Busmen's Holiday

As an element in the nation's transport system the bus industry achieved official maturity in 1935 when Congress put it, along with trucking, under control of the Interstate Commerce Commission. Appropriately the interstate bus drivers went into the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen. But interstate bus and truck lines are not yet within the moderating influence of the Railway Labor Act. Result was that with little or no warning, the country last week suffered its first major bus strike. The Railroad Trainmen called out 1,300 drivers on eight Greyhound lines serving 16 States east of the Mississippi.

Greyhound Corp., or rather one division of it, Pennsylvania Greyhound Lines, has made labor news before. The first case heard by the National Labor Relations Board was a complaint that Pennsylvania Greyhound had fired a group of employes for deserting its company union in favor of A. F. of L.'s Street & Electric Railway & Motor Coach Employes. The Labor Board ruled out the company union, ordered the employes reinstated. For a time it looked as if Greyhound would be the key case in the Supreme Court's review of the Wagner Act, but that honor finally went to Associated Press.

Negotiations for an initial contract first went on the rocks last October, and the Trainmen issued a strike order. However, the negotiators resumed their seats, the union asking for a uniform contract covering all eight lines involved, the company holding out for wage differentials between the various lines. The unions also wanted a closed shop and wages for drivers boosted from around 3 1/2-c- per mile to 5-c-, with a guarantee of 200 miles per day ($11). Last week the company flatly and finally turned down the demands, and the drivers climbed out.

All Greyhound service in Boston and Philadelphia stood still. Elsewhere, in widely varying degrees of regularity, bus schedules were maintained, though there was a sharp drop in traffic. Busses still rolling entered the terminals well splashed with ripe tomatoes. Tires were slashed, windows stoned. In Washington, eleven pickets were arrested for forcing a bus to the curb and beating the driver. Five men were arrested in Springfield, Ill. for the same tactics, while four others were picked up for investigation as alleged "strongarm guards" employed by the company.

Meantime, in Cleveland, as a Federal conciliator tried to end the busmen's holiday, nine of Greyhound Corp.'s affiliated companies filed one of the most remarkable suits in the history of U. S. labor. They asked $6,300,000 damages from the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen, President Alexander Fell Whitney and 19 other Brothers on the ground that the strike was called, not to improve wages and working conditions of bus drivers, but in behalf of railroad passenger traffic. The trainmen for years, it was argued, have tried "to limit development of highway passenger transportation." It seemed quite obvious to Greyhound--at least for propaganda purposes--that since railroading trainmen far outnumbered the bus-driving trainmen, the Brotherhood called the strike "with a view to restore patronage ... to the railroads and increase the number of railroad trainmen employed by the railroads."

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