The potters herald. [volume] (East Liverpool, Ohio) 1899-1982, 1950-03-09
Workers Return To
Pits With 7O-Cent
Daily Wage Boost
BY CUsHMAN REYNOLDS


| Washington NPA)-It took 10
months, but the United Mine Work.
ers finally won new contract for
1876, 900 soft coal miners. 1t pro-
lvides for a 70-cent a day wage
Iraise and a l0-cent per ton increase
lin the royalties coal operators pay
Into the UMW's controversial We'll
flare Fund. The miners, who had
lbeen on a full-fledged strike since
early February, began returning
to the pits March 6, and within
few days the great coal crisis of
1850 was slated to become history.
Under the new agreement, OBJ
tanned despite the full weight Of
the Taft Hartley act, the miners
will receive basic wage of S14.75
day and the welfare royalty will
be 80 cents ton. The pay of those
soft-coal diggers still on piece work
will be adjusted to the straight
time scale. The contract will run
until July 1852, but after April l,
1851, either side may reopen for
wage discussions on 30 days
notice. Meanwhile, the hard coal
dispute, being negotiated in New
York, was expected to end immedl-
ately on similar terms. In Pennsy-
lvania $4,000 anthracite miners
have been working a three-day
week for several months to pro-
test the absence of a contract.
The soft coal operators caved IN
Friday night, March 3, but the new
lcontract between the UNIV and
northern and western, southern
and Captive" operator groups was
not signed until Sunday. However,
the long deadlock actually was
broken the preceding Thursday
when Judge r. B. Keech of US Dis
trict Court here issued his now
famous decision acquitting the
UNIV of charges of contempt.
Keech knocked the props from
under the operators when he said
there was no proof that the union
was responsible for the refusal OF
striking rank-and-file miners to
obey a union order to return to
work in response to the Taft-Hart-
ley national emergency" injunc-
ton Keech himself issued in Feb
ruary. The flabbergasted operators
had expected Keech to find the
union guilty and impose stagger-
ing fine as Judge Goldsborough of
the same court did on two occas-
ions in the past.
Many observers thought the
UNIV dealt the Taft-Hartley act a
death blow. Certainly the miners
long struggle proved the act to be
as useless as it is vicious. The
miners hung on through nearly 10
months of three-day weeks and
full work stoppages while the op-
orators waited for the Taft-Hart-
ley mill to grind the union down.
But, the Taft-Hartley national
emergency" injunction, reluctantly
requested by President Truman,
backfired into the operators faces.
In the end, UNIV President John
L. Lewis and his aides conceded a
number of points. They dropped the
famed liable and willing" clause
which probably had outlived its
usefulness. They agreed to limit
memorial period" stoppages to
five days a year. They also agreed
to limit the union shop to the ex-
tent compatible with the law and
as determined in case now in the
courts. (UMW officers never have
signed the non-Communist affi-
davits required under the Taft
Hartley act before union can par
ticipate in National Labor Rela-
tions Board elections for bargain
ing agent or union shop.) These
points were among the unfair labor
practice charges leveled against
the UNIV by NLRB general coun-
sci Robert n. Denham at the re-
quest of the operators. Save for the
union shop plus controversial as
poets of the Welfare Fund, the un-
fair charges stood good chance
of becoming dead issues. The union
was temporarily enjoined from
these practices in an earlier writ.
There were other pressures on
the operators besides Judge Keech's
surprise decision. Repeatedly the
owners of a number of large mines
in Indiana and Illinois, beset by
consumers to settle and relieve the
shortage, threatened to sign the
so-called Kentucky contract agreed
to this winter by owners of many
small gopher hole mines. The
contract provided for 80
cents a day increase and 35 cents
a ton payments into the welfare
fund. 1t also established board of
trustees for the fund different
from the one established by the
new soft coal agreement. Presum-
ably the Kentucky pact will be ad-
iusted to the new contract through
The invoking of 30-day reopening
clause.