41,000 Years' Work

Secretary of Labor Perkins' statisticians last week made a reckoning that U. S. workers on strike lost 10,222,000 man-days during the first five months of 1934. Since May strikes have multiplied and grown bigger. On the Pacific Coast, the maritime workers alone are estimated to have lost 1,900,000 days' work. On the basis of Madam Perkins' figures, dopesters last week figured that so far this year U. S. Labor had struck itself out of 15,000,000 days--or 41,000 years--of work and probably $75.000.000 of pay. Among other strikes of last week which were making headlines for the Press, work for conciliators and mediators, trouble for police and grist for the Department of Labor's statistical mill were the following:

Minneapolis. Truckmen who struck in May for union recognition and killed two special policemen before they compromised with employers struck again last week, 6,000 strong. This time their demands were for higher pay and the right to have their union speak for "inside workers'' as well as the actual drivers of trucks. Pay might have been compromised but the question of representing inside workers was a sticking point. After two days peaceful picketing during which only milk, ice, beer, bread and fuel were delivered, wholesale merchants demanded police convoys to resume food deliveries. A picket truck blocked the path of a produce truck convoyed by twelve police cars. Police opened fire with riot guns. One policeman jumped the strikers' running board, was knocked on the head. Other strikers broke police lines, rushed to the scene. Police fired again. Fifty pickets were wounded, most of them in the arms and legs. One died next day. Overtures for a general strike were made but other unions promised no more than moral support. Meantime a two-day truce was declared, to give Rev. Francis Haas, Federal mediator, time to arrange a settlement. Governor Floyd B. Olson moved 4,000 guardsmen to the State Fair Grounds. When the truce expired no settlement had been reached and police again began convoying food trucks.

Alabama. The United Textile Workers of America called a Statewide strike in Alabama demanding a 30-hour week, $12 minimum wage, abolition of the "stretch-out,"* reinstatement of men fired for union activity, union recognition. Out marched the hands in 24 mills in northern Alabama. Of the State's 35,000 textile workers the union estimated 22,000 were on strike, while employers set the figure at 13,000. Well aware that cotton goods have been piling up in warehouses, employers took the strike philosophically, announced the mills would stay shut indefinitely, declared the union was "striking against NRA." Union leaders announced that if the strike was not settled by the time of their national convention (Aug. 10), it would be made nationwide.

Montana. Anaconda Copper's 3,600 striking miners and 1,500 smelter workers began heaving scrap iron and rocks at engineers, superintendents and non-union men engaged in manning the pumps which keep three mines at Butte from being flooded. The strike, for a 30-hour week and a pay increase from 60-c- to $1.25 an hour, has been in progress since May 8, and all negotiations for its settlement have failed.

Meantime Montana's capital, Helena, has been without daily newspapers since mid-May. The Typographical Union there originally demanded an increase of pay from 90-c- to $1.20 an hour. Last week the strike reached a new impasse when the Independent and the Record-Herald offered $1.05 an hour and the printers refused to take less than $1.12.

Ohio Onions. Month ago in the black mucklands of Scioto, 45 mi. west of Warren Gamaliel Harding's Marion, Ohio, the 700 men, women & children who weed 17,000 acres of onions and peppermint for the National Onion Growers Association struck for higher wages, shorter hours. Present schedule is 7-c- to 12-c- per hour for a ten-hour day. The strikers asked 35-c- an hour for an eight-hour day. No sooner had the strike been declared than the American Federation of Labor jumped in, organized 400 of the weeders into the first agricultural union affiliated with the A. F. of L. The growers refused to bargain with the union. Living on Federal relief, which proved to be higher than their regular pay, the strikers stood their ground, began spasmodic rioting. By last week the growers were appealing for the National Guard while hogweed stood two feet high in the mucklands.

San Antonio. Pecan shellers belonging to the Texas Pecan-Shellers' Union struck for higher wages. Fifteen hundred men and women marched from shelling plant to shelling plant demonstrating through San Antonio.

Settlement. Strikes settled last week included a four-week strike of 1,400 workers of General Tire & Rubber Co. at Akron; a nine-week strike of 1,000 hatters of Danbury, Conn.; a seven-week strike of 900 workers of Piedmont Manufacturing Co. at Greenville, S. C.; a ten-week strike of 8,000 red ore miners at Birmingham, Ala.

*The practice of assigning a mill worker more & more looms to tend.

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