Evening star., 1933-08-11
Producers Said to Be Still
Determined to Keep Union
From Encompassing Labor.
.FLATLY Reject REQUEST
TO REMOVE PROVISION
Gen. Johnson Indicates Admins
tration Will Act if Operators
Fail to Agree.
BY the Associated Press.

Coal men themselves today were un-
able to find any indication that two
days of hearings before the National
Recovery Administration had brought
bituminous mine operators nearer a
settlement of their major differences
over fair practice agreements for the
industry.
Nearly all producers from the great
Appalachian fields, reaching from Cen
tral Pennsylvania to Tennessee, were
said to be still determined to keep the
United Mine Workers of America from
encompassing their mine labor.
They said that if the open-shop
clause in their code went out, the re-
moval would be the work OF the N. r. A.
Indications were today that the admin
istration would do this if necessary.
The coal men fatty turned down a
request by Donald Richberg, general
counsel for the N. R. A., to follow the
steel industry and remove the clause
themselves.
The second maj jor difference-mlnl-
mum wages-was even farther from set
tlement. The administration with one
word could wipe out the open-shop
clause, but adjustment of all the dill
ferentials in the various wage scales
would be complicated task.
Complicated, that is, unless the plan
advocated by Frank E. Taplin, Cleve-
land operator, were adopted. Taplln
said the IS basic minimum wage for
underground labor, advocated by the
United Mine Workers. should be blan-
keted over the industry, without Differ
entails.
Administration May Act.
Indication that the Recovery Ad-
miuistration would remove the open
shop" labor provision if the operators
themselves do not agree to Withdraw
the proposal was given today by Hugh
S. johnson, industrial administrator.
In response to questions Of reporters
the administrator repeated previous
declaration that the industrial acts
guarantee of collective bargaining for
labor could not be modified.
In presenting the code the bitum1nous
operators included the controversial
section providing for collective bar
gaining, but added a paragraph assert
ing that collective bargaining with the
companys own employees and not
national union was intended.
johnson pointed out that there hao
never yet been a code presented to
President Roosevelt for PRONUNCIATION
upon which an agreement had not been
reached within the industry, but he
added that I'VE may be arriving at q
different situation"
Meanwhile. the Recovery Administra-
tion was told that conditions in the
Arkansas Oklahoma bituminous indus
try were so much worse than In the
rest of the country that this territory
was entitled to special treatment IN the
industry's code of fair competition.
Earl Cobb, representing the Arkansas
Oklahoma SmokeleSS Coal Bureau, at
the third day of hearings on proposed
codes, said his group favored the code
offered by union operators and sup
ported by United Mine Workers. provided
the present wage scales IN the Arkansas
Oklahoma territory were permitted to
remain as they are.
He said the miners realized the con-
ditions there made the lower wage
scale necessary and were agreeable to
the exemption.
Telling of the inroads made into the
coal industry by natural gas and fuel
oil in this territory, Cobb painted a
bleak picture of the Arkansas-O Oklahoma
coal fields.
I'VE will not profit by any general
increase in business" he said The
operators and miners of our territory
are anxious only to hold the small part
of business which they have. Unless
oil and natural gas prices are raised
at the same time as coal prices it will
have a disastrous effect upon u.s.
Union Code Is Defended.
He said the operators he represented,
h0 OF ntc until o
United Mine Workers, believed, however,
that adoption of a code would tend to
eliminate unfair competition within the
industry He said the wage scales be-
ing paid in the region now ranged from
Al cents to SO cents an hour for under
ground work. While this is lower than
the rate proposed by the union code, it
is higher than the rates proposed in the
code submitted by the non-union op-
orators.
The second witness was Howard Sho-
walter, president of the Continental Coal
Corporation of Fairmont, w. Va. who
made a general defense of the Union
code. saying that every operator in the
United States, either personally or by
group representation, had been invited
to participate in its framing, and that
there were no self-appointed commit
tees that wrote any feature of this code ~
He said the wage differentials con-
tanned in the code, which include a
per cent lower basic scale for the South
ern districts, ARE presumed to be fair
Living conditions are pretty much
the same in most districts therefore
differentials can only be properly based
upon working conditions" Showalter
said.
He was followed by two other opera
tors urging adoption of the union code,
George K. Smith of Columbus, Ohio
representing the Sunday Creek Coal Co.,
and Herbert E. Howard of Chicago, rep
resenting the Binkley Coal Co.