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Yet unions defend the pay-rules system on the ground that it is good for the railroads. Says G. E. Leighty, chairman of the Railway Labor Executives Association and a member of the presidential panel that reported this week: "The truth is that the railroads, since they pay their train-service employees no Sunday or holiday pay, night differentials, away-from-home expenses or other premium payments . . . actually save under present work rules among their operating workers."
Firemen & Featherbeds. The railroads want to revoke their 1937 concession to the Firemen's Brotherhood and get rid of the firemen on diesels in freight and yard service. These firemen do no necessary work, the railroads say. Firemen would continue to ride in the cabs of passenger trains to serve as safety lookouts. Some diesel engineers frankly agree that firemen are dispensable. "I don't really need him," says an Ohio engineer, "but he's handy to have around. He gets four hours' sleep and I get four hours' sleep." Another diesel engineer tells of a fireman who always brought bedroom slippers to work. "I didn't mind that so much, but it got to be too much when he brought blankets one night, then complained he couldn't sleep because I had the lights on in the cab."
Fireman Gilbert can intone plenty of arguments against removing firemen from diesel locomotives—he has had a lot of practice at that. "Practical railroaders," he says, "rate the locomotive fireman as the most valuable safety factor available to the industry. His presence has meant the difference between disaster and saving lives and property on many occasions."
But Gilbert has a farther-reaching argument in favor of continuing his fight to keep the firemen on the diesels: "We can never forget that we are representing human beings, and that management is representing money. There is a big difference. You can always mint more money. But you can't mint new lives."
Painful Alternatives. President Kennedy has no direct power to halt a railroad strike. He has exhausted all the procedures of delay provided by the Railway Labor Act. The Taft-Hartley Act, with its provision for an 80-day injunction against a strike, does not apply to the railroads. The President cannot ask the companies to delay once again the effective date of the work-rules revisions, because last time he promised the railroad representatives that he would not in any event ask for any more delays.
Aside from the unlikely possibility of persuading the unions to accept the management plan or enter into serious negotiations toward a compromise settlement, the President had only two courses open to him, and both would require congressional approval: seizure of the railroads or compulsory arbitration, requiring both sides to accept the verdict of Government-appointed arbitrators.