The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1926-04-10
COAL. OPERATORS
BREAK CONTRACT
WITH u. M. ". A.
Barons Lock Out Miners;
Seek to Cut Wages

CLEARFIELD, Pa. - OPP - The
miners union is having a fight for
life in the IA soft coal producing coun-
ties of central Pennsylvania, where
the bituminous fields begin. Here in
Dist. 2, United Mine Workers, several
OF the larger operators, employing a
good minority of the coal diggers in
this part of the state, have broken
their contracts with the union they
dealt with many years and are at
tempting to run on the low 1917 wage
scale, without acknowledgment or
other union safeguards.
The contracts calling for current
wages and continued union recogni-
ton for Swear period went in effect
April 1, 1924, but it appears that these
operators never intended keeping them
beyond the time they needed to pre-
pare for a fight with the union. While
the ink was still drying ON the con-
tracts plans to break them were under
way.
Move to Break Contract
B. M. Clark, chief operator in the
district, gave the game away April 2,
1924, the day after the treaty began
to operate. Clark, now fighting the
union with injunctions, thugs and evic-
tons, was doubly committed to the
pact. He had signed as president of
the Assoc. of Bituminous Coal Opera
president of the largest operating con-
Germ in the northern part of that dis
trict, the Rochester & Pittsburgh Coal
& Iron Co., subsidiary of the Buff
falo, Rochester & Pittsburgh R. R.
Co., that taps some of the richest
Pennsylvania deposits. April 2 he is
sued statement seeking to under
mine public confidence in the agree
ment. April 10 he followed with an
urgent demand that the union modify
the rates to suit what he called eco
nomic conditions.
Brophy's Lame Arguments
Pres. John Brophy of the district
union, seeing the drift of policy, re-
piled with spirit that the agreement
must be kept, that the operators had
entered into it with eyes open. Brophy
met the wage reduction argument by
showing that cut in the union fields
would lead to further cuts by nonunion
competitors to the south. He empha-
sized that the ills of this overdevel-
oped industry were due to more funda-
mental causes than could be solved
by reducing standards.
As the year heightened Clark and
bis association secretary, Charles
O'Neill, former miners district union
vice president, continued their propa-
ganda for modification of the contract
through the columns of the little pro-
employer newspapers in Clearfield,
Dubois, Philipsburg, Punxsutawney,
Altoona and other central Pennsyl-
yania cities. Their lead was followed.
The climax came when the Pittsburgh
& Rochester shut down all it's opera
tons in Jefferson and Indiana coun-
ties, throwing several thousand min
ers out of work, and announcing they
would not reopen at the union scale.
Lockout Miners.
When the union operator decides to
break away he begins with lockout.
After the miners have starved for sew
eral months he gets few signatures
to a back-to-work petition from straw
bosses and company men and attempts
to resume operations, saying that he
is responding to demand from the
strikers. When a strike follows he
charges that intimidation is prevent |
ing his loyal workers from pursuing
their own pleasure and he gets an in
junction.
Uses Dummy Corporation
That is what Clark did early in 1926.
He varied the program little by leas-
ing the mines to a dummy concern,
the Jefferson & Indiana Coal Co. This
it was said, had not signed |
the Jacksonville agreement and was
not bound by it's terms. The two CON-
panies were really the same, Clark |
being vice-president of the leasing |
concern.
Similar dummy leasing was prac- |
ticed by other concerns, but the union
is carrying the fight to the parent
companies and refuses to surrender
to paper evasions.