Strikes, Stoppages

The two-headed boss of defense production, OPM's Knudsenhillman, showed his muscle last week in breaking up a labor rumpus. At the Allis-Chalmers plant in Milwaukee, management and employe had rolled and wrestled for more than three weeks while work on $45,000,000 worth of Army and Navy contracts for turbines, shafts, pumps, gun parts ceased. Patience exhausted, Knudsenhillman sent identical telegrams to Milwaukee, urgently "requesting" spokesmen for both sides to hurry to Washington. There defense officials threw them at U. S. Conciliation Service Director John R. Steelman. At week's end Knudsenhillman, perspiring and triumphant, announced that the dispute was ended, workers would go back to work, management would grant "union security." But, warned Knudsenhillman, setting forth a policy on labor in defense industries: "It [the settlement] is not to be considered ... a device to promote a closed . . . shop."

On other labor fronts last week: P: In Lansing, Mich., Governor Murray D. Van Wagoner offered police protection to workers who would go back to the struck plant of Motor Wheel Corp. United Auto Workers (A. F. of L.) had struck for a closed shop.

> In Carteret, N. J., members of C. I. O.'s United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers Union, joined by non-union employes, walked out of the Foster Wheeler Corp. plant. Reason: they had been refused a 10% pay rise. Neil Brant, union organizer, was arrested for defiling the U. S. flag. He had pounded on the flag when it was draped over the chairman's table at a strike meeting. P: In Chicago, a strike at the International Harvester Tractor Works threatened to spread to the huge McCormick Works next door. Struck were the Harvester Rock Falls, III. and Richmond, Ind. plants. Argument: higher wages. P: In Bridgeville, Pa., 400 workers who struck without authorization from their parent union were fired from their jobs at the Vanadium Corp. plant. Closed by another strike was the company's Niagara Falls plant.

> In Lackawanna, N. Y., Bethlehem's plant where members of C. I. O.'s steel workers agitated for an adjustment of wages, work was held up by "stoppages."

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