THE INTERSTATE COMMERCE COMMISSION/SURFACE TRANSPORTATION BOARD AS REGULATOR OF LABOR'S RIGHTS AND DEREGULATOR OF RAILROADS' OBLIGATIONS: THE CONTRIVED COLLISION OF THE INTERSTATE COMMERCE ACT WITH THE RAILWAY LABOR ACT

For almost a century the predecessor the Surface Transportation Board, the Interstate Commerce Commission [STB and ICC], regulated the financial and economic aspects of the railroad industry. For most of the latter half of that century, when the ICC approved railroad for financial transactions (mergers, stock controls, purchases of railroad assets, leases, trackage rights agreements), it imposed upon individual railroads seeking that approval conditions for the protection of the interests of their employees which the approval might affect. Then in late 1983, without benefit of legislative or judicial sanction, the Commission reversed course and began to protect the interests of the railroads against those of their employees, whether the employees' interests were protected by contract or by the Railway Labor Act. The ICC simply injected itself directly into the relationship between management and labor to the benefit of the former and to the decided detriment of the employee interests it was mandated to protect.