CALL TO MINERS

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20619, 21 November 1941, Page 5

CALL TO MINERS

RESUMPTION OF WORK ALTERNATIVES OFFERED UNION’S REPLY AWAITED (Elec. Tel. Copyright—United Press Assn.) (Reed. Nov. 21, 10 a.m.) WASHINGTON, Nov. 20. President Roosevelt sent a letter to the steel companies, the owners of the captive coal mines, and Mr. John L. Lewis, president of the United Mine Workers’ Association, in which he said that the “closed shop” was the only issue in dispute and affected merely .5 per cent of the workers employed in the captive mines. He declared that' work in those mines must recommence and called on all, as patriotic Americans, to accept one or the other alternative, first, to allow the matter of the “closed shop” in the captive mines to remain in status quo for the period of the national emergency, or, secondly, to submit this point to arbitration, agreeing in advance to accept the arbitrators’ decision.

The United States Steel Company agreed to accept either of these alternatives, but the United Mine Workers’ Association declined to give a definite answer at least until Saturday. The Congress of Industrial Organisations’ convention at Detroit cheered the declaration of the president, Mr. Philip Murray that “nothing must stop the work of organising the unorganised in America—not even a great emergency.” The convention endorsed the stand of the C. 1.0. representatives who resigned from the National Defence Mediation Board when that body rejected the. "closed shop” issue in the captive mines.