1926 Railway Act & Aviation Legislation The reasons that Congress passed the 1926 Railway Act go well beyond just labor disputes in the railway industry. This paper covers those issues and also delves into how the airline industry became part of the Act.

The 1926 Railway Act -- Background

The Act became law in 1926 because there was a need to keep "…the American economy flowing without the disruption of railway labor disputes" (Bank, 2006). But the Act also related to protecting the rights of railway employees to join a union if they wish to. In fact the Act has proven to be "…one of the most crucial laws passed" in America's economic history, Bank writes on page 1. At the crux of the matter was the unionization of railway workers, but the Act became a model for other industries where union activities were taking place.

In the book Airline Labor Law: The Railway Labor Act and Aviation After Deregulation, author William E. Thoms, law professor at the University of North Dakota, writes that the Act was passed ten years before the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). The Railway Labor Act reflected a "pioneer federal attempt to secure the peaceful settlement…" of disputes between employers and employees (Thoms, 1990). In the recent past (before 1926) there had been strikes and lockouts, and other "disruptive forms of self-help," Thoms writes, and because the railways were "far and away the primary carriers of goods and passengers," it was vital to deal with those workers' issues. Interstate commerce would be (and was) impacted negatively where there were work stoppages, or violence in connection with workers' attempts to join unions (Thoms, 4).

As background into the labor issues Thoms explains that Congress believed the main reason for disruptive strikes was the "failure" of workers and management to agree on contracts that were "fair to labor and management alike" (4). And the courts, according to Thoms, were not prepared in the sense of expert knowledge of these labor dynamics to help parties come to reasonable...

Hence, the Railway Act establishes what rights the workers had (in terms of being able to organize and join unions), and what rights of management. Also, Thoms continues, the Act provided details on precisely what "administrative machinery" was to be put in place to help with the selection of representatives that will be part of the bargaining procedures.
The basic bottom line of the Act can be broken down into four components: a) to try and avoid "interruption to commerce"; b) to make it legal for employees to be free if they wish to join a labor union; c) to provide "complete independence of organizations by both parties to carry out the purposes of the RLA; and d) to provide a way for the settlement of disputes whether they be minor or major disputes (Thoms, 5).

The operative word in the Act is "collective bargaining"; and for minor disputes within the context of collective bargaining the Act strikes were illegal; for minor disputes the Act calls for mediation under the National Railroad Adjustment Board. For major disputes, the Act created the National Mediation Board (NMB), an independent agency appointed by the President of the United States.

Airlines and the Railway Labor Act

There were of course trains well before there were airline companies, but after Charles Lindbergh flew his transatlantic trek to Europe a great deal more interest was focused on the potential for commercial airline transportation. In fact the very first scheduled airline service was launched in 1919 (Tampa-St. Petersburg Airline), and it was clear that air travel would become a big part of transportation in America, and that it needed to be regulated by the federal government (Thoms, 7).

In terms of regulating the airlines, first there was the Air Mail Act of 1925, which allowed the U.S. Postmaster General to give contracts to airlines that were delivering mail in the United States. The Air Commerce Act of 1926 "vested jurisdiction over safety and maintenance of airways and navigation facilities" to the Department…