Strikes-oj-the-Week

As the midnight shift was preparing to enter the Republic Steel plant in Massillon, Ohio one night last week, two cars driven by C. I. O. sympathizers collided, blocking the entrance to the long viaduct leading to the mill. Ohio's Governor Davey, having withdrawn his troops from Massillon, the gate was patrolled by some 30 deputized special guards. Knocking in the windows of the cars the guards dragged out the drivers, while a crowd of pickets surged up to defend them. In the ensuing two-hour battle the nearby union headquarters was nearly wrecked, a baker's dozen of pickets were shot, two fatally.

Meantime in Indiana Governor Townsend patched up a truce between the Steel Workers Organizing Committee and Youngstown Sheet & Tube, pending a ruling from the National Labor Relations Board on the question of signed contracts. Unlike the Inland Steel truce, in which both sides made definite agreements with the Governor, this truce was informal. After the company made a few changes in its labor policy regarding vacations, the S. W. O. C. called off its pickets in Indiana Harbor, broke out 30 barrels of beer for a "victory" celebration as 7,000 workers prepared to return to the last closed plant of the independent steel companies. Stoutly the S. W. O. C. maintained that the strike was not yet lost. Though this certainly appeared to be whistling in the dark, it was equally certain that the four steel allies--Bethlehem. Republic, Inland and Youngstown Sheet & Tube--had not heard the last of S. W. O. C. From now on the strike will become a campaign of attrition--to harass the companies at every step with the hope of raising the cost of making steel to a point where any settlement would seem sweet.

Other strike news of last week:

P: "As a pictorial indictment of law enforcing agencies," the Paramount newsreel of the Republic Steel massacre in Chicago (TIME, July 12) was shown to ranking Manhattan police officers at a "command performance" by Police Commissioner Lewis J. Valentine. Said the Commissioner: "We don't want any shooting here."

P: Two men were shot fatally, 28 wounded, in a pitched battle between strikers and peace officers outside the gates of the Aluminum Co. of America's fabricating plant in the company town of Alcoa, Tenn. Promptly dispatched to Alcoa were three companies of National Guardsmen. The Alcoa strike was called last May by the A. F. of L.'s Aluminum Workers of America in an attempt to end the wage differential between Aluminum Co.'s Northern and Southern plants (a 63-c--per-hour base rate in Pennsylvania as against 43-c- in Tennessee). The union's offer to arbitrate was turned down flat by the company. At week's end after William Green dispatched his personal aide, Francis T. Dillon, to investigate, the Alcoa local voted to return to work, and the local's president Fred Wetmore resigned for "the good of the Union"-- meaning that A. F. of L. thought he was too friendly with C.I.O. for a Southern Labor leader.

P: In Manhattan 35,000 members of David Dubinsky's Ladies' Garment Workers (C.I.O.) walked out when negotiations stalled for a new three-year garment workers' contract. Mr. Dubinsky had already obtained a 10% boost in wages and a new low in hours (32^ beginning in 1939). But the manufacturers balked at a stipulation forbidding them to send out mannish garments to be tailored in men's clothing shops, where working conditions are not so high as in the ladies' garment trade. Having bargained collectively for 27 years, the garment union immediately referred the disputed point to an arbitrator, which ruled for the unions. Having stretched a hot week end to four days, David Dubinsky's Ladies' Garment Workers were trooped back to work.

P: Police were summoned in South Bend, Ind., when eight C.I.O. gravediggers, picketing a local cemetery, refused to allow a lawn mower salesman to enter the grounds. The aging gravediggers claimed they were laid off fortnight ago for union activity. Chairman W. E. Miller of the Cemetery Board claimed there was not enough grave digging to keep them busy.

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