Kahn, Mark L.

English

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Buffalo Law Review Volume 4 Number 3 Article 22 4-1-1955 Collective Bargaining in the Railroad Industry. by Jacob J. Kaufman. Mark L. Kahn Wayne University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.law.buffalo.edu/buffalolawreview  Part of the Labor and Employment Law Commons Recommended Citation Mark L. Kahn, Collective Bargaining in the Railroad Industry. by Jacob J. Kaufman., 4 Buff. L. Rev. 369 (1955). Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.buffalo.edu/buffalolawreview/vol4/iss3/22 This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at Digital Commons @ University at Buffalo School of Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in Buffalo Law Review by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ University at Buffalo School of Law. For more information, please contact lawscholar@buffalo.edu. BOOK REVIEWSCOLLECTVE BAEGAITIIG IN THE RALROAD IND-uSTRY. By Jacob J.Kaufman. New York: King's Crown Press, ColumbiaUniversity, 1954. Pp. x, 254. $3.75.Threatened or actual work stoppages on the nation's railroadshave long been a source of public concern, a concern which firstreceived legislative expression in the Arbitration Act of 1888.Since that time, there have been six major revisions in federallegislation designed to promote peaceful union-management rela-tionships in this industry. The latest occurred in 1934, when theRailway Labor Act of 1926 was substantially modified.This Act, as amended, provides a relatively elaborate pro-cedure to which railroad unions and managements must submitbefore work stoppages over new contract terms become legallypermissible: (a) private bargaining; (b) bargaining under medi-ation; (c) a formal proffer of arbitration by the National Media-tion Board; and (d) the creation of an emergency board, at thediscretion of the President of the United States, to investigatethe dispute and make non-binding recommendations. . The Actalso requires that unresolved disputes arising under existingagreements be submitted to a bipartite National Railroad Ad-justment Board which, assisted when necessary by a neutralreferee, may issue binding awards.Professor Kaufman's monograph is a timely and helpful effortto evaluate the amended Railway Labor Act in light of two decadesof experience. The context in which railroad industrial relationshas developed is briefly described in the four chapters of Part I.These point up the poor financial condition of the carriers andthe secular decline in railroad employment, and summarize thecomplex nature of the present "working rules," the structure oflabor organization, and the history of federal legislation dealingwith railroad labor disputes. Part II, the major portion of thebook, reviews and appraises the operation of the Railway LaborAct. Part III is a one-chapter discussion of the right of railroadworkers to strike. Part IV provides us with the author's con-clusions.His major finding is that collective bargaining on the railroadshas virtually collapsed. This unhappy condition is attributedprimarily to three considerations: (a) a deterioration in the rela-tive wage position of railroad workers; (b) a breakdown of thegrievance procedures; and (c) the very existence of the RailwayLabor Act itself.369BUFFALO LAW REVIEWThe failure of railroad workers to maintain their formerrelative wage status is explained largely "by the fact that theemergency boards . . . have not followed any consistent, objectiveset of standards for the purpose of wage determination" andalso because there has been compulsory arbitration, de facto butnot de jure, in the industry, which has placed the workers in aninferior bargaining position.The breakdown of grievance procedures is traced to a basicconflict over working rules, to which the unions cling stubbornlyas part of their fight for job security and which the carriers seekto revise or eliminate because of the costs involved.Finally, a great deal of responsibility for the present stateof collective bargaining is placed directly on the Act because "aslong as specific procedures exist for the resolution of disputeswhich cannot be resolved through collective bargaining, such pro-cedures themselves destroy collective bargaining." ProfessorKaufman would eliminate the emergency board provisions fromthe Railway Labor Act and place major reliance upon mediation,although his review of the record doesn't generate much con-fidence in the capacity of mediation to dispose of basic issues.He believes the Act should remain silent about the nature or timingof government intervention when stoppages are imminent oractually take place, because the resulting uncertainty will inducethe parties to rely more heavily upon their own efforts to reacha settlement.This reviewer also subscribes to the virtues of uncertainty,and agrees that the ready availability of emergency boards whosejudgments are non-binding discourages earlier efforts to reach asolution. But Professor Kaufman places too little emphasis uponthe difficult environment in which railroad collective bargaininghas functioned. No legislative approach could have resolved theunderlying insecurities and conflicts which have produced a hostileand inflexible relationship. The Railway Labor Act, whatever itsdeficiencies, should not be held significantly accountable for themore basic influences at work.The best part of the book is its careful analysis of the wagecriteria employed by the emergency boards (Chapter IX), but Ican find no adequate basis for the author's conclusion that thefailure of these ad hoe boards to develop uniform standards "maywell have played a part in the deterioration in the economic posi-tion of the railroad workers and the increasing dissatisfaction ofthe railroad workers with the wage recommendations of theemergency boards." Surely the unions would have objected toany set of standards, uniform or not, which justified this relativeBOOK REVIEWSdeterioration. And recommendations which satisfied the unionswould have been unacceptable to the carriers. In any event, thisreviewer cannot accept a changing inter-industry differential asa major cause of the collapse of collective bargaining. I agreethat governmental pressures, including presidential intervention,have inhibited the bargaining power of the unions (while obtainingmore for them, however, than they could have gotten withoutstriking). But again I feel that Professor Kaufman underem-phasizes the contribution of the underlying economic forces: therailroads' financial difficulties, the high proportion of labor costs,and the general tendencies under relatively high employmentconditions for wage differentials to diminish.This should have been a larger book. Because it isn't, sometopics are neglected or dealt with in too hasty a fashion. Thereader won't learn much about the history or the character of thebrotherhoods (some of which are almost a century old) or aboutthe non-economic aspects of railroad employment. Those portionsof the Railway Labor Act which deal with the determination oflabor representation on a "craft or class" basis and with unfairlabor practices are largely ignored. Some serious defects of theNational Railroad Adjustment Board set-up, apart from its hugebacklog of cases-such as its denial of representation to non-standard unions-are overlooked. The important political roleof the brotherhoods is not adequately covered or accounted for.The chronicle and appraisal of railway disputes legislation priorto the Railway Labor Act is too sketchy to warrant the reader'sconfidence.But what the book contains is useful. It leaves this reviewerdoubtful that there is any real opportunity for collective bar-gaining to work effectively in the railroads as long as the rightto strike must be inhibited, because the parties will continue tododge ultimate responsibility for working out their own problems.Mark L. KahnAssistant Professor of EconomicsWayne University

Collective Bargaining in the Railroad Industry. by Jacob J. Kaufman.

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Collective Bargaining in the Railroad Industry. by Jacob J. Kaufman.

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