Settlement By Seniors

In Room No. 482 in Chicago's Union Station last week the U. S. railroad industry completed an advanced seminar in labor relations. Under the paternal eye of the National Mediation Board, railroad management in the person of Pennsylvania R. R.'s Personnel Director Herbert Alexander Enochs and the representatives of some 250,000 members of the five big operating Brotherhoods -- engineers, firemen, conductors, trainmen, switchmen-- came to a peaceful compromise on demands for wage increases.

With a strike vote in their pockets the Brotherhood leaders originally asked the railroads for a flat 20% boost. The railroads, with good evidence to support their case, pleaded declining earnings (TIME, Sept. 13), and direct negotiations broke down last August. Following the rules laid down in the Railway Labor Act, these seniors in the class of collective bargaining then called in the Mediation Board. In the agreement reached last week the Brotherhoods got increases averaging about 6 1/2%, retroactive only to Oct. 1.

To U. S. railroads this means an additional burden of some $35,000,000 per year. Agreements for a 5-c--an-hour boost previously signed with the non-operating railroad unions will add another $100,000,000. Burdensome though the boosts may be, the settlement erases a big question mark in the current business outlook, may release important railroad purchasing at a time when industry will welcome orders (see p. 69).

Having congratulated his sober seniors on their good temper, Federal Mediator William M. Leiserson departed for Yellow Springs, Ohio, wearily announcing: "I'm going there for a nerve tonic."

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