PRESS RELEASE
Synarchist Washington Post in an Anti-Labor Scandal
Jan. 3, 2008 (EIRNS)—The Washington Post, owned by the "American Tory" family of the late Katharine Meyer Graham, has taken a page from its Synarchist forefathers in its negotiating tactics with the Post's production workers, demanding the union cede complete control over its pension fund to the Post, before it will bargain a new contract!
The Synarchist tactics, and demand to control and invest the money of its workers, are completely in profile for the family of the late Post owner, Katharine Meyer Graham, and her son Donald Graham, the current overseer of the Post plantation. Katharine Meyer's grandfather, Marc Eugene Meyer, was a cousin of the Meyer and Weill families who owned Lazard Freres, and Marc Eugene Meyer became head of Lazard's New York branch in the late 19th century. Katharine's father, Eugene Meyer, declined an offer to be a Lazard partner, and after his rise on Wall Street, became Chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1930-1933, under Herbert Hoover, whose Administration was an avowed enemy of Franklin Roosevelt and the principle of the General Welfare contained in the Preamble to the Constitution. In 1933, Eugene Meyer bought the Post at auction through agents, and installed the pro-Hitler Felix Morley as its editor. In the 1930s, Lazard's Paris Headquarters, directed by Andre Meyer (no relation), supported the Nazis. When Andre Meyer emigrated from France in 1940, Katharine Graham reportedly gave him half her money to manage. After the mysterious death of Katharine's estranged husband Phil Graham in 1963, Lazard's Andre Meyer reorganized the Post stock shares so that control would reside permanently with Katharine Graham's heirs.
The Post's production workers, CWA Local 14201, have worked without a contract for four years, and have not had a pay raise for five and one-half years, in true Graham plantation style. The Post brags that it has the most productive "mailroom" operation in the nation (the final stage of assembling the inserts, bundling newspapers for delivery, etc.), with workers who make between $21,000-$47,000 a year, while working late shifts and every holiday.
"The Post is systematically beating its unions one-by-one," a union spokesman told EIR today, and the production workers are the last to resist. The Post has never improved the pension plan since Donald Graham ended profit-sharing in 1976. The current multi-employer plan is administered by the CWA-ITU, and has an equal number of Washington Post and union trustees. Donald Graham is now demanding the sole, unilateral right to invest the workers' money which came out of wages (in the Washington Post, perhaps?), or else he refuses to bargain at all.
