LABOR: Strikes-of-the-Week

As sure a sign of Recovery as circus openings are of spring were the strikes popping and smoldering across the land last week.

¶ Confronted with a “sitdown” for more pay by his 133 employes, President Everett A. Wilsher of Detroit’s Gordon Baking Co. crawled into his plant through a window, sued for peace. Failing, he sent 20 constables armed with warrants, charging illegal possession. The constables tossed tear gas; the strikers returned loaves of bread. A Federal conciliator brought about a truce, persuaded the sit-downers to leave the plant pending negotiation.

¶ In eastern Michigan, some 200 bus drivers struck for a raise from 55¢ to 75¢ per hour, left thousands of commuters stranded on street corners in Flint, Pontiac, Mount Clemens, Wyandotte, Trenton, Detroit.

¶ Pennsylvania’s Governor Earle refused to close Reading’s Berkshire Knitting Mills, world’s largest hosiery manufacturers, where a strike against “sweatshop” conditions had been in progress since Oct. 1 (TIME, Dec. 7 & 14). Scattered through jails of four adjoining counties were 148 striking picketers who had been arrested for “blocking the sidewalk” after lying down in slush and snow outside the Berkshire plant. In Berks County Prison 13 picketers were given bread & water in solitary confinement after they had refused to weave carpets because that was not union labor. This week a battle between strikers and strikebreakers damaged 14 humans, six automobiles.

¶ In Park City, Utah, 400 striking silver miners, cheered on by wives and sweethearts, repulsed 17 automobile loads of would-be strikebreakers with fists and boots. One combatant was seriously in-jured when a woman bystander heaved a rock.

¶ Out to capture the automobile industry, John L. Lewis’ Committee for Industrial Organization continued to pursue its masterful strategy of skirmishing with parts makers, seriously embarrassing the industry without risking a head-on conflict. The two attacking C. I. O. unions, United Automobile Workers and Federation of Flat Glass Workers, formed a council for joint action. A victory was won when employes of Detroit’s Midland Steel Products Co. (Ford, Chrysler and other automobile frames) went back to work after a seven-day sit-down which won them more pay, abolition of piece work, union recognition. A sit-down of 5,000 employes in Detroit’s Kelsey-Hayes Wheel Co. (wheels for Ford, General Motors and other motor car makers) was halted by a promise of more pay, resumed this week when the company turned down U. A. W.’s other demands. Also in Detroit, a United Automobile Workers strike for higher pay spread throughout Aluminum Co. of America plants, by week’s end involved nearly 1,000 employes.

In Racine, Wis., where U. A. W. unionists have kept the J. I. Case Co. plant closed since Oct. 27, Circuit Judge M. M. Davison asserted his injunction limiting picketing had been violated with the complicity of the mayor and sheriff, declared a state of anarchy, asked Governor LaFollette to send militia.

In Pittsburgh, representatives of management and union met in the first joint conference of the seven-week-old strike of 7,000 Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co. workers.

In Ottawa, Ill., 1,300 employes of Libbey-Owens-Ford Glass Co. continued a sit-down in protest against a $4,000,000 job transferred from the Pittsburgh company.

A third C. I. O. union began sniping at the motor industry when 112 United Rubber Workers struck for higher pay in Akron’s Lowenthal Co. (rubber patching materials).

¶ When a tanker manned by strikebreaking seamen put in at the Pew family’s big Sun Shipbuilding & Drydock Co. yards in Chester, Pa., Sun members of the Industrial Union of Marine & Shipbuilding Workers refused to service it, struck. Union officials improved the occasion by demanding more pay, a 36-hour week, a closed shop. On the fourth morning some 1,500 strikebreakers lined up, marched toward the yards. Picketers met them with fists, bricks, clubs, lead pipes. Police rushed in with tear gas, managed to separate the rioters for a few minutes. On the second clash, five fire engines bore down on the seething mass—at 50 m.p.h., said strikers. Four men were seriously hurt, more than 100 banged and bruised. One aging striker was found dead of heart failure. State police continued to break up picket lines until Governor Earle called them off. This week, after President John G. Pew had appealed for a “Happy Christmas” at work, with discussion of differences postponed to the New Year, 3,000 of the company’s 4,500 employes returned to work.

¶ The biggest and costliest maritime strike in U. S. history dragged into its seventh week of deadlock. Characteristic of the lack of violence with which this struggle has progressed was the friendly chatting of Harry Bridges, Pacific Coast strike leader, and Roger D. Lapham, president of American-Hawaiian Steamship Co., as they waited their turns to debate the strike in San Francisco’s Civic Auditorium before a capacity audience of 15,000 (see cut). Characteristic of the stubborn determination which has made the strike a clash of irresistible v. immovable was each debater’s proclamation that his side would never yield on the strike’s crucial issue—control of hiring halls. So amiable was President Lapham, a onetime Harvard debater, that Australian-born Harry Bridges later wrote him a letter declaring: “If the employers as a group will exhibit the same sportsmanship and fairness that you did, the two sides can easily get together.”

At week’s end Leader Bridges flew East to address a series of mass meetings in Atlantic ports, try to persuade longshoremen to defy their officers, join the striking seamen. Anticipating the return from South America of apparently the only one who could settle the strike, Oakland and Berkeley, Calif.’s City Councils addressed to President Roosevelt a plea for “prompt and vigorous action.”