Trouble on the Rails

"The no-strike pledge has lost its usefulness. . . . We are now, despite the President's noble speeches, making war millionaires at a rate which, when a belated accounting is had, will make the profiteering of World War I look like a WPA payroll."

With such big bold words last week in Chicago, Alexander Fell Whitney, the professorial president of the Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen, got his fellow workers to join the four other big railroad operating unions to call for a general strike vote among their 350,000 members.

The trainmen had held out against calling the vote. As one member put it at the Chicago meeting: "If we strike, we aren't striking against the carriers, we are striking against the Government."

Not a strike, but a strike threat against the Government, or at least against its present Administration, was precisely what Alexander Whitney and the railroad unioneers wanted. Ten months ago, mindful that many war-plant workers were making more money than the highly skilled railroad men, the five unions had asked for a minimum $3-a-day wage increase. A special Government Railroad Labor panel, considering the case from every angle, after an interminable length of time gave them 4-c- an hour--32-c- a day--instead. Economic Stabilizer Fred M. Vinson hurriedly approved the raise. But the unions cried "Insult," turned the proposal down.

Exploded Alexander Whitney: "This stalling . . . has made the settlement of railway wage disputes a farce." More & more blasts came; not since John Lewis had there been such high, hot talk by labor against the Administration.

Threat or Reality? Since a general railroad strike is intolerable, no one seriously envisioned one. But the threat of wildcat strikes is real.

And real wildcat strikes could be expected from another railroad quarter. The 1,100,000 members of the 15 non-operating railroad unions (maintenance men, etc.) were just about as mad. To their demand for a 20-c--an-hour wage increase, another Railway Labor panel countered with an increase of 8-c- an hour. By last week the "non-ops" having negotiated for 13 weary months, had not yet got up their nerve for a strike vote, had agreed to resubmit demands to a new panel.

John L. Again. The railroads, piling up their biggest surpluses in two decades, had agreed without fuss to meet the 8-c- rise for the "non-ops" without asking for rate increases. But there was one cold fact which would send them scurrying to the ICC with a demand for higher freight rates: a rise in the price of coal.

And this week such a rise seemed imminent. How much of a rise it would be depended on how much of a pay increase John L. Lewis' miners get. The War Labor Board seemed almost certain to take some action on the U.M.W. contract with Illinois mine operators before the miners' Oct. 31 strike deadline. If WLB approved the contract as is, Illinois miners would get an additional $2 a day, and almost all other mine operators would virtually be compelled to follow suit. WLB might order a smaller increase, but some upping of the pay scale seemed certain. And when the miners' pay goes up, mine operators will ask OPA for a coal price increase ; railroads in turn will ask the ICC for a freight rate increase, and the inflationary spiral will be in full motion.

Wanted: A Policy. On one thing labor, management, the press and many New Dealers were agreed: for this state of affairs, the Administration had itself to blame. Ever since the war's start, the U.S. wage and price policies have been an unintegrated mass of rulings and directives, administered by a group of mutually jealous boards and agencies. For 15 months, the Administration has stubbornly held the wage front along the Little Steel formula line; yet it cannot in truth defend the Little Steel formula against claims that living costs have risen 6.2% since May 1942, the formula's terminal. The formula's defenders further argue that while living costs rose 22.5% between September 1939, and August 1943, the weekly take-home earnings of factory workers in 90 representative industries rose 76%. To this, labor has a double-barreled reply: 1) food has risen far beyond 22.5%; 2 ) the average weekly take-home pay, even considering the phenomenal percentage rise, is but $43.43.

And agreement was general that, since wage and price ceilings have never been tied together, there will be strikes and threats of strikes, as long as this policy remains.

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