The United States railroad labor board, now sitting in Chicago heard spokesmen for the railroads and the various railway labor organizations to determine whether or not working rules should be changed and whether the wages of those employees further reduced below the 12.2% cut which chopped over $378,000,000 from the railway pay rolls last July.
The question is one of vital interest to the country. Not only the passenger and the shipper, but every citizen who consumes food, wears clothing or gets a letter through the mails has a personal concern in an efficient, dependable and economical transportation service.
The railways contend that they will gladly reduce rates if they can take the difference out of the wages of their employes. They do not promise that this will insure greater efficiency. On the contrary, most of them frankly admit that it will not since railway wages are already at the point where many of the best men are leaving the service. The lawyers for the railroads are not stressing the deflation of the section men and unskilled maintenance-of-way employes, whose wages are only about $3 a day; but they assert that the higher paid railway employes, especially the engineers and train service men, should immediately suffer a substantial reduction in pay.
In order to secure for our readers the unvarnished truth abut the actual wages received by the best paid railway employes, we have just made a survey of the compensation of locomotive engineers, who are sometimes referred to as “the aristocrats of labor,” since they are among the most highly skilled and best paid railway workers. Obviously, if a cut should not be made in the wages of these men, then the wages of the most poorly paid employes can not be further reduced.
In order to determine whether the engineers are now receiving more than their share of income, we have taken the authoritative figures on wages recently compiled by the U.S. railroad labor board, the data compiled by the U.S. railroad labor board, the data collected by the Interstate Commerce commission, and the rule for determining a “just and reasonable wage” laid down in the Transportation Act passed by Congress in 1920 and still in force. According to the carefully compiled figures of the railroad labor board, the average daily earnings of engineers are as follows:
Passenger engineers, $6
Yard engineers, $6.51
Through freight engineers, $7.05
Local freight engineers, $7.41
The labor board stresses the fact that these are average daily earnings, and include overtime as well as regular pay. They represent the total daily compensation received by the average engineer since July 1, 1921, when decision No. 147 of the Labor Board imposed at 9.4 per cent cut, totaling $32,882,645 per annum on engineer serve employees. In the same report there is also given the average monthly wages received by engineers, which indicates that many of them do not work full time. In fact, the highest average stated is but $185.93 per month, which tapers down to $119.56 for yard and local engineers. As a matter of fact, many engineers are now receiving less than this, because the prevalent industrial depression has deprived them of steady employment to the point where they receive but a few days’ work in a week, often with an average income of under $100 per month. This is far less than the dollar an hour standard compensation paid skilled artisans in practically all of the well organized trades. It is actually less than the United States bureau of statistics claims that the average American family must have to maintain a decent standard of living!
We believe that it is fair to ask one question: What are locomotive engineers’ services worth to society? The transportation act lays down seven rules by which a “just and reasonable wage” shall be determined by the United States railroad labor board. In brief, they are:
1. Wages paid for similar work in other industries
2. Relation between wages and cost of living
3. Hazards of employment
4. Training and skill required
5. Degree of responsibility
6. Character and regularity of employment
7. Inequalities of present wages or treatment, the result of previous wage adjustments.
Obviously, there is no similar work in other industries which which the labor of a locomotive engineer can be compared; nor should any skilled worker be held down to a mere subsistence based on the bare cost of living. What, then, are the hazards, the skill, and the responsibility exacted of engineers? We doubt if the public realizes the risks daily assumed by every engineman in active service. According to the mortality tables, based upon years of actuarial experience by the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers Insurance Department, the average duration of life of a railroad engineer is but 11 yearws and 7 days. No engineer knows when he steps into the engine cab whether, through no fault of his, his life will be snuffed out before the end of the run. The safety appliances which railroad employes have secured only after prolonged struggle can reduce, but they cannot eliminate, the risks incurred by engine service employes.
The training, skill and physical perfection required of an engineer is such that the great majority of engine wiper, hostlers and firemen who spend years of labor preparing for the opportunity to grasp the throttle fall by the wayside in the thorough elimination of the less fit. Even after rejecting all who cannot measure up to the strictest tests for height, perfect vision, heart action, blood pressure, etc., 17 per cent of the firemen are rejected at the end of three years because their eyesight becomes impaired by the fierce glare of a grate of coals throwing off 2,800 degrees of heat. An additional 76 per cent do not exhibit the temperament and natural ability required of an engineer, so that only 17 out of every 100 candidates even win a place on the right side of the cab. Even after this rigorous process of the selection of the most fit, only six out of every 100 ever get places in passenger service. In brief, the length of training and the skill required to become a successful engineer is no less than that demanded of a competent dentist or an able lawyer.
It is an axiom of social justice that payment received for any service should depend in part upon the responsibility involved. The skilled surgeon is certainly entitled to a greater compensation than the woman who mops up the hospital floors. In no other profession in the world, not even excepting the medical profession, is a man entrusted with greater responsibility for the lives his fellow men than is the engineer in the locomotive cab. How well he discharges this obligation is indicated by the report of the Interstate Commerce commission for 1921, which shows that fatalities on American railroads are less than in the past 22 years, 16,239,774 passengers being carried to one killed. Whenever a wreck does occur it is the men who run the trains and not the passengers who usually pay the price. Indeed, the scrupulous carefulness of engine and train service employes is such that one important transportation line carrying 30 million persons a year has not fatally injured one passenger in more than four years. There are 34 times as many people killed by automobiles in the United States, according to the 1920 census, as there are passengers killed on railroads. The law recognizes the great responsibility for human life entrusted to the engineer, and holds him strictly accountable for the exercise. There is a grim truth in the jest that if a doctor makes a mistake he buries it, but if an engineer makes a mistake, he goes to jail for it. Train service employes are obligated to perform their work with a diligence which precludes the possibility of carelessness or negligence.
An engineer is not only responsible for the lives placed in his care, but also for the millions of dollars worth of railroad property which he handles ever month of his service. President M.C. Byers of the Western Maryland Railroad, recently stated: “An engineer running a train of 100 coal cars virtually has $500,000 worth of property in his care, and for this reason, if no other, the members of the Brotherhoods should have comparatively high wages.”
If the American people permit the wages of railway employes to be beaten down in order to pay dividends on railway stocks, which have been notoriously watered, the people themselves will be the losers. Railroad service demands an exceptionally high degree of skill, carefulness, and responsibility. Wages paid in this service must be sufficient to secure the very best human material. Low wages will inevitably demoralize our transportation system. The actual figures presented by the Railroad Labor Board prove that even the most skilled railway employes are not overpaid, ad that many of them are receiving less than the clerks in a dry goods store. Finally, the railroads themselves would profit if they would devote less effort to beating down wages to the lowest possible level and a little more effort to cultivating the good will of their employes.
From B.L.E. Bulletin, as reprinted on the editorial page of The Greensboro Daily News, July 19, 1922.
No comments:
Post a Comment