STRIKES IN AMERICA

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 177, 28 June 1937, Page 7

STRIKES IN AMERICA

CHARGE AGAINST COMPANY. INTIMIDATION ALLEGED. “EMPLOYEES COERCED.” (United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright.) Received June 28, 8.5 a.m. DETROIT, June 27. Charging the Ford Motor Co. with the responsibility for malicious and brutal assaults upon United Automobile Workers’ Union organisers, the National Labour Relations Board lias issued a complaint against the company. The bearing lias been set tor a uly G. The complaint contends that tlie company is interfering with, restraining and coercing the employees in order to uiscourage membership oi the unions. They cited the heating of union organisers at the gates ot the plant on May 27. Several thousand workers have returned to the steel plants, and it is expected that more will follow during the next few days. Four bombs were thrown at one plant, but no damage resulted. Many arrests ware made. The Committee for Industrial Organisation contemplates piotesting to l'resident Roosevelt and demanding that he rid Youngstown of soldiers who are acting as strike breakers. Intimations that the steel strike bad virtually been defeated brought retorts from the C. 1.0. that the fight had just begun. Tlie Federal Mediation Board is remaining on the scene and is still hopeful that it can contribute to a settlement. Senator Wagner, author of National Labour Relations Law, in a radio address, condemned the “very few large corporations for fighting labour and labour’s right to organise.” The national strike situation took on a specially serious note when a walk-out of ‘BOO,OOO railway workers was threatened as a result of tlie complete breakdown in negotiations concerning the employees’ demand for a wage increase of 20 cents an hour. A Federal Labour Department report shows that 350,000 workers were involved in 750 strikes during April. Idleness totalled 3,385,000 man-days, showing an increase of over 60 per cent, since January. For the whole of 1936 there were 2125 strikes, involving 790,000 workers. WOOL SHIPMENTS. STRIKE DELAY IN BOSTON. BOSTON, June 26. Seven hundred members of the Woolhandlers and Marine Warehouse Union have struck for the “closed shop.” Tlie International Longshoremens’ Association at Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore has announced that it will not handle wool shipments until the strike is settled.