COAL STRIKE OFF

Evening Post, Volume CXXXII, Issue 126, 24 November 1941, Page 6

COAL STRIKE OFF

AMERICAN DECISION

PRESIDENT'S PLAN ACCEPTED

ARBITRATION SOON

(By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright.)

WASHINGTON, November 22,

The policy committee of the United Mine Workers of America has dramatically called oif the coal strike and voted unanimously for accepting President Roosevelt's suggestion for arbitration of the closed-shop issue in the company mines.

Mr. John L. Lewis concurred and thus reversed his stand of Wednesday. "We accept your proposal in the public interest," Mr. Lewis wrote the President. He told the Press that the mine workers accepted the President's suggestion fully and without qualification.

The decision of the arbitration board which President Roosevelt designated will be binding on both the owners and miners.

Within a few minutes after the arbitration agreement was announced telegrams and telephone calls flashed from the U.M.W.A. headquarters ordering tlie men back to work. Within an hour pickets left some mineheads. In Pittsburgh miners started down into the mines on the night shift, and virtually full operation appeared probable on Sunday with full-blast mining assured on Monday.

Mr. Lewis said' that with the miners returning to work and the controversy well on the road to a just settlement, the coal supply was assured till April 1, 1943, when the present Appalachian contract terminated. Congressional leaders cheered the news,- but a number of them stressed the fact that the end of the strike would not prevent the enactment of legislative labour controls.