Editing Railway Labor Act (section)

==Passage and amendment==
The RLA was the product of negotiations between the major railroad companies and the unions that represented their employees.<ref>Railway Labor Act, May 20, 1926, ch. 347, {{USStat|44|577}}. {{USC|45|151}} et seq.</ref> Like its predecessors, it relied on boards of adjustment, established by the parties, to resolve labor disputes, with a government-appointed Board of Mediation to attempt to resolve those disputes that board of adjustment could not. The RLA promoted voluntary arbitration as the best method for resolving those disputes that the Board of Mediation could not settle.

Congress strengthened the procedures in the 1934 amendments to the Act, which created a procedure for resolving whether a union had the support of the majority of employees in a particular "craft or class", while turning the Board of Mediation into a permanent agency, the [[National Mediation Board]] (NMB), with broader powers.

Congress extended the RLA to cover airline employees in 1936.<ref>Railway Labor Act, {{USStat|49|1189}} (1936).</ref>