President Woodrow Wilson issued an order for nationalization in 1917, and Congress affirmed the action in 1918 with the Railway Administration Act.
The United States Railroad Administration (USRA) was created to manage the entire system. : 9 Establishment ĭuring the period of American participation in World War I, operation of the American railway system was brought under national control to ensure efficient operation. Although still lacking the power to enforce its decisions, the Newlands Act was successful in resolving 58 of the 71 controversies which were managed by the Board, from the time of the Act's passage through 1917.
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: 8 This legislation expanded and formalized the mediation and arbitration process, establishing a three-member "Board of Mediation and Conciliation" and increasing the number of professional arbitrators to six. The result this desire for permanent, professional mediation of railway wage disputes was the passage of the Newlands Labor Act in 1913. : 7 Calls were made for a substantially-sized permanent board of arbitration, with representatives of the railroad companies rather than the unions taking the lead in calling for such a body. : 7ĭespite this seeming success, neither the railroad companies nor the various unions representing railway employees were satisfied with either the process or the decisions rendered. In the subsequent eight years between 19, a total of 61 disputes were settled by mediation or arbitration. : 6–7 This voluntary mediation was resisted by the railroad companies and very seldom used until 1906. Various attempts at stopgap legislation proved largely unfruitful, although the Erdman Act of 1898 did establish a more precise mechanism for mediating disputes between employers and those workers engaged in train operation. Such voluntary arbitration had lacked an enforcement mechanism, however, and labor unrest continued unabated. : 6 With the continued functioning of the railways seen as a vital public interest, Congress had attempted to solve wage disputes through legislation as early as 1888, when an initial mechanism for voluntary arbitration was created. Institutional history Background įollowing major expansion of American railways after the American Civil War, labor disputes increasingly became a focus of turmoil between employers and employees, first evidenced at a large, multi-state scale during the Great Railroad Strike of 1877.
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