American Railroad ideology is that the most "efficient" railroad owns no track and runs no trains.
American businesses believe they should be able to spend zero money and yet still make all the profit.
American businesses believe they should be able to spend zero money and yet still make all the profit.
or maybe, as employees->0, revenues->∞
> During hearings before the board on wages … the railroads argued that labor from railroad workers does not contribute to their profits. “The Carriers maintain that capital investment and risk are the reasons for their profits, not any contributions from labor,” the PEB report said. “The Carriers assert that since employees have been fairly and adequately paid for their efforts… then they have no claim to share in the [profits].”
No, they didn't. The article you cite misdescribes the situation (for ideological reasons that are old hat to anyone familiar with the history of socialism). The railroads didn't argue that they should be able to spend zero money and make all the profits. They argued that they were paying money: they were paying employees fairly and adequately for their efforts. And having done that, they, as the owners of the company, took the profits that were left after meeting all company expenses, including paying labor fairly and adequately for its efforts. That's literally what owning a company means. An employee is not an owner. Profits are what the owners get after paying their employees.
A much better argument against the railroads in this case is that the railroad routes that their companies have exclusive rights to are granted by government regulation, not in a free market, so the revenues that are available to them, and which determine what their profits are after paying their employees, are not due to their sound business acumen, but to their ability to buy government regulations that favor them. But the article you cite does not say that (again, for well known ideological reasons).
The fact that railroad service in the US sucks is also bleak, and is a product of the same government regulation that has put the railroad company workers in the bleak position they are in. If you don't like the obvious implication of my previous post, which is that the government should open up railroads to free market competition and force the railroad company management to either show actual business acumen or give up their profits to someone who can, there is another possible response: since the government has created a railroad monopoly, the government should grant ownership of the railroad companies to all railroad workers, not just the company management. That way all workers would naturally share in the profits, because they all have a share in ownership. That would actually be more in line with what "socialism" claims to be about: everyone gets a share in the ownership of the capital they use to produce value. But the article that was cited doesn't make that argument either (once more, for ideological reasons that are obvious to anyone who is familiar with the history of socialism).