Railroad Labor Board

The Railroad Labor Board (RLB) was an institution established in the United States of America by the Transportation Act of 1920. This nine-member panel was designed as means of settling wage disputes between railway companies and their employees. The Railroad Labor Board's approval of wage reductions for railroad shopmen was instrumental in triggering the Great Railroad Strike of 1922. The Board was terminated on May 20, 1926 when President Calvin Coolidge signed a new Railway Labor Act into law.

American railways were long the focus of turmoil between employers and employees, with the first use of federal troops to maintain order dating back to a strike of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in the early 1870s. 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. Such voluntary arbitration had lacked an enforcement mechanism, however, and labor turmoil had continued unabated.

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. This voluntary mediation was resisted by the railroad companies and very seldom used until 1906. In the subsequent eight years between 1906 and 1913, a total of 61 disputes were settled by mediation or arbitration.

Despite this seeming success, neither the railroad companies nor the various unions representing railway employees were satisfied with either the process or the decisions rendered. 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.

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