The Great Railroad Strike of 1922.
Because they were critical to the war effort, America’s railroads were nationalized during the First World War, and their return to private hands in 1920 was accompanied by the creation of the Railroad Labor Board, which retained the authority to establish wages and monitor working conditions. It also retained the eight hour day established as the norm during the war. The Railroad Labor Board cut wages across the board for railroad workers in 1921, and in 1922 cut them again, exempting many railroad positions protected by the Brotherhoods, and targeting the average 12% reduction in wages to the shop workers and maintenance workers.
The shop workers and others associated with the wage reduction had been allowed to unionize during the war, and when notified of the targeted reduction they voted to strike rather than accept the cuts. On July 1, 1922, through seven unions, 400,000 railroad workers went on strike. The railroads were still able to run the trains since the engineers, firemen, brakemen, and so on did not support the strike. The railroad companies accordingly turned to the time-honored tactic of hiring strikebreakers to replace the maintenance crews and mechanics. The Railroad Labor Board encouraged the practice, and established that the hires were to be permanent.
The railroads, including the Baltimore and Ohio, the Chesapeake and Ohio, the New York Central, and the Pennsylvania, stripped the striking workers of their seniority. This meant that even if they returned to their jobs they would be considered new hires, out of line for any promotions to one of the skilled railroad crafts. In several different instances around the country, armed company guards fired on strikers, who also found themselves the targets of anti-labor community workers and their spouses, who threw eggs, rotten fruit, and heavier missiles such as bricks and stones at them on the picket line.
For their part the strikers took opportunities to commit acts of sabotage against their employers, damaging locomotives, rolling stock, switches, control towers, and other equipment to disrupt schedules as much as possible. As negotiations to resolve the strike dragged on, with little movement on either side, state governors mobilized their National Guard units as needed to protect railroad property. As the strike went on the Federal government took an active role to defeat it. This hostility to the strikers was ameliorated by President Harding, who wanted to arbitrate a solution which was acceptable to both sides.
Finally, on September 1, a federal judge issued an injunction against strikes, pickets, and several other union activities. Some shop workers and maintenance men attempted to return to their jobs, while others simply found other forms of work. During the strike thousands of black workers crossed the picket lines, and when it was learned that the rail brotherhoods would not accept them the railroads kept them in their jobs, further weakening the unions. The strike gradually died out, after the injunction made the act of picketing a crime subjecting the picket to arrest and fines. The Strike of 1922 didn’t so much end, it just gradually faded away.