Newport Telegraphers Brace for a Strike Over the Nine-Hour Day
With Newport as headquarters for the Great Northern grievance committee, operators await a national conference that will decide whether the new federal nine-hour law is applied—or fought.
Newport is headquarters for the grievance committee of the Great Northern telegraphers. H. C. Wray, day operator at the local station, is chairman of the committee. C. E. Jaynes is vice chairman at the instance of the railroad company, as they desire that no person shall be a member unless he has been in the employ of the company for five years. Mr. Jaynes went to St. Paul Wednesday to confer with the officials of the Great Northern regarding the new scale of wages for the operators under the nine-hour law passed by Congress and which goes into effect March 1. The question of a strike of the operators will be decided after the conclusion of a conference in Washington, D. C., Thursday. At this conference a number of presidents of railroad companies and the two leading telegraph companies, together with the representatives of the railroad and commercial telegraphers' organizations and the Interstate Commerce Commission, the matter of applying the law at the date mentioned will be gone over. If the law is applied, well and good; if not, then trouble.
“If the law is applied, well and good; if not, then trouble.”
The telegraphers' fight over the nine-hour day and a wage scale was a local chapter in a national labor struggle, with Newport serving as the grievance committee's headquarters. A century later, telecom and railroad workers still bargain over schedules, staffing and the line between law and strike—only the technology has changed.
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