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From Labor Action, Vol. 14 No. 21, 22 May 1950, pp. 1 & 8.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
MAY 16 – The Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen ended its six-day strike against four major railroads this morning under conditions which indicate a complete surrender on the part of the leadership of the union.
The major issue of the strike, the demand that the railroads employ a fireman in the engineroom of multiple-unit road diesels has been all but abandoned. The secondary demands – that wagas on diesel and electric locomotives be brought up to standard steam-engine rates, and that firemen be employed on all yard diesels regardless of size – will be arbitrated with both sides agreeing in advance to accept the ruling of an arbitration board.
Thus the firemen’s strike will go down in history as one more instance of the misleadership of the railroad unions’ officials. Though the text of the arbitration agreement is not yet available, the probability is that the railroad workers will get very little out of it.
Newspaper reports indicate that the brotherhood chiefs hope to sneak the additional firemen in on the road diesels under a clause which states that they may place before the arbitration board evidence that the roads have violated an old clause in the BLFE contract. This clause states that if the railroads hire additional men in the engineroom of diesels, these men will come from the ranks of firemen. The brotherhood maintains that the roads have been using up to 5,000 specialists and supervisory officials to ride in the enginerooms, and that according to the contract these men should be firemen. This claim is justified, on the face of it.
But now that the strike has been called off, and after two presidential fact-finding boards have ruled that an additional man is not needed, there is little reason to believe that an arbitration board will find in favor of the union. As a matter of fact, even putting the claim before the board is most likely just a face-saving device to make the men believe something has been won.
According to all reports, the strike was solid when it was called off. The firemen were maintaining their picket lines and no back-to-work movement had developed.
The roads claimed to be running a few more trains on the sixth day of the strike than they had been running on the first day, but the work was being done by supervisory workers who were scabbing on the union men. Why, then, did the brotherhood chiefs call off the strike with nothing to show for it?
All we can do right now is speculate. There is little doubt that the pressure was on from all sides. Tens of thousands of workers were being thrown out of work due to the strike. Chambers of Commerce and other employer organizations were bombarding the government with the demand that Truman “do something” to end the strike. The union was being denounced by the daily press and all the other employer-controlled agencies of communication.
But that is not enough of an explanation. After all, even the most stupid union leadership in the world would have known before the strike was called that there would be plenty of heat.
Perhaps the most plausible explanation is that the strike was called off in the hope that this would lead congress to drop the Donnell bill. This bill, on which hearings are being held before a Senate. Labor subcommittee, would make it illegal for railroad workers to strike, and would subject all labor disputes on the railroads to compulsory arbitration.
Chief arguments for the bill have been that railroad strikes cannot be tolerated as they do too much damage to the “public.” Three railroad presidents who testified before the subcommittee used the firemen’s strike as an example of the kind of thing to be prevented by the proposed shackling legislation.
If is quite possible that the heads of the BLFE were pressured by the chiefs of the other railroad brotherhoods and by other labor leaders to drop their strike so as to render less likely passage of this bill. There may even have been some deal behind the scenes in which the railroad executives pledged themselves to stop pushing for the bill if the brotherhood would call off the strike.
That is just speculation. If it is correct speculation, it indicates the sorry state into which the unions have stumbled through their political policy of supportingfriends and defeating enemies in the two old parties. It would mean that their friends and enemies could get together to crush any strike by simply introducing vicious anti-labor legislation in Congress, and then promising to dump it if the striking union would call off its strike.
Of course, if the unions were united and would stand fast, this procedure could be used in reverse. The unions could simply tell their friends and enemies in Congress that they will stay on strike, come hell or high water, until the anti-labor legislation is dropped. But for that kind of a policy union leaders are required who are courageous enough to stand by their guns just as firmly as the congressmen stand by the guns of the employers.
In a way, that is what John L. Lewis and the miners did during their last strike when everyone knew that whether or not the court would find the United Mine Workers in contempt, no coal would be mined. But D.B. Robertson, president of the Firemen, is no John L. Lewis.
If the above interpretation is rejected, what other one would hold water? There could only be two possible ones. Either the union heads were simply bought off, or six days of pressure was all they could stand. Neither of these two reasons for the abrupt end of the strike seems very likely.
Of course, the firemen are holding the sack, as usual. They went out on the picket lines and were ready to stand firm. But the constitution of their union is so rigged that they have absolutely np say in strike settlements. The ballot on which they vote to strike for their demands also contains a clause which gives complete authority to their officials to settle the strike on any terms they see fit. A firemen can either vote not to strike, or else he Votes for strike AND for this undemocratic clause.
If the political reason for calling off the strike was in fact the chief one, it may serve as one more lesson in the futility of the kind of politics pursued by the railroad unions along with the rest of the American labor movement.
After decades of supporting their friends and defeating their enemies, decades of spending their membership’s funds in helping various “pro-labor” Democrats and Republicans into office, every time the rail workers try to get a little something for themselves they find their friends standing over them with a club ready to beat their organizational brains in. Harry Truman did it in the 1946 rail strike, and Congress is threatening to do it again.
Sooner or later the rail workers are bound to learn from bitter experience that neither playing “good dog” in their disputes with management, nor “heeling” at the command of politicians pays off. When that day comes it will be a great one for the workers, and a very sad one for the hangdog officials who have been misleading them for so long.
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