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Special Message to the Congress on National Emergency Labor Disputes in the Transportation Industry.

February 03, 1971

To the Congress of the United States:

Early in 1970, I proposed to the Congress a new approach for dealing with national emergency labor disputes in the transportation industry. The proposal was based upon my belief that existing law did not provide adequate remedies for settling such disputes, and thus failed to protect the national interest.

Today, I am again recommending that proposal, the Emergency Public Interest Protection Act. Events since the bill's first introduction have made its enactment even more urgent. I am hopeful that the Congress will give the proposal its prompt and favorable consideration---before there is another crisis in the transportation industry.

The bill I propose would give the President vital new authority to deal with national emergency disputes in the railroad, airline, maritime, longshore, and trucking industries.

First, the bill would abolish the emergency strike provisions of the Railway Labor Act--which now govern railroad and airline disputes--and make all transportation industries subject to the national emergency provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act.

Second, the bill would amend the Taft-Hartley Act to give the President three new options in the case of a national emergency dispute in a transportation industry, when that dispute is not settled within the eighty-day "cooling-off period" authorized by Taft-Hartley. Under those circumstances, if a strike or lockout should threaten or occur, and national health or safety continued to be endangered, the President could select any one of the following courses of action:

--He could extend the cooling-off period for as long as thirty days. This might be most useful if the President believed the dispute to be very close to settlement.

--He could empanel a special board to determine if partial operation of the industry were feasible and, if so, to set out the boundaries for such an operation. This alternative would allow a partial strike or lockout without endangering the national health or safety. It could not extend beyond 180 days.

--He could invoke a "final offer selection" alternative. Under this procedure, the final offers of each party would be submitted to a neutral panel. This panel would select, without alteration, the most reasonable of these offers as the final and binding contract to settle the dispute. Unlike arbitration, which too often merely splits the difference between the parties, and thereby encourages them to persist in unreasonable positions, this procedure would reward reasonableness and thereby facilitate negotiation and settlement.

Third, the bill would establish a National Special Industries Commission to conduct a two-year study of labor relations in industries which are particularly vulnerable to national emergency disputes.

Fourth, the bill would amend the Railway Labor Act to conform the management of labor relations under that Act to the practices prevalent in most other industries, including the encouragement of voluntary settlement of grievances by overhauling the existing grievance procedures.

The urgency of this matter should require no new emphasis by anyone; the critical nature of it should be clear to all. But if emphasis is necessary, we need only remember that barely two months ago the nation was brought to the brink of a crippling railroad shutdown, the strike being averted only by legislation passed after a walkout had actually begun. That legislation, we should also remember, settled little; it merely postponed the strike deadline. A few weeks from now another railroad strike over the same issues which precipitated the last one is a distinct possibility.

I believe we must face up to this problem, and face up to it now, before events overtake us and while reasoned consideration is still possible.

Time and again, as the nation has suffered major disruptions from a transportation shutdown, voices have been raised on all sides declaring emphatically that this must not happen again--that better laws are needed to protect the public interest, and that the time to enact those laws is before, not after, the next crippling emergency. But with the same regularity, as each emergency in turn has passed the voices have subsided--until the next time. So nothing has been done, and emergency has followed emergency, at incalculable cost to millions of innocent bystanders and to the nation itself.

The legislation I propose today would establish a framework for settling emergency transportation disputes in a reasonable and orderly fashion, fair to the parties and without the shattering impact on the public of a transportation shutdown. I urge that this time we not wait for the next emergency, but rather join together in acting upon it now.

RICHARD NIXON

The White House

February 3, 1971

Note: The proposed emergency public interest protection act was introduced as H.R. 3596 and S. 560.

On the same day, the White House released the transcript of a news briefing on the proposed legislation by Secretary of Labor James D. Hodgson.

Richard Nixon, Special Message to the Congress on National Emergency Labor Disputes in the Transportation Industry. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/240518

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