Towards them there is displayed the greatest
toleration and none of the narrow spirit of the "closed shop."
The nonunion engineer is not only tolerated but is even on
occasion made the beneficiary of the activities of the union. He
shares, for example, in the rise of wages and readjustment of
runs. There are even cases on record where the railroad unions
have taken up a specific grievance between a nonunion man and
his employer and have attempted a readjustment.
>From the inception of the Brotherhood, the policy of the order
towards the employing railroad company has been one of business
and not of sentiment. The Brotherhood has held that the relation
between the employer and employee concerning wages, hours,
conditions of labor, and settlement of difficulties should be on
the basis of a written contract; that the engineer as an
individual was at a manifest disadvantage in making such a
contract with a railway company; that he therefore had a right to
join with his fellow engineers in pressing his demands and
therefore had the right to a collective contract. Though for over
a decade the railways fought stubbornly against this policy, in
the end every important railroad of this country and Canada gave
way. It is doubtful, indeed, if any of them would today be
willing to go back to the old method of individual bargaining,
for the brotherhood has insisted upon the inviolability of a
contract once entered into. It has consistently held that "a
bargain is a bargain, even if it is a poor gain.
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