Strikes-of-the-Week

When Myron Charles Taylor of U. S. Steel and John Llewellyn Lewis of C. I. O. sealed their historic bargain last March, most observers sighed with relief, assumed that the threat of a great steel strike which had been hanging over the nation for months was ended. They reckoned, however, without Steel's major "independents" -- Bethlehem, Republic, Youngstown Sheet & Tube, National, Jones & Laughlin, Crucible, Inland, American Rolling Mill--to whom Big Steel's concession was a shocking betrayal of the industry's traditional united front against unionism.

As most of the smaller independents fell in line and signed up with C. I. O.'s Steel Workers Organizing Committee, the larger companies, employing more than 200,000 men and producing about one-fourth of the nation's steel, continued stubborn holdouts. When the Supreme Court certified the Wagner Act, their resistance took a subtle turn. They were entirely willing to bargain with S. W. O. C. and perhaps to enter into agreements with it--but they would have nothing put down in writing. Standing thus, they were strictly within their legal rights: the Wagner Act requires only bargaining, not written contracts. But S. W. O. C.'s Chairman Philip Murray, determined to win all he could while Recovery and Rearmament were booming steel production to alltime highs, cried last fortnight: "I tell you a strike will inevitably trail in the wake of this maddening policy."

One night last week at grim Aliquippa, Pa., 25 miles down the Ohio River from Pittsburgh, flames leaping up from great Jones & Laughlin blast furnaces flickered over the tense, expectant faces of thousands of men, women and children massed outside the five-mile-long plant's gates. Sharp at 11 p. m. came the deadline which Jones & Laughlin's C. I. O. unionists had set when they voted to strike unless the corporation signed a union contract. Marching out of J. & L. plants both in Aliquippa and Pittsburgh, the unionists shut down the nation's fourth largest steel producer, threw 27,000 men out of work, started the biggest U. S. steel strike since 1919. Next day, 6,000 employes of Pittsburgh Steel Co. struck, too.

There was to be no repetition of 1919's violence. Aliquippa's police chief decided once that the C. I. O. pickets looked threatening, tossed a few tear gas bombs at them. Strikers battered a U. S. mail truck which they thought was taking ammunition into the plant. A few hardy non-unionists tried to crash the picket lines, best scrap being put up by irate old H. L. Queen, longtime company storekeeper. "I've got a job and I'm going to it," cried he. When pickets seized him, H. L. Queen sank his teeth into a striker's hand (see cut), was dragged away with bleeding lips.

Governor Earle put in a prompt appearance, but before he could do a Governor Murphy the strike was over. Jones & Laughlin's husky, amiable Chairman Horace Edward Lewis set his fist to a letter to Chairman Murray, agreeing to let the National Labor Relations Board poll his workers this week, to give S. W. O. C. an exclusive bargaining contract if it won a majority vote. Pittsburgh Steel at once agreed to the same terms. Though declaring that strikes against other independents were "inevitable" jubilant Philip Murray decided to hold off until after the Jones & Laughlin election, trusting a victory would topple what was left of Steel's crumbling united front.

What front was left, however, displayed early this week an aggressive and grim cohesion. In Youngstown, Ohio, big Republic Steel and Youngstown Sheet & Tube made it known that should S. W. O. C. call a strike at their plants they would promptly close down, reopen only on request. By this move, which would stop the payrolls of 33,000 steelworkers in the Youngstown area, the companies would anticipate the "showdown" they profess to expect next February when U. S. Steel's agreement with C. "l. O. ends.

P: Brief, "unauthorized" walkouts and sit-downs at seven General Motors plants in Flint and Saginaw, Mich., Janesville, Wis. and Cleveland last week showed that C. I. O.'s United Automobile Workers still had a long way to go in disciplining its new members. Without waiting to accomplish that formidable task, U. A. W. officials announced that they were starting this week after still more recruits, tackling their toughest opponent to date: Henry Ford. From two offices in Dearborn the drive was to be directed by the Union's entire high command, banded in a special "Ford Organizing Committee." In a prompt countermove, Ford this week distributed to 150,000 employes copies of the Founder's familiar anti-union views, capsuled under the heading "Fordisms." Samples:

A monopoly of jobs in this country is just as bad as a monopoly of bread.

Our men ought to consider whether it is necessary to pay some outsider for the privilege of working at Ford's.

What was the result of these strikes? Merely that numbers of men put their necks into an iron collar. We're only trying to show who owns the collar.

Figure it out for yourself. If you go into a union, they have got you and what have you got?

P: Forward-looking were the methods by which one strike was settled last week, another averted. In Akron, C. I. O.'s Bus & Streetcar Operators' Union called off a 27-day strike against Akron Transportation Co. when the company, compromising a demand for higher pay, agreed to let the union examine its books every 60 days, to enter into new wage negotiations whenever the union discovered that its earnings exceeded operating expenses, taxes, fair depreciation charges and a fair return on investment.

In Cambridge, Mass., when his 375 employes threatened to strike for the first time in the company's 55 years, President Harmon P. Elliott of the Elliott Addressing Machine Co. gave them pay raises totaling $35,000, set up a profit-sharing plan by which all employes of ten years or more will receive the income from a $250,000 trust fund. "1 really did it for the fun of doing it," said 50-year-old President Elliott. "It will be fun watching them get the benefit of it while I'm here and not after I'm gone."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.