HEAVY FINES ON MINERS’ HEAD AND UNION FOR CONTEMPT

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22617, 21 April 1948, Page 5

HEAVY FINES ON MINERS’ HEAD AND UNION FOR CONTEMPT

(N.Z.P.A. —Keutcr —Copyright.) (10.30 a.m.) WASHINGTON, April 20. John L. Lewis, president of the United Mine Workers’ Union, was fined 20,000 dollars and the union 1,400,000 for contempt of court in ignoring a Federal Court order to stop the miners’ strike.

* Judge T. Allan Goldsborough accepted a Government recommendation for fines, saying it had been his own inclination to send Lewis to gaol. The threat still hangs over Lewis as the judge imposed the fines only on the criminal contempt charge. He said he would act on Friday on the second conviction lor civil contempt. Lewis and the union announced they would appeal against the fines. Judge Goldsborough rejected the union’s arguments that the recent walkout was not a strike and said that Lewis had actually called a strike when he advised the union on March 12 that the soft coal operators had “dishonoured” their contract in the pension dispute. Judge Goldsborough declared that Lewis’ action was, in effect a "code” telling the miners to strike. Finding the union guilty of contempt, Judge Goldsborough said it must be held responsible for the mass action of its members. “The suggestion that 350,000 men would get the idea simultaneously to walk out collectively is, of course, simply ridiculous,” he added. 3500 Miners Walk Out Angry miners stopped work in scattered pits tonight as a protest against the conviction of the president of the United Mine Workers’ Union, John Lewis, on a charge of contempt of court. More than 3500 night shift workers , refused to enter 10 pits in Alabama and two in Pennsylvania. The pits were forced to close.

Among the first pits affected by the walk-outs were five “captive” mines which supply a large portion of their output to the steel industry. Protest strikes later spread to the night-shift workers in Indiana, where 1500 walked out of 12 mines and to Virginia, where six pits are Idle. Six open-cut mines in Kentucky are also affected.