MILLION WORKERS ON STRIKE IN UNITED STATES

Grey River Argus, 5 October 1949, Page 5

MILLION WORKERS ON STRIKE IN UNITED STATES

NEW YORK, October 3.

There now are nearly one million steel and coal workers on strike in the United States. They are striking for pension benefits. Apart from 500,000 members of the United Steelworkers’ Union who are on strike, at least another 500,000 workers in the steel fabricating and processing plants are expected to be idle’ by the end of the month. In addition, industries dependent on coal and steel are putting off thousands each day. Some 80,000 anthracite miners have ended a fortnight of idleness in Eastern Pennsylvania and 22,000 softcoal miners in the Western States went back to work. Both these mining groups acted in response to instructions from Mr John L. Lewis, president of the United Mine Workers’ Union, who said their further inaction was not now vital to the pending wage negotiations. There-is no hint of a work resumption order for the 380,000 men who mine most of the nation’s coal. The strikes in the United States steel and coal industries are costing the nation more than £16,000,000 daily, says the United Press. The hold-up in America’s two basic industries is probably the heaviest blow ever dealt to business.

Violence Develops In Coal Strike (Rec. 10.5). NEW YORK, Oct. 3.

One man was killed and three men were injured to-day in violence arising from the coal strike. The case of death was that of a truck driver hauling coal from the Communion mine at Grundy, in Virginia. The driver was killed when he was struck by boulders, which crashed down a hillside. The sheriff of the area said: “We know, definitely, that somebody pushed those rock'-, off the mountain”.

At Pokeville, in Tennessee, some non-union miners ambushed twenty unionist miners. They wounded three of them with gunfire. Two others are missing. It is believed that the non-unionists heard that they were to be attacked, and they acted first.