Word: featherbedding
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The T.P. & W. is another name for G. P. McN. (George Plummer McNear Jr.), who owns it-track, ties & rolling stock (TIME, May 18). As a result of last week's decision by a Government-appointed arbitrator, G. P. McN. will have to pay $3,200 a month more...
...shaking started a year ago when the Brotherhoods demanded their nationwide 30% wage boost. G. P. McN., like the other roads, agreed to part of the raise. But unlike the others, he added a proviso and stuck to it-no more featherbedding. Roared he: "A day's work for a day's pay." So last December his engineers and trainmen struck. So G. P. McN. went on running his railroad as usual, except that he used only 55 trainmen instead of 83-the number which the Brotherhoods' featherbed rules would have required for the same work...
...terms of most railroad employment still include the man-and-dollar-wasting practices known as featherbedding. These intricate Railroad Brotherhood rules, devised when railroad traffic was shrinking, are aimed at making work and keeping a maximum number of men on the payrolls. Though obsolete and wasteful now, featherbed rules are a sacred cow in labor politics. Few railroad presidents dare monkey with them...
Nor does he expect to lose his crusade against the featherbeds. He ran the T.P. & W. efficiently with 35% smaller train crews than the rules require. As the labor shortage gets worse, the lesson is bound to spread. Whether Individualist McNear regains his prestige or not, the featherbed rules are...
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...