pa1778data.pdf

U.S. STEEL DUQUESNE WORKS
HAER No. PA-115
(Page 23)
various departmental superintendents, each formed parallel
committees around such matters as requests, education, and
safety. These committees met both separately and jointly.
Finally all employee and management representatives met at
regular intervals to discuss general problems. 27
Despite two major challenges, the ERP remained the model for
labor relations at the Monongahela Valley mills of U. S. Steel
over the next several years. The first challenge occurred in the
fall of 1933 when a coal miners' strike against U. S. Steel for
recognition of their United Mine Workers of America union locals
spread to the Clairton Works. Because the Clairton Works
supplied coke to the Corporation's steel mills in the region,
thousands of miners and their steelworker allies attempted to
shut down steel production in the area by closing the facility.
In the process, they also hoped to attract support from the
steelworkers employed at the Duquesne, Homestead, and Edgar
Thomson Works. The effort failed when the Corporation managed to
attract enough depression-starved workers into the mill to keep
the coke works running and because the strike failed to spread
beyond Clairton. 28
The second attempt to overturn the ERP took place between
1934 and 1935 when an estimated 50,000 steelworkers spontaneously
organized themselves into fifty new lodges of the Amalgamated
Association in the Ohio and Monongahela valleys. The new lodges,
which accepted steelworkers regardless of skill level, attempted
to act in concert for the purpose of exacting union recognition
from employers in the steel industry. Their efforts, however,
were stymied by the refusal of the Amalgamated Association's
national leadership to support a nationwide strike call. The
Association agreed on what became an ill-fated strategy to
negotiate a settlement with the steel companies for union
27 My evidence on the organizational makeup of the ERP's at
U.S.Steel is drawn from the minutes of the Fifth and Sixth Joint
Conference of Employees and Management Representatives - Duquesne
Works, February 11 and June 2, 1936. The minutes can be found in
the Industrial Relations Records of the Duquesne Works at the Labor
Archives, University of Pittsburgh and are hereafter referred to as
the Fifth and/or Sixth Joint Conference minutes of the ERP at the
Duquesne Works.
28 The Daily News, McKeesport, PA, September 28 - October 11,
1933; The Pittsburgh Post-Gazetter September 26 - October 11, 1933;
A more complete account of the Clairton strike can be found in Joel
Sabadasz, "Understanding Workers: Labor Relations in Steel from
1930 to 1941 in the Lower Monongahela Valley", manuscript in the
possession of author.