C.I.O. Chiefs Threaten to Shut All Plants Unless Demands Are Met at Lackawanna
BUFFALO, N.Y., Feb. 25 - C.I.O. workers at the Bethlehem Steel Corporation's Lackawanna mill set a strike deadline for 9 P.M. tomorrow and heard a leader assert that the union was well enough organized to "close every plant Bethlehem has."
The employees voted unanimously at a mass meeting to walk out unless the company, which has $1,500,000,000 in defense contracts, reinstates those who have been "indefinitely suspended," agrees to a collective bargaining agency election among the plant's 14,000 men and grants a 25 per cent wage increase to all workers.
John Riffe, assistant to Van A. Bittner, regional director of the Steel Workers Organizing Committee, who is in Washington, told the meeting that the union was unable to reach Bethlehem officials "even through the highest officers of our country."
He said telegrams were sent to President Roosevelt, the Defense Commission, Secretary Perkins and Governor Lehman asking them to intervene and bring about a peaceful settlement before a strike occurred at Lackawanna and "all other Bethlehem plants."
Sunday midnight the union members completed a sixty-hour ballot authorizing the strike, 6,411 voting in favor of it and 1,001 against it.
Mr. Riffe, who said earlier that C.I.O. workers at the three Pennsylvania mills had authorized a strike, declared that the union would bargain only with the heads of Bethlehem and not with company representatives at Lackawanna.
Mine Stoppage Is Threatened
"We are willing to submit our problems to President Roosevelt or any representative he may select and let them decide," he asserted.
Mr. Riffe declared that the Bethlehem coal and iron mine workers were organized and that if Bethlehem did not come to an agreement with the steel workers, "we are going to close those mines."
He added that stewards and committees of every department in Bethlehem plants at Johnstown, Pottstown, and Bethlehem, Pa., had approved the action of union workers "who have expressed themselves in favor of a strike." He interpreted this approval as a formal authorization to strike unless the company consented to a collective bargaining agency election and settles "many grievances."
The S.W.O.C. leaders in the three Pennsylvania plants denied that any formal strike action had been taken but said that union members in departmental meetings had expressed approval of a strike.
The company has made no comment other than to content that the suspension of 1,000 workers since Friday resulted from work stoppages by the men which, it said damaged the coke ovens.
The New York Times
February 26, 1941
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