nation, and employed by far the most workers of any industry in the country.

The hazards of being a railroad employee, particularly those working as members of train crews, like brakemen, conductors, and engi­neers, or those working on the bridges, tunnels, and rights of way of the railroad, had resulted in a level of deaths and maiming previously unknown. Congress, taking note of the plight of railroad workers, passed a spate of remedial legislation aimed at improving their working conditions and safety. Examples are the Boiler Inspection Act to lessen the risk of locomotive boiler explosions; the Safety Appliance Act to establish safety standards regarding ladders, handholds, and coupling devices on freight cars; and the Air Brake law, which required the instal­lation of air brakes on each railroad car.

Congress also addressed the concerns of workers who had little or no control over their wages or working conditions, and the concerns of railroad management and the public regarding disruptions of the nation’s primary transportation system through labor strife, work stoppages, and violence carried out by railroad workers. The result was the Railway Labor Act of 1926.

The Railway Labor Act, for the first time, provided a legislative scheme to insure workers the right to organize themselves into legally rec­ognized bargaining units, or unions. This required railroad management to accord the workers a voice in their conditions of safety, wages, and working conditions. At the same time, the law restricted the unions’ right to disrupt the nation’s transportation system through work stoppages and strikes except under the most controlled conditions, and only after federally mandated mediation between workers and management proved fruitless. Even then, the law provided that the president of the United States could require, under certain conditions, that employees continue to work under their existing labor agreements so as not to paralyze the nation’s commerce.

Except for the enactment of the Railway Labor Act in 1926, there had been no meaning­ful federal legislation affecting the larger world of workers and management since the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914. That statute had exempted labor unions from the constraints of the Sherman Antitrust Act, legislation that had been used by the courts to great effect in enjoining union strike activity. In 1932, Congress passed the Norris – LaGuardia Anti-Injunction Act,3 which further severely limited the power of courts to issue injunctions in labor disputes.

When the Roosevelt Administration took office in 1933 amidst the distress of working people during the Great Depression, it turned its attention to the general condition of workers outside of the railroad industry. In 1935, Con­gress passed the Social Security Act to provide protection to workers to cover the risks of old age, death, and the dependency of children, and to provide for the payment of unemployment ben­efits. Congress also, in 1935, passed the National Labor Relations Act (the Wagner Act),4 which extended to workers in the nation generally the right to organize, bargain collectively, and to “engage in concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid and protection.”

At this point, recognizing that the fledgling air carrier industry, similar to the railroad indus­try before it, appeared to be on the threshold of assuming some of the transportation needs of the country, Congress exempted airlines and their workers from the broader labor relations law of the Wagner Act and placed the air carrier industry under the Railway Labor Act (RLA), where it has remained. The pilots’ union, the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA), maintains that this result came about, at least in part, because of lobbying efforts by their organization in the early 1930s.

The first airline employee’s union, ALPA, was formed in 1931, but it had no legal stand­ing. The airlines required pilots to fly 120 hours a month, but during the depression in 1933, they announced that flight hours would be increased to 140 per month, and at a lower pay scale. A strike was called by the pilots and, in the absence of any law governing the situation, the parties agreed to refer the issue to mediation. Judge Bernard Shintag of the New York Supreme Court took evidence and ruled, among other things, that pilot monthly flight time should be limited to 85 hours per month. Although without the legal standing of enforcement, the ruling, known as Decision 83, was ultimately incorporated into the Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938.

Under the provisions of RLA, airline work­ers were given the same rights of organizing and collective bargaining as were railroad workers, and airline employees were similarly constrained from conducting work stoppages except under the very specific provisions of the statute.

The main purposes of the Act are:

* The statute intends to establish a system that

resolves labor disputes without disrupting

interstate and foreign commerce. The statute imposes on both labor and management the obligation to use every reasonable effort to settle disputes. This is the “heart of the Act,” as stated by the Supreme Court.

9 The statute requires that no change in work­ing conditions or wages be made during negotiations between labor and management. This is called “maintaining the status quo” and generally prohibits management from changing working conditions or wages and prohibits unions from striking or conducting any other type of “work action,” like slow­downs or sick outs, during this time.

• The statute prohibits management from interfering with any attempt by workers to organize themselves into collective bargain­ing units.

There are only two types of “issues” rec­ognized under the Act. Every type of actual or potential disagreement or dispute between the parties is classified as:

9 A “major dispute” is one that concerns wages and benefits, working conditions, or rules. These types of disputes are also called “Sec­tion 6” disputes and may, after exhaustion of all remedies under the statute, and while the “status quo” is being maintained during negotiations between the parties, result in strike action.

• A “minor dispute” describes all other dis­putes, and mainly concerns individual employee issues such a disciplinary action. Strikes are prohibited in minor disputes; instead binding arbitration is required in the event that the parties are unable to resolve the issue.

Procedures to be followed are:

1. The party desiring to change the provisions of the labor agreement must give a Section 6

notice of the desired change to the other side. This notice includes the initiation of nego­tiations after the “amendable date,” or the date that the agreement becomes subject to change.

2. The parties must enter into negotiations within 30 days and bargain in good faith.

3. Either of the parties may request mediation by the National Mediation Board (NMB), which appoints a mediator to assist in the negotiations. The NMB may not require either party to agree or to take any other action with respect to the issue.

4. If the NMB concludes that an impasse has been reached, so that no settlement of the issue is likely, it may offer to arbitrate the issue and issue a decision that will be bind­ing on the parties. Both parties must agree to be bound.

5. If either party refuses binding arbitration, a 30-day “cooling off’ period begins, during which mediation usually continues.

6. If no agreement is reached by the end of the 30-day period, either side may resort to “self­help,” that is, a strike by labor or the imposi­tion of new wages or working conditions by management.

7. If certified to the president by the NMB, a Presidential Emergency Board (PEB) may be convened to prevent “self-help.” The PEB has 30 days to investigate and report to the president, after which time an additional 30

days (a total of 60 days) is imposed on the parties to maintain the “status quo.” During this time, considerable pressure is exerted both by government officials and by the media (public opinion) to cause a resolution of the issue.

8. Congress is empowered upon a failure of all preceding efforts to legislate a resolution that is binding on the parties.

No Presidential Emergency Boards were convened during the 1930s, nor until after World War II. In fact, the first labor agreement in the airlines was not negotiated until 1939.5

It should be noted that the RLA was extended only to airlines, or “carriers” as defined in the Act, and not to other forms of transporta­tion. The trucking industry, buses, and shipping under the Merchant Marine fall under the NLRB.

Significant developments in airline labor relations, both before and after the deregulation of the airlines in 1978, will be discussed begin­ning in Chapter 30.

Endnotes

1. Time Magazine, August 26, 1935.

2. Pacific Air Transport v. U. S., et al.

3. 27 USC §101-115.

4. 29 USC §151-166.

5. Presidential Emergency Boards under the Railway Labor Act <http://www. ilr. cornell. edu/library/e_archive/ miscellaneous/airlines/emergency. pdf>.