Carl Laturner v. Burlington Northern, Inc., and Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers,appellants

This appeal has as its genesis the 1970 merger of the Great Northern Rail way Company (GN), the Northern Pacific Railway Company (NP) and three of their operating subsidiaries — the Pacific Coast Railroad Company, the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Company and the Spokane, Portland & Seattle Railroad Company (SP&S). It evolves from an action instituted by a group of dissatisfied employees who charged that the surviving carrier, Burlington Northern, Inc. (BN), and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers (BLE), as the authorized bargaining representative for the craft of locomotive engineers, had discriminated against them for hostile and invidious purposes in the negotiation and implementation of an agreement which established, inter alia, the method for consolidating certain of the predecessor carriers’ seniority rosters.

FACTS

In early 1961, the above-mentioned rail carriers filed joint application with the Interstate Commerce Commission, I. C.C. Finance Docket Nos. 21478-80, for authority pursuant to Section 5(2) of the Interstate Commerce Act, 24 Stat. 380 , as amended, 49 U.S.C. § 5 (2), to merge the GN, NP, Pacific Coast and Burlington lines, and for the…