Railroad Craft Seniority: The Essence of Railroad
Society and Culture (and its "State")
Frederick C. Gamst
Introduction
My first field research paper in ethnology was done on railroaders for Gerald
Berreman's graduate seminar on ethnological field techniques in the fall of 1961. The
paper became my first presentation at a conference, of the Kroeber Anthropology
Society, in spring 1963 (Gamst 1963). This research interest, first developed under
Berreman, continues. After four decades of researching on the railroad, what appears
to be the essence of the social relations and structuring of railroad work? The answer,
explored in this article, is the social system of seniority, encompassed in a complex
web of rules.'
As an institutionalized age grouping imposing on members' rights and duties
and allocating privilege and power, contemporary seniority is actually a form of
corporate structure familiar to ethnologists. As an institution, seniority has a charter,
or rationale of its nature including purpose. Broadly considered, seniority is one kind
of social linkage, constraining actions and fostering a social order.
On railroads across the United States and Canada (hereinafter, North
America) employment is heavily unionized, even for first-line supervisors.2 In the
webs of rules of rail industrial relations and their encompassing law, craft seniority
has loomed central in the creation and maintenance of a bargaining unit of a grouping
of employees represented by a component of a labor union. Indeed, the term seniority
has traditionally served as a metaphor for railroad employment and the job. Craft
seniority embodies the very foundation of railroad social relations and norms,
including industrial relations and unionism. Seniority's webs of both work rules and
supporting comprehensive federal labor laws, since 1888, developed first for the
railroad industry and consequently furnished partial models for other industries.
During the often-contentious maneuverings in 2001 for the proposed merger of the
Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers (BLE) and the United Transportation Union
(UTU), protection of seniority rights was always a central matter (BLE 2001a, 2001b;
UTU-BLE 2001).
In the U.S., jurists view the comprehensive laws for rail industrial relations as
forming a state within a state.3 Lloyd K. Garrison summarized the web of railroad
rules: "the railroad world is like a state within a state... [where] the reign of law has
Railroad Craft Seniority
been firmly established" (1937:568-69). The U.S. Supreme Court, in Taylor vs.
California, 1957, used this view of the existence of a railroad state.
On the economically strategic railroads, how did the worker-empowering,
socioeconomic web of craft seniority develop, and what are its characteristics?4
The Development of Seniority
Early Seniority Apart from the Railroads
Age is a culturally relative construct. For example, Western cultures have
differing legal definitions of the age of majority. The Cushitic-speaking Qemant
peasants and Semitic-speaking Wayto hunters of Ethiopia have an epoch-event
determination of personal age ("Haile Sellassie bafit"-born before the reign of this
monarch). Undoubtedly, all specific cultures have linguistic forms with which they
classify persons in the life course by some age construct. Use of the characteristic of
age for determining social status is universal. Organizing humans for a structural
ranking by age may well be universal, if only done informally. Almost no institution
disregards length of time in an occupation or leadership status, and for good reason.
Social ranking by age inspires societal confidence and individual peace of mind: few
if any people want their war chief, medicine man, commander in chief, surgeon,
accountant, or airline captain to be new at the worktasks. No one complains that by a
Constitutional work rule of the founding fathers, the President of the United States
shall have attained the age of thirty-five.
For hundreds of African societies, formal, sequential age sets of persons
moving together up through formal, hierarchically ranked age grades are part of or are
the dominant factor in structuring society (Baxter and Almagor 1978; Bernardi 1985).
Age sets are groupings of people linked by a culturally delimited similar span of age.
And so it is among many of the 23 million Oromo people I have surveyed
ethnographically in Ethiopia and taught about since a Berkeley seminar in 1963
(Gamst 1999).
In Anglo-Saxon cultures, at least, concepts of a generalized seniority
constitute part of the worldview. The age ranking of individuals and of groups (as
diverse as military units, colleges, youth athletic teams, and street gangs) by some
form of seniority provides an idea of social order and fairness deeply valued and
historically rooted in the normative system. Seniority rules became embedded in the
cultures of our earliest large bureaucratic organizations, such as the church, army and
navy, and legislative and administrative bureaus of government. As early as 1450, we
find the seniority ranking of clerics: "Eche [each] in hys order after their seniorite in
religion" (OED 1971:2726). In the sixteenth century, we find praiseworthy lists of
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persons ranked by seniority: "Where in an honorable Index they shall be placed
according to their degree and segnioritie" (OED 1971:2726).
During the eighteenth century, in the British Army, seniority became fully
institutionalized, thereby reflecting still earlier development, and dominated its social
relations, structure, and norms. This institutionalization also held for its offspring, the
American Army (Great Britain, Army 1774). As the leading British military
dictionary of the times explained: "SENIORITY, in military matters, is the difference
in time betwixt the raising of two regiments, whereby the one is said to be so much
senior to the other. All regiments take place [position] according to seniority in
numerical order. The differences in time betwixt the dates of two commissions of
officers of the same rank, roll by the seniority of their commissions" (James 1810:
"Seniority"). Seniority ranking abounded in all army activities. Even when "serjants"
conferred with an adjutant, they ringed themselves around him "according to the
precedency of their companies" and repeated his orders in rank order from the senior-
most sergeant to the junior-most (Anon. 1778). The regulations of the British army
for 1816 have the rules for seniority of officers near its beginning. Each unit had to
maintain lists of personnel by rank and its date, hence, classified seniority lists (Great
Britain, Army 1816:4-9, 292-93).
Necessarily, the units of the offspring American Continental Army and their
men were arranged by British work rules for seniority (Spaulding 1937:50-51), and
such rules continued long afterward in the U.S. (Scott 1968: 484-86, 549). During the
1880s, Admiral David D. Porter, age 75 in 1882, and other senior naval officers
opposed a plan for retiring senior officers. Porter said he abhorred such a "total
disregard &  ignoring of seniority" (Karsten 1986:242).  U.S. Army officers
commissioned in 1861-1864 "had created a 'choke' in the Army's seniority-only
promotion system similar to that of the Navy's." In 1883, an Army first lieutenant
calculated that he would need at least thirty years of service for his promotion, by
seniority order, to the next rank, of captain (Karsten 1986:259).
Legislatures are also seniority-bound, and not just for allocations of office
space. Committee assignments and chairmanships in the U.S. Congress have been
generally awarded, respectively, by Congressional and committee seniority for almost
two centuries (McConachie 1898:156-57, 271, 326; Goodwin 1959:417-18). "In no
other place, perhaps, does seniority or length of service carry so much weight as it
does in the Congress of the United States" (Galloway 1953:367). "Congresses may
come and go, but the seniority rule stays on indefinitely" (Pollack 1925:235).
Furthermore, as in other occupations, seniority work rules in Congress generally have
efficient results. "The seniority rule is based on years of service and hence is more
likely to secure parliamentary skill and general ability for Congressional work than
some other system which makes years of service only one factor in the choice"
(Pollack 1925:245). George Goodwin concludes after studying the Congressional
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seniority system that "an acceptable alternative is extremely difficult to devise"
(1959:436).
The civil service is also ordered by seniority (Jenckes 1867). To reform the
American political practice of the Jackson era, "to the [electoral] victor belong the
spoils," demands for civil service reform began in the 1830s. President Grant
attempted to rationalize federal employment. But it was not until the Pendleton Act of
1883-enacted after a disappointed office seeker assassinated President Garfield-
that federal reform became truly effective. Under the act, a bipartisan civil service
commission administered a partial merit system for appointments to federal
employment, below the positions of cabinet and agency heads. The Civil Service
Rules and Orders of President Theodore Roosevelt enhanced the act. On the state
level, New York enacted civil service laws in 1883, Massachusetts in 1884, and other
states a few decades later. For civil service, "the seniority rule was adopted in the
interest of both justice and efficiency" (Anon. 1913b). In many modern organizations,
then, seniority systems provided both fair relationships for individuals and efficient
structures for organizations.
Pioneering Seniority on the Railroads
It is not surprising that the earliest widespread and consequential web of rules
for occupational seniority outside of the church, armed services, and government is
found in the oldest industry enormous in cost, colossal in scale, and vast in
dispersion-the railroads. This advent rests in the bureaucratic complexity of
managing railroads, of vital consequence to developing or developed countries.
Because of the strategic economic power inherent in the skills and
responsibilities of locomotive engineers, members of this craft pioneered on the
railroads North America's first seniority systems of large scope and organizational
impact. Thus, in part, locomotive engineers pioneered seniority for all industries.
Railroad seniority originates in a managerial grant-giving the principle to
employees.
The earliest known complete record of seniority rules by principle in North
American railroading is discussed in the BLE's Monthly Journal. In "A Step in the
Right Direction," Charles Wilson, the BLE's Grand Chief Engineer, discussed a
general order of Jay Gould, president of the Erie Railway, granting a principle of
seniority for various railroad crafts (Wilson 1870; Gould 1870a). Without question,
then, "these rules and regulations" for seniority were management's, permitting
construction of craft seniority rosters classified by the territory of an operating
division or the span of a department.
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On January 31, 1870, Gould ordered that "hereafter" a list (roster) of all
employees of the Erie be kept showing date of first employment, occupational
position first held, and dates of any promotion or other change of position. The list
would be "classified so near as may be according to the respective qualifications of
each party" (Gould 1870a).
Jay Gould directed that "this principle," of rank-order seniority date would
apply to new hires, who must be placed at the bottom of the craft-classified seniority
rosters, and be used for filling vacancies and for making promotions. Thus rail
seniority by craft emerged in a highly developed form, on one of the largest railroads,
as a managerial mechanism for efficient command and control in the operation of the
carrier. The employer, here arch-capitalist Jay Gould, implemented craft seniority to
manage better his diversely specialized and territorially dispersed army of employees
(Gould 1870b).
In all, just as bilateral seniority on railroads has its origin in a unilateral form
granted by management, so too the bounding of crafts and the classification of well-
defined kinds of jobs within them stems originally from managerial policy. Rail
management desired separated specialized crafts for cost-effectiveness in the market
and efficient, safe operations. Thus, management prohibited the various crafts from
exchanging duties as a matter of unilateral work rule.
The idea of work rules defining seniority by craft and delimiting it by
operating territory could not have exploded full-blown into Jay Gould's mind in
January 1870. It was undoubtedly discussed and drafted by his staff officers in the
previous year and was necessarily based on still earlier policy and practice of such
managers, on the Erie and elsewhere. Across the second half of the nineteenth
century, we can see beginnings of the policy and practice of work rules regarding
railroad seniority. From well over a century ago through the present, accounts of
American railroad work show management's informal and formal practice with
seniority principle, when not superseded by seniority right.
Today, most North American railroaders are unionized with their employment
fixed by the terms and conditions of collective labor agreements. Employees and
management call such agreements schedules. In general, the term schedule refers to a
written list of items providing explanation with exactness and a permanent record for
a monetary transaction.  For some industrial relations on railroads, unilateral
schedules existed before bilateral schedules. My research shows a good number of
documents for preagreement schedules still preserved, all of which set the patterns for
later agreement schedules.
As one railroader wrote, back when agreement schedules had just become
common on the larger railroads: "in the earlier days of railroading, it was the practice
of railroad companies to formulate a schedule of wages to be paid the employees, in
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certain branches [crafts] of the service" (Tucker 1893). The preagreement schedules
discussed by Tucker covered, for an operating craft such as locomotive firemen, lists
of rates of pay classified by kind of service, district, and, often, by years of
employment ("first year, second year, full" rate of pay) (CB&Q 1878). In the 1880s,
management added the weight, hence power and productivity, of a locomotive as a
fourth element of pay classification.
Perhaps the first record of an attempt to bargain collectively on railroads was
in 1853, when engineers on the New York Central & Hudson River petitioned their
general superintendent, unsuccessfully, for a small increase in pay (Anon. 1877). One
of the earliest preagreement schedules, in 1864, reacted negatively against another
engineer's petition (Perlman 1926:12-16). This schedule for engineers and firemen on
the Galena & Chicago Union had rates of pay for the two crafts on various districts
plus eight paragraphs of work rules (Perlman 1926:14-15).
The Chicago, Burlington & Quincy's (CB&Q) preagreement "Schedule of
Wages for Locomotive Firemen, January 1, 1878" has several pages, containing rates
of pay for the various classes of service and one nonseniority work rule for conditions
of employment. The Southern Pacific's notice of February 15, 1884, providing a
schedule for engineers and firemen, similarly lacks a seniority rule. Generally similar
but with a modest unilateral provision for seniority are Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe
Circular no. 1 of October 20, 1883-a schedule for conductors, brakemen, and train
baggagemen-and Santa Fe schedules of 1890 and 1893 for trainmen. Still unilateral
but far more detailed in its 34 work rules, including seniority, is Pennsylvania
Railroad, General Notice of 1903 for trainmen (PRR 1903). In such unilateral
beginnings, then, the premise of craft seniority spread across North American
railroads. Well into the 1910s, some crafts such as clerks and telegraphers had no
bilateral schedules with a number of railroads; thus unilateral schedules, including
seniority, still obtained (see GR 1917).
Developed Seniority on the Railroads
From a unilateral principle, craft seniority evolved into a cardinal right, the
underpinning of bilateral labor agreements between rail management and union
bargaining agent for a craft of employees. The first agreement schedule of record, in
1875, is between the New York Central & Hudson River and a committee of the BLE.
It contains basic rules on rail craft seniority, and its intricacy shows it had to be
developed from an earlier schedule. Rule 7 said the agreement "shall take the place of
all previous agreements." It is an example of the direct development of an agreement
schedule from a preagreement one (preagreement IC 1876 and agreement IC 1885 are
also examples).
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The new agreement schedules increased the number and scope of the work
rules, which always included a central place for craft seniority. As on the Illinois
Central (IC), these labor agreements at first were only somewhat evolved from their
unilateral predecessors. The BLE reprinted many pioneering agreements (1892). The
reprintings were valuable to the union committees requiring information for
bargaining their initial and subsequently adjusted labor agreements. Thus, union
committees, from Florida to British Columbia, could learn what other such
committees had obtained as provisions in their contracts. By the end of the nineteenth
century, bilaterally negotiated schedules, always containing seniority rules, were
common for at least the "big four" operating-craft brotherhoods on all sizable
railroads.
After 1900, the "big four" craft unions (engineers, firemen, conductors,
trainmen) began standardizing the seniority provisions of agreements in two ways.
They ushered in concerted bargaining across a broad region of the U.S., such as the
West (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 1912:44-45; Wark 1913). Also they made
interunion compacts to limit rivalry and conflict, as in the Chicago Joint Agreement
between the BLE and Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen & Enginemen (BLF&E)
(Anon. 1913a). By the 1910s, as the bilateral work rules including seniority continued
to develop, agreement schedules grew into small pamphlets. With the advent of the
schedules negotiated by the federal U.S. Railroad Administration during World War
I-which in collective bargaining agreed to work rules in lieu of employee requested
wage increases (Wolf 1926:69)-schedules expanded to sixty or more pages.
The steady expansion of agreement wordage is reflected in the Southern
Pacific's contracts for engineers of 1888 (14 work rules on 1 long sheet) and 1919 (38
extensive rules containing up to 36 sections each on 62 printed pages). Those of the
San Pedro, Los Angeles & Salt Lake for firemen had 8 extensive rules on 24 pages in
1908, but by 1915, covering both firemen and engineers, had 51 rules and 27
explanatory examples on 48 pages. By 1954 on this Salt Lake Line, then part of the
Union Pacific, the firemen's agreement had 172 work rules (many with subrules) on
109 pages of some 42 dense lines each, plus 55 pages of supplemental agreements.
The seniority rules covered 6 such pages (UP 1954). In 1972, this line's engineers'
agreement had 143 rules on 124 pages plus 123 pages of supplemental agreements
(UP 1972).
Whatever their format, the evolving work rules in agreements developed job
fairness and codified the conditions of employment. Most of these rules were the
result of lengthy, often difficult, and arduous collective bargaining wherein managers
and the union representatives made give-and-take exchanges regarding their
respective requests about wage rates and employment conditions.
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Seniority Principle and Seniority Right: Two Essences
Originally, seniority on railroads was a unilaterally (from management only)
based policy principle. Later, on most railroads, it became a bilaterally (management-
labor) created legal right. Comprehension of the full construction of current seniority
provisions rests on an understanding of the genesis of railroad seniority systems and
on the features of preagreement seniority principles.
Principle refers to that which belongs to a person or group-apart from law-
by a rule adopted as a guide to action. By right is meant that which belongs to a
person or group by a law or a tradition (sometimes moral). Right is a just claim of a
person or group against others, legally enforceable by the state. It is an interest
existing along a continuum narrowing at one end into an interest legally constructed
by rules defining a thing held to be property. Rail seniority rights, however, have not
fully become those defining property.
On North American railroads, seniority principle comes from an employer's
policies and practices, and seniority right comes from a labor agreement between a
bargaining agent and an employer. The seniority right stems from the provisions of
relevant work rules in an agreement resulting from negotiations between a craft
bargaining unit of employees and an employer. Over time, such seniority becomes
further shaped by bilateral interpretations of such provisions and, when the two parties
cannot bilaterally interpret, from third-party arbitral, court, and Congressional
interpretations.
The rail bargaining unit is often represented by a General Committee of
Adjustment (GCA), a component of an international or national labor union and
headed by a General Chairman (GC). The adjustment concerns changing the wages
and conditions of employment of unit members. The GCA has been the sole actor to
bargain initially, modify subsequently, and interpret as necessary for bargaining unit
members a labor agreement and its written and unwritten supplements and
understandings. The general committee's members assist the GC. They are,
depending upon the union, either Local Chairmen of Local Committees of Adjustment
or differently titled heads of union locals. A GCA's jurisdiction is ordinarily a
contract district on all or part of a railroad. Sometimes a general committee represents
several, or several parts of, railroads. Elected by his GCA, the GC acts for it when not
convened, but must always answer to it. The GC handles grievances, complaints, pay
claims, and issues forwarded to him by local units. Among the central matters thus
forwarded are those involving seniority, and its craft and territorial jurisdictions,
concerning which the GCA has full power. Frequently, regarding wages and
conditions of employment, a GCA authorizes a regional or national concerted
movement for bargaining with the railroads of a region or a nation.
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At times, seniority may be a right first constructed and imposed on the
employer by a court, arbitrator, or government administrator. Under the federal
control of the railroads in World War I, the U.S. Railroad Administration (USRA)
imposed seniority provisions not previously agreed to by the carriers (Hines 1928;
USRA 1919a and 1919b; Jones 1954).
Because lawful contractual rights are, "recognized or established by law," the
webs of evolving statute law and, more important, case law, alter the characteristics of
seniority rights over time. See, for example, the discussion in a following section on
the refinement of seniority right during 1937 in the U.S. by the National Railroad
Adjustment Board (NRAB). In industrial democracies, the web of rules for industrial
relations systems is, ideally, pluralistic. Thus the employers, their employees, and the
state are each independent bodies of involved actors lawfully empowered to share in
the making of work rules. Although in North America it is customary to speak of
work rules as bilateral, between management and labor, on railroads they have long
been trilaterally derived, among these two parties and the state.
Today, seniority as principle is still found in many industries-including on
some railroads-not having a union agreement but where management grants
seniority to employees. On the Florida East Coast, which had abrogated its standard
seniority-bound agreements after a losing strike by rail unions in 1963, management
felt a variety of seniority was necessary. Management unilaterally melded all crafts
into one roster, with seniority determined by the date first hired on the struck railroad
(Harwell 1996:38). On the Wisconsin Central in 1989, absent a union bargaining
agent, management promulgated unilaterally a procedure establishing "a length of
service (seniority) list of all employees categorized by departments," where vacancies
were filled "by selecting the most qualified employees" (WC 1989:1-2). In practice,
management filled vacancies mainly by seniority, I was told.
As a right, seniority has at its core a number of formal contractual rules,
protecting an employee's interest in a job. Fundamental is a rule establishing an
employee's seniority date, usually the earliest time of paid work of a designated kind
(for example, as a switchman or when promoted to conductor). The essential roster
for seniority's rules include maintaining and posting, periodic updating, and appeal
processes and their durations for changing errors. Also found are rules for the
periodic bulletining and filling of job vacancies, assigning of vacation times, and
regulation of other employee job prerogatives. (Job prerogative is employment
benefit or advantage for a worker's welfare and happiness.) Seniority determines both
sequence of persons for receiving prerogatives such as in promotion, demotion,
furlough, recall, temporary forced assignment and forced transfer, and choice of
prerogatives such as in a job's kind, location, time, and rate and number of days of
remuneration.
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The General Functions of Seniority
From the broadest perspective, seniority concerns employment security for
the individual employee. Thus, it is valued even more than increases in wages or
fringe benefits. These two directly remunerative gains are worth little if a worker
faces arbitrary job loss at the whims of the employer. Accordingly, the rail unions
have expanded the seniority provisions of an agreement in give-and-take bargaining
with management. It appears that as seniority increases so does loyalty to a union
(Anon. 1958), thereby providing the membership solidarity needed to effect union
goals.
Under seniority rules, the employee having the longest service in a craft with
a railroad receives the greatest protection from layoff and undesired pressures of work
and the most desired allocation of job prerogatives. Seniority thus favors those with
greater length of service over those with less. This uniform seeming inequity
becomes increasingly equitable over time for those remaining in a particular seniority
unit. Operating employees in freight service, and formerly in passenger service, are
paid on a piece-work basis per so many miles. As noted by the BLF&E at a time
when many railroaders were killed or injured on the job: "a combination of piece-
work and seniority assures high wages to the comparatively few whose fortunes have
led them safely through.. .years of railway service" (Anon. 1916:634). Overall, the
matter of the underlying fairness of a seniority system accords with widely held core
values regarding longevity in the U.S. and Canada.
On its fundamental level, for a worker, seniority may be considered a variety
of fairness and justice serving as insurance against the risks of market fluctuations
creating unemployment. "As workers acquire seniority they store up advantages over
their fellow workers" (Miller and Form 1980:248). But seniority is broader than this:
seniority is also advantage over all who are not fellow workers. At least since the
time of Jay Gould, new railroaders may be added to a seniority roster's bottom only
when none of those on the list are furloughed.
In terms of social relations, seniority is also an overall protection for an
employee against insecurity of employment stemming from the employer's capricious
whim, including displeasure over an action, nepotism, or other discrimination. It
protects from managerial arbitrariness in discipline, promotions or demotions, wage
increases or decreases, allocation of tasks, allocation of work sites, transfer, layoff,
recall from layoff, and other circumstances subject to arbitrariness. Without seniority,
an employer could dismiss employees not held in esteem. They include the person
who asks questions about managerial directives or the work process, the aged or ill
worker, a member of a particular minority, the union organizer, the political activist,
or the holder of nonconforming ideas.7  Accordingly, for unionized workers, the
consequences of the subjective displeasure of a manager concerning an employee are
almost eliminated (Abraham and Farber 1988). A seniority system necessarily limits
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the employer's ability to have unrestricted control over employees, most likely more
so than with other work rules. Consequently, most firms resist the introduction of
seniority.
In its broadest dimension, then, agreement seniority involves some degree of
union control of an employer's jobs and work processes on behalf of represented
employees. For each employee, therefore, seniority contains some amount of a
limited property-like interest of value (a continuing equity) in a job and its included
work. "The job, in a sense, 'belongs' to the worker; it is a scarce and valued
commodity, to the use of which he has received certain limited rights" (Schneider
1969:351).
Along with the rest of rail labor agreements, seniority in its encompassing
web of labor law does not just benefit the railroad employee. "The national Railway
Labor Act [RLA] is not for labor alone. To be sure it benefits labor greatly, but its
underlying purpose is to assure industrial peace in an important phase of our national
economy. It is a double-track system; the trains run both ways simultaneously, and
when equity can compel a railroad to comply...so, too, may it compel obedience by
unions" (Brown, circuit judge dissenting in B.R. T. v. Central of Georgia Ry. Co. 29
Labor Cases 69.745, 229 F.2d 901 [CA-5, 1956]). Under the RLA, management
benefits from a seniority system. Among its employees, seniority fosters maintenance
of an interpersonal tranquility at work, approval of the managerial ordering of the
practices for conducting business, and acceptance of the legitimacy of management's
allocation of work. A seniority system lessens uncertainty and unrest in industrial
relations.
Regarding employment longevity, William Boyes and Michael Melvin repeat
a generalization often found in economics and industrial relations: "An older worker
is more productive or more valuable to the firm than a younger worker." Also,
"Seniority may bring higher income because of the additional human capital an older
worker embodies" (Boyes and Melvin 1991:779).
Management may, for just cause and by special agreement, limit the
prerogatives of seniority for an individual. Thus an operating employee, because of
health problems or disciplining for causing a large-scale accident can be "restricted"
in his or her seniority choice of jobs, with a coding of his or her seniority line on the
roster by typed symbols (*, #, !, %) signifying restriction to "yard service," "branch
line and yard service," "hostler service," "freight brakeman," "helper service"
provided by locomotives assisting trains over grades, and so forth. If the employee
cannot pass the required written and practical promotional examinations, then that
person does not become a locomotive engineer, conductor, track foreman, train
dispatcher, or whatever. In many instances, such as the promotional examinations to
engineer, failure means loss of railroad employment.
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Besides promotion and periodic examinations, operating employees, train
dispatchers, control operators, and other employees are given practical efficiency
tests. Such in-field tests range from a signal improperly displayed or extinguished to a
red (stop) signal flare. As with many kinds of efficiency tests, running past a signal
displaying a stop indication, even by a foot, ordinarily means being fired, after an
agreement-based investigation of the incident. Rail seniority, then, does not negate
managerial assessment of ability and disciplining, to the point of terminating
employment, for lack of ability.
Under Section 1, Fifth the RLA differs markedly from the National Labor
Relations Act (NLRA), in that the term "employee" is linked with "subordinate
officials." That is, first-line supervisors, such as yardmasters, foremen of various
kinds, and train dispatchers, may form unions. Such linkage is contrary to the usual
practice outside of railroads. The Inter-State Commerce Commission defined,
somewhat, the line between subordinate officials and higher officers on railroads
(USICC 1947), and the National Mediation Board (NMB) certified bargaining units of
first-line supervisors (NMB 1948-2000).8
The Rail Bargaining Unit and its Essence of Seniority Rights
Seniority is the sine qua non of the rail bargaining unit. At the very heart of
any bargaining unit must be a mechanism for fairly allocating to unit members jobs
and other prerogatives of employment that are part of the unit's jurisdiction. Without
such a mechanism of unit stability, strife would result among members and lead to
internal chaos in relations with management and non-unit personnel. In short, without
this mechanism of social stability, a bargaining unit could not easily be created and, if
founded, could never endure. The mechanism is seniority rights, arranged on
railroads by craft.
Placing a person on craft seniority list "A" confers membership for the listee
in the corresponding craft bargaining unit. The membership of a particular bargaining
unit might be entirely on one seniority roster, or could be on two or more such lists,
each for a separate jurisdictional territory of the unit. On railroads, the day-to-day
administration of the seniority-driven apportioning of job prerogatives is left with the
employer. But the process is monitored closely by the concemed GCA. After all,
seniority matters more among employees than between employer and employee. If a
railroad employee contests either a GCA's interpretation of an agreement's seniority
clause or its theory of processing a seniority grievance against management, he or she
may appeal against the GCA's view. The appeal is through the formal internal review
process of the national or international union (Dulen 1953; BLE 1993). A rail union' s
constitution specifies the process (UTU 1968:25-29, 81-84).
If an employee has a seniority grievance against the employer, he or she must
submit it to the union bargaining agent for prescribed review and possible handling. If
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review finds the grievance has merit, the union negotiates with management on behalf
of the employee. In the U.S., if the carrier and union cannot agree, the parties must
settle the matter by compulsory arbitration, as a minor labor dispute under the RLA.
The NRAB or a public law board settles the dispute.9
Given a union member's contesting the manner of handling a grievance, the
NRAB, a public law board, or their superordinated NMB10 will not casually overturn
the union's actions and views on the matter. Indeed, only arbitrary or grossly
unreasonable handling by the union would be a cause of arbitral rejection of the
organization's view. Once the parties agree to a seniority clause through collective
bargaining, and it is protected by internal union review, it is interpreted largely by the
union.
In seniority and other contractual provisions reached collectively between a
carrier and a union bargaining agent, the labor organization has the authority to bind
legally all the members of a seniority group, which it is authorized to represent under
the RLA. Members of this group not belonging to the bargaining agent union are
equally bound by the provisions. Legally, the carrier and labor organization must treat
members and nonmembers of the bargaining agent union in the same way.1 1 In short,
what the union bargaining agent in good faith agrees to in the nature of seniority, all
contractually covered employees must abide by, subject to modification by the
internal appeals process within the agent's union.
Beyond managerial disciplining of employees is the disciplinary action of rail
union officers over their members (Gamst 1986). A seniority system of a bargaining
unit cannot exist without union discipline.
Generally, an agreement is not violated if a union member does any anti-
union transgression other than not paying union dues. This is the only anti-union
infraction causing a railroad, by agreement, to fire an agreement-covered employee.
Thus railroaders belonging solely to the United Railroad Operating Crafts (UROC), a
union not found to be a standard labor organization under the RLA were fired (Gilbert
1958). One could protect one's seniority, however, by "double heading," belonging to
the union of one's desire and to the required union, for example, UROC and
Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen. A railroad is not required to fire an employee
refusing to honor his own union's picket line.
Craft and Terrtonral Limits of Seniority Right
For effective operation, some delimiting of the seniority unit, both
occupationally and territorially, has been necessary on railroads. Such limits are
ordinarily reached bilaterally, by agreement. But, as discussed previously, the
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Railroad Craft Senionty
limitations originated in unilateral principle before any agreement and are today found
only as principle on some small railroads.
Craft limits to seniority in railroading concern an agreed (or else granted) set
of worktasks to be performed by a designated group of employees. Further, the
seniority an operating employee acquired in craft X does not carry over, that is,
become added, to seniority later acquired after he or she transfers to craft Y. Thus in
North American railroading, an employee with a seniority date of June 1, 1980 as a
brakeman who is promoted to and first works as an conductor on May 15, 1984, and
then is promoted to and first works as an engineer on August 20, 1991 retains the
earliest date on the brakemen's roster, has the second, separate, date on the
conductors' roster, and gains the last, separate, date on the engineers' roster. None of
the years of seniority as a brakeman can be added to the employee's craft-separate
conductors' or engineers' seniority, and none of the years as conductor can be added
to those as an engineer. With a seasonal or cyclical downturn in traffic, when
furloughed as an engineer, this employee can exercise his seniority as a conductor,
displacing any junior working conductors. When furloughed as a conductor, the
employee can displace any working junior brakemen.
Each operating craft is autonomous from another, even in multicraft unions
such as the UTU (UTU 1969a; 1969b). This holds for nonoperating crafts also.
However, some rail unions in recent decades at times represent a unitary combined
craft replacing a number of related operating or nonoperating crafts. For example, on
the Providence & Worcester beginning in 1973, the UTU represented a general
operating craft combining both engine and train service employees, differentiated by
skill qualifications (P&W 1973). Thus a brakeman not qualified as a conductor or as
an engineer could not work in such positions.
The terms of an agreement limit the geographical area for claim to particular
work by covered employees. In other words, the members of one craft seniority roster
are spatially bounded by the territories of any other rosters in the same bargaining unit
and by the rosters of other such units of the same craft. For example, engineers in the
Union Pacific's (UP) former Los Angeles-Salt Lake bargaining unit had two distinct
territorial seniority rosters with corresponding jurisdictions. These two are from Los
Angeles northeastward to the west switch at Caliente, Nevada, and from this point to
but not including Salt Lake City. From this last point, the former Oregon Short Line
runs northwest and contained another seniority district, and former bargaining unit for
UP engineers. No carry-over seniority exists between different territories of a craft.
On a railroad, a seniority territory for a craft might be limited to a point such
as a particular facility; it could extend across a district such as a stretch of main and
branch lines, perhaps a superintendent's division; or it might comprise the entire
railroad. Over the years, through negotiated and imposed collective bargaining, a
tendency has emerged toward larger seniority territories. With point seniority-in the
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past, seniority of clerks was often limited to one office or terminal, machinists to one
shop or roundhouse, and switchmen to one or a few contiguous yards. In recent
decades, the trend toward increased size of territory has almost eliminated point
seniority and extended district seniority to include all of one or more divisions, or a
larger unit such as a region of a railroad.
U.S. railroad mergers since 1980 have reduced the number of Class-I railroads
from many to just eight, including four mega-carriers (AAR 2001). The railroads
claim efficiencies of scale and consequent enhancement of service to shippers to
justify mergers. But, clearly, the mergers of the UP and the Chicago & Northwestern
in 1995, the UP and the Southern Pacific in 1996, and the Norfolk Southern and half
of Conrail in 1999 did not result in improvements for the customers. Just the opposite
resulted. Frank N. Wilner (1988) correctly cites an important reason for the merger
mania, since these merged railroads can overthrow existing labor contracts.
Accordingly, new federally imposed labor agreements for a mega-railroad resulted in
the forced combination of seniority districts and the unilateral termination of
negotiated work rules of all kinds. This imposing was done over the objections of rail
unions that their legal labor agreements, negotiated across a century or more, were
unilaterally abrogated by management.
During 2001, seven rail unions and the five largest freight railroads negotiated
an agreement to end "cramdown," the practice permitted by the Surface
Transportation Board in its approving railroad mergers of unilaterally abrogating
collective bargaining agreements.  Under the 2001 agreement, if there is any
combination of work and two or more labor agreements apply, the union(s) concerned
decide which one applies. Importantly, when the carrier integrates seniority rosters, it
must give deference to the seniority integration plan developed by a union (BLE
2001c).
The Features of Craft Seniority in a Bargaining Unit and Persons
Excluded
What are the specific features of the allocating mechanism comprising rail
craft seniority? To begin, a distinction must be made between longevity in
employment and seniority from an agreement roster. Longevity is the total length of
time spent in a person's employment with a single employer, or else with an employer
and its successor. A useful explanation of employment seniority on railroads flows
from the discussion in this article. Initiated by a specified first date of service and
functionally governed by the rostered rank order of an employee in a schedule-
bounded employment group, seniority is a mechanism for regulating social relations
in the allocation of scarce prerogatives among employees in the group and for the
protection of this monopolistic advantage against all persons outside of the group.
Seniority rules provide uniform procedures for allocating desired schedule-defined
prerogatives from employment and for setting fair priorities among disputed claims
Railroad Craft Seniority
concerning the prerogatives within the group. Seniority can be delimited by a craft of
employees and by a territory in the range of an employer's facilities. As on railroads,
an employee could simultaneously have several different craft seniority dates.
Any explanation must consider two distinct quantitative measures of time
inherent in the actual use of seniority and longevity systems (Gamst 1993:112-19).
Seniority, although initiated by a ratio measure of time (a specified first date of
service), is operationally an ordinal measure of time (a ranking of times). Ratio time
is exemplified by calendar and clock time. It has a fixed absolute base, or zero, point,
and its differently designated durations of time have equal units in a fixed
relationship, such as December 10, 11, and 12 or 2:31, 2:32, and 2:33 P.M. Ordinal
time has no base point. It consists only of temporal sequences, or rankings, with no
measure of a quantity of time between ranked items. The everyday operation of a
seniority roster is an example. All that matters on the roster is the total number of
ranks, or lines of individuals, and the sequential relation of a particular employee's
rank to all others listed. In other words, the worth of an employee's seniority can only
be calculated relative to that of other employees on the same roster. Not the formal
absolute (ratio) date or duration of seniority, but the dynamic relative (ordinal) rank of
it detenmines sequence and choice of job prerogatives. As Dan Mater warned
regarding use of units of calendar time to understand seniority:  "seniority as
measured in units of time is meaningless" (1940:390).
Longevity is based solely on the absolute (ratio) calendar total length of
employment with an employer, including its successor. Unions and railroads usually
label it as "years of continuous service with the employing carrier." It governs access
to labor agreement benefits (UP 1986b), including number of days of paid vacation,
amount of any severance pay or buyout payment, and amount of retirement pay. Of
course, the calendar dates on which one takes vacation days is determined purely by
seniority. In examining a particular employee's seniority and longevity, the latter
often reflects a greater total time with a railroad and the former a lesser segment of
this time in a particular craft with the company.12 This is so for those promoted from
one craft to another, say, from trackman to section foreman.
The value of longevity, then, accumulates and increases for an employee by
virtue of his formal, ratio, and length of employment, but that of seniority does not.
No covariation exists between the formal, structural, ratio variable of longevity and
the dynamic, functional, ordinal variable of rank in seniority. In short, except for
fringe and other benefits, not calendar date of first service, but seniority's rank, is all-
important. For example, on the morning of one day, an employee with a seniority
date of July 1, 1998 could be ten roster positions (ranks) from obtaining a desired job.
On that afternoon, ten employees on his craft roster-all older in seniority-could end
employment for various attritional reasons. Now, with the exact same ratio seniority
(July 1, 1998) as earlier that day, the employee's ordinal seniority (ten ranks/lines
higher on the roster) and ability to take a job increases dramatically.
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Conversely, an employee could wait across the span of three years for an
improvement in his seniority, but in a period when there is no attrition of those older
than he on the seniority roster. Consequently, his ratio measure increases (three
additional years of seniority), but to no job avail because his ordinal measure (no
ranks higher) has not changed. In another example, one could hypothesize a railroad
with three contiguous seniority districts of approximately the same length. Each has
about the same number of persons on its conductors' seniority roster and the same
number of trains running through daily in each direction (1 regularly scheduled and 6
to 8 irregularly scheduled freights). The "best run" is the regular train, having a fast
trip and predictable hours on duty, and goes to the conductor with the greatest
seniority on a district. On the first district, he is a 35-year man, on the second a 41-
year man, and on the third a 29-year man. The total (ratio) number of years of
seniority per person is of unequal value on the three similar districts, because of
unequal (ordinal) ranking on district seniority rosters.13
As an emergent and not a full equity/property right, a railroaders' seniority
could not always be sold for money, until recently. Seniority can by agreement rules
be exchanged in the same craft between different seniority districts of a single railroad
system, say a conductor on the UP in Los Angeles with one in Omaha. Today, such
exchange may not formally include money, contrary to in the past when one operating
craft employee sometimes gave a monetary inducement to another person of the same
craft for exchanging seniority dates. Given the unequal ranking on different seniority
rosters, a seniority exchange could be quite advantageous for one party. This was
even more so when an "old head" relative, prior to retirement, exchanged with a
nephew. In recent times, the two parties to a seniority exchange must each take the
seniority date of the junior-most of the pair. Because, to date, seniority exists solely
by virtue of a labor agreement, its property aspect is limited. This incorporeal thing of
seniority has no independent existence, as do a material car or house, or an
incorporeal copyright of an author to a book.
Beginning in the 1980s, seniority is commonly said to be "sold to the
company" by railroaders of certain crafts in agreement programs of "seniority
buyouts." Here a carrier reduces the members of particular craft seniority rosters
having agreement rights to work in jobs that management no longer desires. The
employer pays a lump sum in an exchange for surrendered seniority rights, for
example, in 1991 on the Chicago & Northwestern, from $50,000 to $100,000 to a
trainman and somewhat lesser amounts on other railroads (UP 1986a; SPT 1987a and
1987b; Anon. 1990, 1991a, 1991b). Clearly, the emergent property of seniority held
by a railroader now has a union-negotiated price for restricted sale in the marketplace.
Such restricted sale is similar to selling a house in a national seashore reserve: sale
must be solely to one party, the government.
A rail craft seniority roster creates more than just a limited membership. The
work rules create for roster members an exclusive preference regarding specified
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Railroad Craft Seniority
worktasks and responsibilities, thereby relegated solely to the particular membership.
Seniority lawfully includes a roster monopoly over designated work. The right of
agreement seniority was further defined in this way during 1937 by the NRAB's First
Division (Award No. 1842:132, Caldwell Case; Award No. 1843:147, Haileyville
Case) as follows: "seniority, in railway service, is a preferential right to perform a
certain class of work to the exclusion of all others not holding such seniority in that
service. Once established it cannot be arbitrarily destroyed." The federal NRAB thus
gave the authority of law to the premise that agreement seniority right includes a
monopoly on the performance of the tasks of a craft by its practitioners from a
specified roster, upon its roster territory. Except for the "cramdown" practice no party
can unilaterally either abrogate the roster monopoly in seniority right or give part of it
to those not on the seniority list.
Further, those excluded from a bona fide monopolizing right are a class of all
of the world's people not included in the roster group. As affirmed by the NRAB, no
particular class of persons is, by virtue of existence of seniority right, a target for
exclusion from performance of right-protected work. Instead, the global class of all
those not on the governing seniority roster are excluded, without prejudice to any
subclass within this universal group. The rights of persons already on a seniority
roster may not be diminished by the extra-agreement addition of a new person. The
lawful seniority rank order used in furloughing and recalling of employees could
frustrate affirmative action goals (MacLeod 1987).14
Retrospection on the Contractual Basis of Seniority Right
An employee's seniority rights are not unlimited. The seniority rights of a
worker are conditioned by the wording of the labor agreement creating them. Because
seniority right is contractually based, it can only be modified by agreement between a
bargaining agent and management. And the right is enforceable only in accordance
with the terms of the latest version of the agreement. Broadly speaking, because
seniority rights issue from an agreement, they do not go beyond the life and provisions
of a contract. In Local Lodge 2040, International Association of Machinists v. Servel,
Inc.; (268 F.2d 692 698 (7th Cir), cert. denied 361 U.S. 884 [1959]), the court held
that "seniority rights depend upon an employer-employee relationship; they do not
guarantee such a relationship but merely define the rights of an employee when that
status is in existence." Thus, under the NLRA, seniority rights do not survive the
termination of an agreement unless provided by the wording of the agreement or by a
subsequent agreement.
In the "state" of the U.S. rail labor relations, the matter is entirely different.
Under the RLA, a labor agreement remains continuously in effect until renegotiated
by the parties and cannot expire so long as the carrier and bargaining agent, or their
successors, exist. Rail craft seniority rights, accordingly, do not terminate because a
contract lapses owing to passage of time. Changes or terminations in particular work
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rules, therefore, must be renegotiated. Railroaders could work with an agreement not
adjusted for several years past an expiration of a moratorium prohibiting renegotiating
of the contract.15
Employees furloughed from employment have seniority rights only as
provided by the contract. When duration of rights is not limited by the contract,
furloughed workers retain the rights so long as they are both available and able to
work. Until the federally imposed agreements of 1985 and 1986 in the U.S. (Anon.
1986), an unlimited time of furlough had been true for new hires in all the operating
crafts.
In sum, it is not empty talk when a person "hires out" on a railroad and the
first thing heard is: "the only thing you will ever have on this railroad is your
seniority."  It takes years of on-the-job discussion, practice, and reflection to
comprehend the words.
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1918a General Order No. 27.
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1919a Public Acts Proclamations by the President Relating to the United States
Railroad Administration and General Orders and Circulars Issued by the
Director General of Railroads to December 31, 1918. Director General of
Railroads Bulletin no. 4 (Revised).
1919b General Order No. 27, with its Supplements, Addenda, Amendments, and
Interpretations, to June 30, 1919.
1919c Decisions of the Railway Boards of Adjustment, Nos. 1, 2, and 3 to
December 31, 1918. Director General of Railroads Bulletin no. 10.
UTU (United Transportation Union)
1968 Unification Agreement and Constitution. Cleveland: UTU.
1969a UTU Guarantees Craft Autonomy, January 1 [placard] Cleveland: UTU.
1969b The Unity Move in Railroad Labor. Cleveland: UTU.
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UTU-BLE (United Transportation Union-Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers)
2001 Unification Agreement and Constitution. Cleveland: UTU-BLE.
Wark, George K.
1913 The Eastern Federated Board. Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen's
Magazine 54:830-31.
Wilner, Frank N.
1991 The Railway Labor Actand the Dilemma of Labor Relations. Omaha, NE:
Simmons-Boardman.
1998 Why Railroads Really Merge. Journal of Commerce 27 February.
Wilson, Charles
1870 A Step in the Right Direction. Locomotive Engineers Monthly Journal
4:123.
WC (Wisconsin Central)
1989 Policy Procedure 4.1. Length of Service (Seniority), April 1.
Wolf, Harry D.
1926 The Railroad Labor Board. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago.
'For the development of constructs in industrial relations of webs of rules, see Gamst 1995.
2In Canada during and immediately after the First World War, rail labor agreements and their
work rules, including those for crafts and seniority, became structured by U.S. forms (Rountree
1936:57-61).
3For Tifle HI of the Transportation Act of 1920 as comprehensive federal labor law, see Jones
1941. Frank N. Wilner (1991) provides the most informing current treatise on the RLA. For
the U.S., the RLA shaped views on the relations among employers, employees, and
government. Federal laws for the railroad "state" foreshadowed general labor law for the land.
For example, the Federal Employers' Liability Act of 1908 predated state workmnen's
compensation acts; the Adamson Act of 1916 included provisions found in the National
Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938; aspects of the
RLA, including its amendments of 1934, provided similar statutory wording for the National
Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 and the National Labor Relations Act of 1935; the RLA's
periods of "fact finding" and "cooling off' were incorporated into the Taft-Hartley Labor
Management Relations Act of 1947; the Railroad Retirement Act of 1937 was drafted in 1934,
but not enacted, prior to the passage of the Social Security Act of 1935; and the Railroad
Unemployment Insurance Act of 1938 provided the first national system of unemployment and
disability benefits. The "rail state" was in the forefront of the women's labor movement
during World War I, when rail unions sought and received the first agreements providing full
"application of the principle of equal pay for equal work by women and men" (Anon. 1918c;
Goldmark 1919). In April 1917, the federal Director General of Railroads equalized, and
pioneered, national rates of pay for the same class of rail service "without regard to sex or
race" (USRA 1918a).
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4In this article, a bargaining unit is a group of employees holding a set of jobs in an industry,
or some part of it, possessing enough of a sharing of common characteristics and interests to
constitute such a clustering. This unit is represented by a bargaining agent for collective
bargaining with an employer or grouped employers of an industry. A bargaining agent for
such a unit may be a labor union, but for railroads it is ordinarily a union component, a General
Committee of Adjustment. Here, a craft among workers of any kind, anywhere is one or two
or more closely related, skilled to highly skilled trades. It is an occupation with both manual
and mental tasks necessitating extensive training and the possession of considerable ability.
(For the railroad operating crafts and the craft of train dispatcher demonstrated as mental in
addition to manual occupations, see Gamst 1980 and 1990.) In railroading, members of the
operating crafts crew trains and engines. Nonoperating craft members provide mechanical
(regarding equipment), engineering (regarding structures and right-of-way), traffic control, and
clerical support for the movement of trains and engines and related tasks.
5Because the employer often agreed to provide particular work rules in lieu of increases in pay
or other work rules, one could reason as follows. Customarily, a party to collective bargaining
agrees to surrender something only in return for gaining another thing. There are no work
rules gained in past bargaining that are not still being continuously paid for by railroaders.
Such payment is in the form of a past reduction of a good in perpetuity, for example, a forgone
increase in wages or rule advantage.
6 During our discussion of craft seniority, class is included. Thus, under Section 2, Fourth of
the RLA, either "craft or class" constitutes the unit for bargaining and representation.
Bargaining units and crafts were originally intertwined in rail labor relations. By World War I,
especially for the operating crafts, the bargaining unit, even without a formal label as such, had
become explicit. During federal control of railroads from 1917 through 1920, almost all
current craft bargaining units were formalized (Anon. 1918a and 1918b; USRA 1919a, 1919b,
1919c) and even employees who were not craftsmen were allowed collective representation, in
classes instead of crafts. An example is Supplement No. 8 of General Order No. 27 of the U.S.
Railroad Administration, created the early bargaining units for maintenance-of-way
employees. Its Article I speaks, among other employees, of "track laborers and all other
classes of maintenance-of-way labor not herein named" (USRA 1918b). Thereby,
collectivities of noncraft employees were recognized as having some manner of community of
interest and labeled as employees constituting a class. Where craft skills were not involved,
the USRA found a craft-analogous class.
7Job opportunities decline with age (Hutchens 1988). Seniority protects against such decline.
8Even railroad officers outside of the RLA are protected by craft seniority. They "have a job
insurance" of always being able to fall back to their craft seniority employment, because the
labor agreements allow maintenance of a seniority date when becoming a full-time company
officer, union official, or government rail regulatory administrator.
9 Under the RLA, a public law board is a local, three-person, special adjustment body created
by agreement of the parties. A minor dispute concerns interpretation of an existing labor
agreement and its work rules, hence a grievance dispute. Decisions of either board are final
and binding on the two parties; thus, rail labor cannot strike over and management cannot
ignore concerning a minor dispute.
10 The RLA requires and supports voluntary bargaining, with no time limit, between labor and
management. The primary purpose of the Act is not to reach settlements quickly but to "avoid
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any interruption to commerce or to the operation of any [rail or air] carrier engaged therein."
For failures of the parties to reach a settlement, under Section 4, the Act includes the services
of the NMB, like the NRAB an independent agency in the executive branch of the federal
government. A major dispute concerns negotiation for a revised or an initial labor agreement
involving, under Section 5 "changes in rates of pay, rules, or working conditions not adjusted
by the parties." Beyond this charge, the NMB could handle "any other dispute not referable to
the National Railroad Adjustment Board" and not adjusted by the parties. In a major dispute,
the NMB could impose its mediation services, thus effecting mandatory involvement for the
parties, for whom a settlement is not compulsory; act upon a request for its mediation from
either or both parties; proffer its arbitration services leading to a "final and binding award,"
thus necessitating both parties accepting the process voluntarily; or accept from either or both
parties a request for its arbitration services, which either party may reject. When, under
Section 10 of the RLA, the NMB believes a dispute threatens "to deprive any section of the
country of essential transportation service," then it might recommend to the President that the
matter be submitted to an emergency board (PEB) which, if appointed by the President,
recommends a settlement. At the President's request, only the Congress can impose,
legislatively, upon the parties either the PEB's recommendation or an arbitration. The NMB
has no power to compel a settlement. Section 5, Second of the RLA empowers the NMB to
interpret provisions in disputes "over the meaning or the application of any agreement reached
through mediation." The Board little uses this power, owing to its desire not to tarnish its aura
of neutrality in disputes.
t1 That the nonunion members may not be discriminated against has been upheld since Steele
v. Louisville & Nashville Railroad, 323 U.S. 192 (1944), a pivotal rail seniority case precursor
to the landmark Brown v. Board of Education.
12 Related to the seniority and longevity just discussed, the National Labor Relations Board,
courts, and arbitrators differentiate seniority from net credited service. The former includes
the duration of the calendar time since the employee received a seniority date, and the latter is
the duration of time an employee actually worked with an employer. Net credited service
governs amount of and entitlement to remunerations such as sick benefits, vacation,
termination payment, and pension. Seniority governs allocations of prerogatives of work
among members of a seniority group as previously discussed.
13 Even on the new "spun-off' railroads, when a labor agreement is completed, it is rank order
in seniority that is sought by the union. On the Montana Rail Link, a newer, but more
experienced, hiree might be qualified to take a promotion to locomotive engineer before a
previous, but less experienced, hiree. Accordingly, "in the event a junior employee is
promoted to engineer ahead of a senior employee, the junior employee.. .having made a service
trip as a qualified, promoted Locomotive Engineer, will establish a seniority date for all
employees his/her senior in their respective rank order on the date of such first service of the
junior employee" (MRL 1991:19).
14 Seniority rules are today found in almost all labor agreements and civil service statutes and
are protected in the U.S. by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which says: "It shall not
be considered an unlawful practice for an employer to apply different.. .terms, conditions, or
privileges of employment to a bona fide seniority.. .system" (42 U.S.C. ? 2000e-2[h]).
Further, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Firefighters'Local Union No. 1784 v. Stotts (464 U.S.
561 [1984]) that the authority of federal courts is limited in granting injunctions which weaken
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or undercut a "bona fide seniority system," even when the system conflicts with court orders to
increase the numbers of protected minority and women employees in a firm. Just one negative
or positive fact for a seniority system rarely allows a determination of "bona fide." A court
instead looks to the "totality of circumstances" (James v. Stockham Valves & Fittings Co., 559
F.2d 310, 352, 5th Cir. [1977]). A bona fide seniority system is free of discrimination or its
intent against particular classes of employees. In Teamsters v. U.S., (431 U.S. 324 [1977]), the
Supreme Court found a seniority system bona fide because it was not created for
discrimination and "it was negotiated and has been maintained free from any illegal purposes."
15 Rail labor agreements ordinarily have no fixed period but can be adjusted on dates mutually
agreed by the parties. As per Section 6 of the RLA, a party desiring to change a labor
agreement must give thirty days written notice. Included in an agreement ordinarily is a
specified period, often three years, during which a moratorium exists regarding the reopening
of matters just negotiated. Matters not included in the moratorium during this period may be
presented in a Section 6 notice. Some moratoria are permanent.