Also known as an emergency board. Under the Railway Labor Act (RLA), an emergency board that the President may form during an initial cooling off period to investigate, report, and make recommendations to resolve airline or railroad labor disputes. The President has discretion to create an emergency board after being notified by the National Mediation Board (NMB) that a dispute between a rail or air carrier and a union will "threaten substantially to interrupt interstate commerce to a degree such as to deprive any section of the country of essential transportation service."

The emergency board makes recommendations to resolve the dispute. After the President receives recommendations from the emergency board, the recommendations are forwarded to the NMB, which distributes the recommendations to the parties involved in the dispute. If the President creates an emergency board, the cooling off period extends until 30 days after one of the parties rejects the emergency board's recommendations.

For more information, see Practice Note, Railway Labor Act: Overview.