COAL MINERS STRIKE

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25445, 17 March 1948, Page 5

COAL MINERS STRIKE

MANY PENNSYLVANIA PITS IDLE

UNION’S DEMAND FOR PENSIONS

NEW YORK, March 15. Dozens of mines in the rich Penn-, Sylvania field were closed to-day When the miners struck to support the demand by the United Mine workers’ president, Mr John L. Lewis, for a miners’ pension of 100 dollars a month. By the middle of the morning more than ohe-third of the nation’s 400,000 soft coal miners had walked out.

The walk-outs are spreading quickly and they threaten to close all the soft coal mines within a day or so. It was reported in Washington that the Government was preparing to act if a general stoppage was threatened. Mr Lewis demanded pensions on a basis of 100 dollars monthly for every miner aged 60 with 20 years’ experience. He claimed that the pensions should be paid out of the Health end Welfare Fund, established in 1946, on the basis of a 5 cents a ton royalty, under an agreement reached when the Government controlled the mines. When the United Mineworkers and the operators signed a contract in 1947 the royalty was increased to 10 cents a ton. Unofficially, -it is estimated that the royalties now total 45,000,000 dollars. , , . . [Mr Lewis sent a letter to mine branches of the union on Friday stating that the owners had dishonoured the 1947 wage agreement by failing to come to terms on pensions. He asked the miners to discuss the matter and inform him of their reaction.]