The Gem worker and the Idaho labor herald. (Boise, Idaho) 1914-1917, 1916-06-22
TROUBLE In CHICAGO
Employers Get Injunction Against Employees to
Prevent Small Share Of Prosperity
Industrial Relationsl

l Washington-Union labor in Chi
cago, with an absolutely just cause, is
lighting with its back to the wall a
really desperate combination of en-
ployers grouped around the Inter
national Harvester Company. and
against the power of the courts. The
most sweeping injunction in the whole
history of the use of injunctions
functions against labor have been is
sued, in the form as yet, of tempor-
airy restraining orders, on behalf of
the Harvester Company and the Illi-
noise Malleable Iron Company and
on behalf of the big and little tannery
companies of Chicago, whose work
men are also on strike to procure a
respectable living and some small
share of the prosperity which their
labor is creating.
The unions are winning the strike
and would have it won except for the
resort of the employers to the courts
to help them save their big profits and
starve the strikers into submission
to bosses who are too arrogant even
to confer with committees of the
workers, or with national and state
and local mediators.
The employers of labor in Chicago,
as elsewhere, see that labor now has
its opportunity, through organization.
to get the directors control of its
own life and to gain fair wages. SO
they are desperately determined to do
all in their power, and to use every le-
gal process their lawyers have devised.
to prevent the workers from organiz-
ing and helping one another by labor
union action.
The employees of the Deering plant
and the Mccormick plant of the IL
linois Malleable Iron Company pre-
sented demands on May for short
er work day and for increases in
wages amounting to an average of
about IL per cent for both piece and
day work. They walked out when the
demands were refused. They have
stayed out ever since and the plants
have been tierd up ever since, for the
moulders, coremakers and foundry
men on strike were essential to the
operation of the works. The COM
panies could not get strike breakers
to take the places of the workers, and
no trickery or intimation could bring
the men back into the plants. Strong
local unions, the Malleable Casting
Workers Union and the Illinois NAL
leable Iron Workers Union, were
formed among tn workers and affiliat-
ed with the Chicago Federation of La
Dor and the American Federation of
Labor.
Trusting thep to their hold on the
courts and the process of injunction,
SIX FESM
the employers with the International
Harvester Company covering up in
the center) flung themselves full
against the American Federation of
Labor and the Chicago Federation
and the local unions of the strikers
and against the individual strikers
themselves.
The injunction they asked, and
which a judge issued, actually denies
and sets aside the freedom of the
press. 1t forbids the use of any kind
of publicity by the workers to ask or
to induce other workers not to take
their places in the plant or to come
out and join the union. Specifically
the companies asked that the unions
be forbidden to repeat such notices in
the Polish Daily and Weekly "Zodga"
as the following. which the unions
had inserted:
I'VE are asking all working men
not to go into the shops of the Illinois
Malleable Iron Company as there is
strike there Be sure and keep away
from the plant. The conferences with
eiiS AiPaig aiN 9uiN ~ DS SuSNCSSiui.
The meetings take place at Webster
Hall, Webster and Robey streets. The
committee, Jan MichaIek, StanisIas
Kazubski, Josef Duda"
What becomes of the freedom of
the press if plain, unthreatening
statement like that can be forbidden
publication both in a newspaper and,
by circulari
That assault on the freedom of the
press and the free speech and on the