Depression Phase

In the dirty, malodorous flatlands of East Akron, where rubber workers live amid a pervading stench from the vats, there is widespread conviction that unionists who first perfected the U. S. sit-down technique cannot get much without fighting for it. On the heights of West Akron, where rubber executives live amid a stench diminished but not conquered by distance and altitude, there is an equally firm conviction that the flatland hordes will some day swarm up the hills, looting and shooting as they come. Last week Akron had a taste of trouble.

Depression having reached the normal phase of protest strikes against pay cuts and layoffs, Akron rubber workers last week reacted with enthusiasm and a surprising measure of success. Following depression in the motor industry, 37 1/2 percent of the 40,000 normally employed in Akron by Goodyear, Goodrich, Firestone and General rubber companies were out of work. Like their C. I. O. brothers in Michigan, members of the United Rubber Workers of America complain that they are getting the short end of retrenchment. Young, levelheaded U. R. W. President Sherman Dalrymple accuses the companies of demoting foremen and other supervisors to production lines, letting out union men who otherwise would hold their jobs by seniority.

Aggravating this general complaint, Goodrich recently announced that either its workers would have to take a pay cut averaging 12.3% or the company would (like its major competitors) transfer a sizable share of its production to other, lower-paid localities. Having rejected this proposal, Goodrich workers also threatened to walk out if 25 supervisory employes retained plant jobs normally held by ordinary workers. Last week both sides accepted a compromise. The union agreed to halved vacation pay. Goodrich agreed to maintain its hourly scales, to give U. R. W. a written agreement.*

Hardly had Goodrich's trouble subsided than more serious trouble broke out for Goodrich's neighbor. Goodyear. In Goodyear's (and the world's) largest tire plant U. R. W. members had been grousing because they could not obtain a signed agreement despite an 8-3 labor election victory last year. Lately they have groused about alleged layoff discriminations. When U. R. W. negotiators and Goodyear management got nowhere last week West Akron's forebodings were partly and bloodily realized.

U. R. W. called a protest strike, 3,000 men swarmed out of the plant and up from the flatlands. Akron police also swarmed, commanded pickets to break up the jams around Goodyear's gates, let a nonstriking minority in and out. The jams thickened, police charged the lines. Nineteen-year-old Striker Donald Dixon was shot through the kidney, a woman through the right hand, a policeman in the face. Forty-seven others were wounded, gassed, or sufficiently knocked about to require medical attention. Police then scooted to U. R. W. headquarters, shattered its windows and drove out its occupants with tear-gas bombs.

Chilled by this good start towards a labor war, both sides quickly sobered. Republican, antiC. I. O. Mayor Lee D. Schroy temporarily reduced police contingents around Goodyear, swore to put every officer in town on duty when the plant reopened after Decoration Day. But a scant few hours before the zero hour, U. R. W. leaders persuaded 3,000 rubber workers gathered in meeting to accept management concessions: 1) to enforce a seniority rule, 2) to negotiate for a written agreement, 3) to discuss wage adjustments. Next morning the rubber workers went peaceably to work.

*Heretofore the union has had a written agreement with only one big Akron tire maker, Firestone. That contract was renewed last week.

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