Managers Serve Notice

Last December the managers' committee of the 210 Class 1 U. S. railroads agreed with the 21 standard railway unions to continue for nine months the 1932 10% deduction from the basic pay of 1,000,000 railroad workers (TIME, Jan. 2). It was agreed that neither side should serve notice of further wage alteration before June 15. Right on the dot, at a meeting in Chicago last week, the managers announced that effective Nov. 1 they planned a 22 1/2% reduction in basic pay.

Explained they: "[The] proposal will bring the rates of . . . workers more clearly into line with living costs and with rates paid in other industries. Unlike other industries, the railroads have not reduced basic rates from the peaks established in prosperous years."

The managers proposed a meeting with the Railway Labor Executives Committee, headed by Alexander Fell Whitney of the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen, on their old battleground at Chicago's Palmer House July 12. Trainman Whitney, although aware that the managers would probably take a 15% reduction if they could get it, affected amazement at the offer, doubted if the roads were "serious."

Railroads are outside the pale of President Roosevelt's Recovery bill, but Federal Transportation Coordinator Joseph Bartlett Eastman, as an unofficial arbiter, arranged to confer with management and labor committees in Washington this week.

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