Word: railroads
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Grim-faced in Chicago last week sat Board Chairman Dr. William Morris Leiserson, his fellow members, Otto Sternoff Beyer and George Cook. Grim also was the Pennsylvania's H. A. Enochs, chairman of the committee of 15 representing the railroads, which maintained, as they had from the first, that a wage reduction was "necessary, justified, and inevitable." Grimmest of all were President George Harrison of the Railway Labor Executives Association (775,000 union men) and President Alexander F. Whitney of the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen (150,000 members). Labormen Harrison and Whitney, despite a quarrel that had them scowling...
Said Mr. Enochs: "Collective bargaining in the railroad industry has apparently failed. When employes seek wage increases, the process of collective bargaining works perfectly. When management seeks a wage reduction, the process does not work at all. Or, to state it differently, the elevator only goes up, and now it is stuck...
Retorted Mr. Harrison: '"A cut in the railroad industry would be the beginning of wage slashing in all other industries . . . a national calamity...
...President may appoint a fact-finding commission to report to him within 30 days. Thereupon both parties must preserve the status quo for another 30 days. Unless Franklin Roosevelt chooses to have the nation's most far-flung industry on strike on Election Day, railroad peace should last until December...
Carloadings fortnight ago rose to 620,511, some 20% under a year ago, yet a new high for 1938. But signs of increasing revenue-like hopes for lower wage costs (see above)-are only details in the sorry railroad picture; last week bonded indebtedness still cast its shadow. Prime example of a railroad staggering under top-heavy debts is 111-year-old Baltimore & Ohio, fifth largest U. S. railroad (in revenue). The line has some $685,000,000 in fixed indebtedness, on which it has had to pay over $31,000,000 in interest annually. B. & O. lost...