Third Strike

At Military Camp No. 1, the big modern army base outside Mexico City, steel gates clanged shut on more than 1,000 railroad workers one night last week. Troops guarded stations, and the government-owned railways sent out a call for strikebreakers to man the trains. After two tries at dealing with Demetrio Vallejo, 45, the brash, baby-faced new leader of the Railway Workers Union, President Adolfo Lopez Mateos set out to crush him.

Vallejo's first strike, which he led as a rank-and-file rebel with no union post, forced the government to agree to union elections that swept Vallejo into office (TIME, Aug. 18). A second strike in February collapsed after ten hours, but most lines of the federal railway system paid off with a 16 2/3% wage increase anyway. Fortnight ago Vallejo demanded the same raise plus fringe benefits for the 5,000 workers on the Mexico City-Veracruz line and the 8,000 on the Nogales-Guadalajara run. He pulled them out and ordered 60,000 other railroadmen to stage a series of one-hour sympathy shutdowns.

The government ruled the strike illegal. Cops raided union headquarters and broke up riots at rail terminals with tear gas and clubs, arrested union members on sight, including Vallejo and all his top lieutenants. The government charged that Vallejo is a Communist (he claims to have quit the party in 1946) and had plotted the strike with the second secretary and military attache of the Soviet embassy in Mexico City. The government booted the two Russians out of the country.

But all of this strenuous action did not get enough trains back on the run. So many key trainmen stayed out that service was reduced by as much as a half and trains ran hours behind schedule. Rotting cargo piled up at freight sidings through the country, and a food shortage threatened Mexico City.

The basic issue: while the cost of living has risen 40% in three years, wages have gone up only about half that much. The rank and file is tired of the cozy old system whereby union leaders cooperate with the government and in turn get cushy government jobs. Sample: Labor Confederation Chief Fidel Velazquez is also a Senator. Even if Lopez Mateos' stern measures win this round, the show of worker loyalty behind Vallejo was a signal of more labor turmoil ahead.

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