Strikes-of-the-Week

When John Llewellyn Lewis wants $1,000,000, all he has to do is assess his 500,000 United Mine Workers $1 each per month for two months. Last week, to build a war chest which would prime the No. 1 U. S. union for any emergency, he announced such assessments. The emergency might be a nation-wide bituminous coal strike, operators having warned last week that they would up the work week from 35 to 40 hours when the current contract expires March 31. Or it might be a steel strike. Some 250 steel company-union leaders rallied at a missionary meeting of Leader Lewis' Committee for Industrial Organization in Pittsburgh last week, heard his pious and progressive lieutenant, Philip Murray, claim that Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers has already enrolled 128,000 of the nation's 500,000 steel workers, threaten trouble unless steelmasters cease their "dog-in-the-manger attitude." C. I. O. also defied its antagonists in the great Steel campaign last week by haling Carnegie-Illinois Steel Corp., biggest U. S. Steel subsidiary, before the National-Labor Relations Board on charges of interfering with its employes' right to organize. Most important, C. I. O. was preparing a frontal attack on the automobile industry, whose parts-making supply bases the United Automobile Workers and Federation of Flat Glass Workers continued last week to harry (TIME, Dec. 21 et ante}. To great General Motors Corp., world's biggest automobile manufacturers' Leader Lewis delivered an "ultimatum" demanding U. A. W. recognition and collective bargaining, on threat of strike.

In Kansas City last week Leader Lewis let General Motors feel his whip when 2,450 employes of its Fisher body and Chevrolet assembly plants "sat down" at their jobs in protest against discharge of a U. A. W. employe. In Detroit. 1.500 employes of National Automotive Fibres, Inc. (floor mats, cushions, door panels for Chrysler and others) struck against discharge of ten U. A. W. workers, went back next day with the unionists reinstated, a 5-c-per-hour pay raise won. In Eau Claire, Wis. 2,000 jobs came to a halt when Gillette Rubber Co. (tires & tubes) was shut down by a strike for better working conditions by employe-members of C. I. O.'s United Rubber Workers. Still idle in Detroit at week's end were 5,000 parts-making employes of Kelsey-Hayes Wheel Co., 600 of Aluminum Co. of America.

Most serious threat to the motor industry came last week as the Federation of Flat Glass Workers, demanding more pay, closed shop and check-off of union dues, added 5,600 employes of Libbey-Owens-Ford plants in Toledo, Shreveport and Charleston, W. Va., to the 1,300 already striking in Libbey's Ottawa, Ill. plant and 6,000 in five plants of Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co. U. S. manufacture of plate glass was thus brought virtually to a halt. Between.them, Libbey-Owens-Ford and Pittsburgh make 90% of the nation's plate glass, 85% of its automobile safety glass. Motormakers declared they would not suffer unless the glass strike was a long one. Ford was prepared to make its own glass. General Motors was stocked with a month's supply. But by last week's end the parts pinch had laid off 10,000 to 20,000 workers in Ford's River Rouge factory, crippled production in Ford's and Fierce-Arrow's Buffalo plants.

P: In Milwaukee, President Samuel Alexander Fulton of Fulton Co., a small motor accessory plant, gave his 300 well-behaved employes bonuses totaling $10,000 and, because he is international chaplain of The Gideons, an autographed Bible each.

P: In Philadelphia, the John B'. Stetson hat plant shut down last week when 2,500 members of United Hatters, Cap and Millinery Workers, a C. I. O. union, walked out for a 25% pay raise, union recognition, better working conditions,

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