Expensive Strike

On the ninth day of the nationwide copper strike, President Truman reluctantly trundled out a Taft-Hartley injunction for the first time since Korea, sent 53,700 members of the left-wing International Union of Mine, Mill & Smelter Workers back to their jobs. Already back at work were 8,300 employees of the huge Kennecott Copper Corp., which had made a separate peace with the union five days before. Kennecott's terms: a raise averaging 15-c- an hour (just a fraction of a cent more than its last offer before the strike began), and an additional 4 1/2-c- an hour in pensions. When the union and the other three major companies failed to follow Kennecott's lead, the President acted.

Though the nation's copper production was almost back to normal this week, the strike will cost the defense effort an estimated 30,000 tons of copper--scarcest material in the defense stockpile--as well as the zinc and lead mined with it. Result: a complete reshuffling of defense production schedules.

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