Business: LOAFING ON THE RAILROAD

Featherbedding v. an Honest Day's Work

IN a shack in the railroad yards at Antigo, Wis. last week sat four railroadmen: a fireman, a conductor, a brakeman and a flagman. All together, they collect pay totaling $110 a day, not counting fringe benefits. Their job: doing nothing. Earlier this year, the Chicago & North Western Railroad decided to eliminate one of the two switching locomotives at Antigo because there was not enough work to keep them busy. But the road may not remove the idled crew without union permission, and permission had not been given.

Such practices make railroads the most egregiously featherbedded industry in the U.S. Not all examples are so flagrant, but the railroads declare that featherbedding costs them $500 million a year. Now, in the middle of negotiating new contracts, the roads have served notice that they intend to replace the feathers with some spine-stiffening substitutes —at the risk of a strike.

The railroads' chief case is against their 40,000 firemen, who have little or nothing to do in modern diesels. The roads argue that taking some 23,000 firemen off freight runs and yards alone would save them $200 million a year. They also want to change the mileage pay rates set 40 years ago when trains traveled at turtle speed. Under the obsolete rules, a train crew gets a full day's pay for every 100 miles traveled, and conductors and trainmen on passenger trains for every 150 miles—even though the actual traveling time sometimes takes less than two hours. Under the same set of rules, the 20th Century Limited, between New York and Chicago, must have eight engine-crew changes on a 16-hour trip, forcing the New York Central to pay out a total of 19.2 days' pay to 16 men. Some yard crews get a day's pay for moving a train 100 yds.

RAILROAD operators say they have had enough. "The necessity of employing firemen on freight and yard diesels costs the New Haven over $3,500,000 a year," says George Alpert, president of the New Haven Railroad. "This is absolutely unessential." Says E. F. Bidez, vice president of the Central of Georgia Railroad: "In 1958 we paid firemen on freight and switch engines $1,005,000. Considering the fact that we could get along without most of them, that's a good bit of money. It's 50% of the net earned last year." The Great Northern Railroad reports that it paid $21 million for time not worked in 1958.