Letter from Murray Latimer to President Franklin D. Roosevelt

Zone 11 JAN 1.9 1945 The President The White House Washington, D. C. 121-A Sir: # For more than twelve years social insurance has been a matter of major interest to railroad workers; wherever railroad men gather together they discuss retirement and disability annuities, and unemployment and death benefits. Since you became President, you have approved five major railroad social insurance measures: the Railroad Retirement Acts of 1934, 1935, and 1937; the Railroad Unemployment Insurance Act of 1938; and the 1940 major amendments to the latter. There have been a number of amendments, mostly minor, except for crediting military service toward annuities. Except for the compromise Retirement Act of 1937, the railroads have been bitterly op- posed to all railroad social insurance legislation. Social insurance is relatively new for this country; on a national scale it was, of course, non-existent before 1934. In a field in which in- terest has been so wide-spread and intense, it was natural that the early years of actual operation would produce many suggestions for change. In the railroad systems, these suggestions number many thousands; individual workers, local lodges, general committees, and national organization conventions have poured forth a steady stream of petitions and resolutions asking for various amendments to the Act. As was natural, the majority of these suggestions was directed to the heads of the various railroad labor organizations. Four years ago, the Railway Labor Executives' Association asked the Railroad Retirement Board for assistance in analyzing the great number of proposals made by railroad workers, individually and collectively, and for such suggestions as the Board itself might have. The Board complied with the request; a number of what were re- garded as practicable amendments was worked out and a first draft of an amendatory bill was prepared in September 1942. The draft was circulated to interested persons, including some hundreds of copies to the Association of American Railroads. On the basis of comments on the first draft, a second draft was prepared and circulated to labor organizations, as well as to the railroads, in December 1943. On the basis of further comments, a third draft was prepared which was introduced in the House and Senate in May 1944, by Congressman Crosser and Senators Wagner and Wheeler. New bills containing the major provisions of those introduced in the last session were introduced by the same sponsors in the current session. The amendments to existing law embodied in the bills now pending in Congress may be summarized briefly as follows: