pa1778data.pdf

U.S. STEEL DUQUESNE WORKS
HAER No. PA-115
(Page 22)
steelworks. Then he organized a Citizens Committee of over one
hundred people that visited the home of every known striker in
the city with the objective of coercing them into returning to
work. Through these efforts, the Duquesne Works remained
virtually free of strike activity throughout the entire affair. 25
The defeat of the National Committee marked the end of all
substantial efforts to organize steelworkers in the region until
1933 when the federal administration of Franklin Delano
Roosevelt, in an attempt to raise the national economy from the
depths of the Great Depression, sought the support of the A. F.
of L. for its proposed National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA).
In return for its support, the Federation managed to gain the
insertion of a clause in the act, Section 7a, stipulating that
all employees had the right to organize and bargain collectively
through representatives of their own choosing. Almost
immediately after the NIRA was enacted, however, the U. S. Steel
Corporation attempted to neutralize the potential for independent
union activity in its steel mills while adhering to the
guidelines of Section 7a by sponsoring an Employee Representation
Plan (ERP) at each of its productive facilities. 26
Each ERP was set up as a self-contained unit, authorized to
deal only with problems affecting the particular steel mill in
which it was organized. All corporation-wide decisions remained
within the purview of corporate officials in Pittsburgh. Within
each plan, employee representatives were democratically elected
from the individual departments within the mill. Once elected,
the representative had the right to present the 'requests 1 of his
departmental constituents to management representatives in what
amounted to a four step grievance procedure beginning with the
grievant's foreman and running through the departmental
superintendent, management's designated representative to the
ERP, and finally the General Superintendent. In addition,
employee and management representatives, who were made up of the
25 David Brody provides a complete history of the national
effort to organize the steel industry in 1919 in Steelworkers in
Americar 199-262; Brody also summarizes these events in "The
American Worker in the Progressive Era" in Workers in Industrial
America: Essays on the 20th Century Struggle (New York, 1980): 42-
3; A detailed history of the local events surrounding the 1919
strike can be found in Frank Serene, "Immigrant Steelworkers in the
Monongahela Valley: Their Communities and the Development of a
Labor Class-Consciousness, 1880-1920," (Phd dissertation.
University of Pittsburgh, 1979), 193-247.
26 Irving Bernstein, Turbulent Years: A History of the American
Worker, 1933-1941 (Boston: 1971), 27-31, 455.