Doesn't "emergency" mean anything to anybody anymore? - government policy on the railway industry - column

Railway Age, March, 1991 by Gus Welty

So, it's deja vu all over again, as Yogi Berra once allegedly said. Yogi also has been quoted as protesting, "I never said what I said," but never mind. It is deja vu time, or at least MEGO time, as in My Eyes Glaze Over. A major dispute is nearing a flash-point, maybe, in the railroad industry-and hardly anybody seems to be paying attention.

Emergency Board 219 sent its report to President Bush, with close to 120 pages covering a dispute that began in 1988 and about half of those pages containing the board's findings and recommendations. The report got to the White House at about the same time that bombs began dropping on iraq, and so it was understandable that the White House took little note of what the three distinguished members of the board had brought forth.

The press took little note either. You name it, television, daily newspapers, even the business press (with an exception or two) found it possible to ignore the fact that the nation's railroads could be facing a strike as early as Feb. 15.

Nothing happened on Feb. 15, of course, because rail management and rail labor agreed to a 60-day extension of the mandatory 30-day no-self-help period that follows submission of an emergency board's report.

That puts the deadline at April 17. Congress will be in session then, after its Easter recess.

According to the unions, the only reason they agreed to an extension of the no-self-help period was that there was a war going on and so they didn't want to do anything that would interrupt rail transportation.

But, something has gone wrong here. When Congress passed the Railway Labor Act back in 1926, Congress intended that the provisions of the Act should encourage settlements. If there were unresolvable disputes and if they threatened to substantially disrupt interstate commerce, then the National Mediation Board could call upon the President to create an emergency board to study the issues and report back. The idea was that the report of an emergency board would carry powerful weight, with the force of public opinion behind it.

So, fine, Emergency Board 219 made its report. But who knows anything about it? Hardly anybody.

The recent dispute between one airline and its independent pilots union got-at a guess-100 times more television coverage time and maybe 50 times as much ink as the railroad labor controversy. If the pilots had struck the airline, it would have been an inconvenience. If the nation's railroads are shut down, it will be a disaster. But what does the public know? Little or nothing. And the only thing the general press seems to be concerned about is whether commuter trains will stop running.

The unions did a good job of getting their message out, after the emergency board made its report. They said they were flat-out rejecting it, even though the board's recommendations included a whole series of general wage increases and lump sum payments stretching out through 1995.

The cost to the railroad industry, over the life of the suggested agreement, might range anywhere from about $3 billion to well over $5 billion-and this would be an impact on an industry that made only about $2 billion in 1989 in terms of net railway operating income.

Rail management, in the meantime, didn't say much. Rail management hardly ever says much, preferring not to "negotiate in public."

But after the 60-day extension was agreed upon, management's spokesman did observe that the Board 219 report was "the most extensive examination of industry economic and collective bargaining issues in the history of the Railway Labor Act." Chuck Hopkins, chairman of the National Railway Labor Conference, said that the railroads "are not convinced that the report contains adequate relief for our industry." He said that the report should provide a "useful framework" for negotiations that "must continue and conclude."

Hopkins also noted, in mid-february, that "only some unions are engaging in serious negotiations." Others, he said, seemed more preoccupied with criticizing Board 219's recommendations.

Dick Kilroy is president of the Transportation Communications Union, chairman of the Railway Labor Executives Association and now chairman of what's known as the Cooperating Railway Labor Organizations. Right after Board 219 submitted its report, he issued a statement that seemed moderately upbeat, looking toward the chance of an agreement being reached on the basis of some of the board's recommendations, if the railroads would back off their positions on wages and rules.

Kilroy, maybe, got hammered, as other union leaders came out with statements absolutely blasting the board's report. And so, in his statement regarding the extension of the status quo until April 17, he said that agreement to that extension "in no way modifies our rejection" of the recommendations.

This raises an interesting point, of course-as in, what basis for negotiation can there be, when one party to those negotiations is flat out rejecting the board's proposals?

What happens if there is no agreement by April 17? A lot depends upon the Persian Gulf situation. Neither management or labor wants to create the image problem that a work stoppage would create in a national crisis.