Steel Strike Begins In The United States

Wanganui Chronicle, 3 October 1949, Page 5

Steel Strike Begins In The United States

NEW YORK, Oct. 1 (Recd. 6pm).A nation-wide steel strike began today, a minute after midnight, when the C. 1.0. United Steelworkers’ Union ordered 528,000 members out. The strike was declared after the union negotiators ended a fruitless conference with Federal mediators over an insurance and pension dispute with the companies. President Truman had arranged truces in the dispute three times throughout yesterday. Government mediators sought a basis of a lastminute agreement. Last hopes faded when it was announced that President Truman would not intervene again. The strike is the first national stoppage in steel since a 30-dav walkout paralysed the industry early in 1946. The calling of the strike today meant the automatic reinstatement of the union’s full original demands for a fourth increase of 12J cents an hour and pension fund benefits that would bring the total increase paid by the steel companies to 30 cents an hour.

The union, as negotiations progressed, dropped its wage demand on the condition that the industry complied with the Presidential Fact-Find-ing Board’s recommendations that the companies provide ten cents an hour for pensions and social insurance, with no contribution by the employees. The companies offered to contribute 10 cents an hour provided the employees also contributed an amount to be negotiated.