U.S. OIL STRIKE

Timaru Herald, Volume CLVIII, Issue 23324, 6 October 1945, Page 5

U.S. OIL STRIKE

State To Take Over Plants (9.50 p.m.) WASHINGTON, Oct. 5. President Truman authorised Mr J. V. Forrcstal (Secretary of the Navy) to take over and operate 26 strikebound oil producing refining plants, says the correspondent of the “New York Herald-Tribune.” The oil strikes so far have cost the nation 1,675,000 barrels of petroleum products a day, or one-third of the total refinery capacity and have reached a critical stage where essential military operations are jeopardised and essential industrial and agricultural production threatened. The correspondent added that nothing will be permitted to stand in the way of adequate supplies of any kind for our armed forces and their proper denloyment and demobilisation. Informed circles say that President Truman plans to broadcast an appeal to the country to end the wave of strikes now interfering with the orderly transition to peacetime production. Mr Truman, it is reported, feels that organised labour, to which he has always been a friend, has demonstrated its irresponsibility and let him down, seriously handicapping the reconversion programme. Mr Truman said he believed he would have public opinion behind him in the demand for a cessation of the strikes.