It has been ten weeks since the management of the Washington Post forced the press operators out on strike October 1.

"We are dealing with a straight-out battle as to whether big business can completely dominate the unions," Dugan explains, "whether they can just throw us out whenever they get tired of us."

Post management refused to even negotiate with the press operators until just a few weeks before the contract expired September 30. Instead, the owners secretly sent more than 100 people to a scab training school in Oklahoma set up by a publishers' antiunion association.

The striking unions are not seeking any new contract gains. They only want to keep the provisions they already have.

Post management wants sweeping rollbacks in the areas of job security and working conditions. They want to eliminate the cost-of-living clause; do away with rest periods between back-to-back shifts; change the grievance procedures; eliminate time-and-a-half pay for double shifts; and reduce the number of press operators by 30 percent on the smaller presses and by 60 percent on the larger presses.

Although the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild in its majority supports the strike, a slim majority of the Post unit of the guild has voted to cross the picket lines. Several hundred guild members form the nucleus of the work force putting out the Post.  
 
December 25, 1950
A foretaste of the militarization of labor was given by the efforts of Truman, the U.S. Army and the federal courts to break the strike of 10,000 railway yardmen in 15 cities. Despite Truman's efforts, however, the strike showed sufficient strength to win concessions. A settlement covering 300,000 rail workers gave a 23 cent an hour wage increase, plus a quarterly automatic increase of 1 cent for every 1 percent in living costs. Working conditions were frozen for three years.

The yardmen's strike was an "outlaw" movement that spread from city to city. Though not endorsed by the railway Brotherhoods' officials, it showed every sign of beating the rail corporations. It was not powerful enough, however, to withstand Truman, the rail barons, the union of officials, and the press, all strike-breaking in the name of the "national emergency."

The union first took its demand through the tortuous procedure of the Railway Labor Board with no results. Then a Truman-appointed "fact-finding" committee considered the dispute. This committee proposed a 40-hour week with an hourly wage increase of 18 cents. Since this would have meant a weekly cut of approximately $17 union negotiators turned it down. The ranks held out for the original demand. A strike was called for Aug. 28, 1950.

On August 21, Truman "seized" the railroads, ordered that no strike take place and put the U.S. Army in charge.

Army management of the railroads was a farce. Seven railway presidents were made "colonels"--only one had to be sworn in, six being reserve colonels" from Truman's previous phony railroad seizure.  
 
 
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