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Trains Magazine 1962 November The SSW story An AC album Double bow trolleys
Trains Magazine 1962 November
November 1962Volume 23 Number 1
NEWS -- -3
RAILROAD NEWS PHOTOS8
"CHEVY WAS BEHIND" -16
LIKE A BLUE STREAK-18
AN ALBUM OF AC'S-28
D&RGW AND ITS KM'S - - 36
SOMETHING ABOUT A DEPOT 39
SIDE RODS, DOUBLE OVERHEAD 42 BEFORE FORD WAS BORN - 48
COVER: Italian electric, D. W. Beadle; SP AC, Broadbelt collection; 55W rack, Steve Patterson.
Railway post office 50Second section 55
Of books and trains 54Running extra 58
Interchange 58
KENNEDY DEFAULTS ON C&NW
AT 7 a.m. August 30, 1962, some 1000 members of the Order of Railroad Telegraphers struck the 10,565-mile Chicago & North Western over the railway's refusal to sign a contract incorporating this sentence: "No position in existence on December 3, 1957, will be abolished or discontinued except by agreement between the carrier and the organization." What provoked the walkout was North Western's Central Agency Program under which the road has sought to close scores of infrequently used country depots spaced only 7 to 10 miles apart. In principle, the program was and is similar to that generation-old system of boarding up single-room schoolhouses in favor of using centralized schools serviced by school buses. Under the Central Agency Program, which won the endorsement of five state regulatory bodies, the railroad has cut off more than 500 telegraphers' jobs since 1957 and plans to eliminate another 70. C&NW offered to negotiate employee protection with the O.R.T. to cushion the impact of its Central Agency Program, but the union insisted on a job freeze which, if enacted, could theoretically keep jobs on the payroll for persons not yet born. On June 14, 1962, a fact-finding emergency board appointed by President Kennedy rejected the O.R.T.'s job-freeze clause on grounds that "the retention of unnecessary positions is not an acceptable form of job security." But the board did present a comprehensive program of employee protection. Example: A man deprived of employment would receive monthly allowances equal to 60 per cent of wages in the prior 12 months - based on seniority and subject to other earnings. Such allowances would continue 3 years for 5-to-10-year employees; and 5 full years for men with 15 years or more seniority. Example: For those whose jobs were relocated, the railway would guarantee moving expenses as well as guarantee against any loss on sale of homes or unexpired rental leases. Example: Any employee who stays with the railway in a lower paid job would be paid for 5 full years the difference between the lower wage and the average wage received in the prior 12 months.
North Western accepted the emergency board's recommendations; the union did not. Said O.R.T. President George E. Leighty, "We'll make a reasonable agreement with him, but Mr. Heineman [Chairman of C&NW] has three things to learn: Employees are human beings; they are entitled to fair and reasonable conditions; and you can't turn men off and on like you can machines." As it developed, what the unionist meant by "reasonable" was the so-called "2 per cent formula" which O.R.T. won from Southern Pacific in the fall of 1961. Its key provision was that "abolition of posi
tions will not exceed the rate of normal attrition [i.e., retirements, resignations, and deaths]; neither will it exceed 2 per cent per year on a system basis." The O.R.T. specifically brought this agreement to the attention of the emergency board which investigated the C&NW impasse and that board just as specifically deemed it "not feasible" in an opinion occupying
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