COAL STRIKES SPREAD

Timaru Herald, Volume CL, Issue 22125, 20 November 1941, Page 5

COAL STRIKES SPREAD

President’s Appeal To Leaders Police Intervene By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright (10.2 p.m.) WASHINGTON, Nov. 18. President Roosevelt, seeking to avert the threatened railway strike, invited the leaders of both management and labour also Government executives to a White House conference. The meeting adjourned without reaching conclusions. Mr Roosevelt told the press that he had nothing to say about the coal strike except that he considered the argument by Mr John L. Lewis that failure to obtain a union shop contract with the captive mines would jeopardise union shop agreements already concluded with the rest of the mines, was invalid. The Carnegie Illinois Steel Company announced in Pittsburgh that it expects to be forced to cease operations in six blast furnaces on Thursday due to the lack of coal. The strike is extending to commercial mines in Pennsylvania. State police have moved into the Garry mine to preserve order following earlier shooting. Mr Wendell Willkle in a speech accepting the Churchman award “for the promotion of goodwill and better understanding among all people,” urged labour to delay the fight for a closed shop, but said that Mr Roosevelt was mostly to blame for the labour crisis, because he failed to enunciate a clean and open policy. Mr Willkle urged labour to clean its own house by throwing out racketeering leaders. He said that labour should be represented directly in the “very marrow of our Government —in a small group on which is placed the responsibility of winning this war.” Workers Wounded in Clash Two workers were wounded at Garry, West Virginia, in the first clash between miners on strike and nonstrikers. Police have moved into mines in Alabama, where the strike is said to be spreading. The spreading of the strikes is giving serious concern to the authorities. Men in other pits are walking off in sympathy with those striking in the pits owned by the major steel companies. The men in 15 mines outside the steel companies downed tools yesterday, and 7500 more men went on strike in Pennsylvania to-day. President Roosevelt sent a message to the 0.1.0. convention to-day. After extending greetings and felicitations to Mr Philip Murray, the President reminded members that annual conventions of American labour groups were symbols of freedom in which all must make every sacrifice to maintain. He said: “I have every confidence that your members recognising the imperative needs of the American people in the interest of American defence, will co-operate with all other American groups in the common and in the patriotic Interest Americans will demand such a contribution from management, labour and from all other groups for preservation. The convention, he said, and American labour organisations today have a great responsibility. The enslaved workers of the world look to their American brothers for the production of weapons which will make them free again. American workers cannot and must not fail them in their hour of need and our hour of need.

According to a message from Toronto the executive of the United Mine Smelter Workers’ Union at Kirkland, ordered 4300 goldminers to strike in the Northern Ontario goldmining area as a result of the operators’ refusal to recognise the union as a sole collective bargaining agency.