pa1778data.pdf
pa1778data.pdf
pa1778data.pdf
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U.S. STEEL DUQUESNE WORKS<br />
HAER No. PA-115<br />
(Page 23)<br />
various departmental superintendents, each formed parallel<br />
committees around such matters as requests, education, and<br />
safety. These committees met both separately and jointly.<br />
Finally all employee and management representatives met at<br />
regular intervals to discuss general problems. 27<br />
Despite two major challenges, the ERP remained the model for<br />
labor relations at the Monongahela Valley mills of U. S. Steel<br />
over the next several years. The first challenge occurred in the<br />
fall of 1933 when a coal miners' strike against U. S. Steel for<br />
recognition of their United Mine Workers of America union locals<br />
spread to the Clairton Works. Because the Clairton Works<br />
supplied coke to the Corporation's steel mills in the region,<br />
thousands of miners and their steelworker allies attempted to<br />
shut down steel production in the area by closing the facility.<br />
In the process, they also hoped to attract support from the<br />
steelworkers employed at the Duquesne, Homestead, and Edgar<br />
Thomson Works. The effort failed when the Corporation managed to<br />
attract enough depression-starved workers into the mill to keep<br />
the coke works running and because the strike failed to spread<br />
beyond Clairton. 28<br />
The second attempt to overturn the ERP took place between<br />
1934 and 1935 when an estimated 50,000 steelworkers spontaneously<br />
organized themselves into fifty new lodges of the Amalgamated<br />
Association in the Ohio and Monongahela valleys. The new lodges,<br />
which accepted steelworkers regardless of skill level, attempted<br />
to act in concert for the purpose of exacting union recognition<br />
from employers in the steel industry. Their efforts, however,<br />
were stymied by the refusal of the Amalgamated Association's<br />
national leadership to support a nationwide strike call. The<br />
Association agreed on what became an ill-fated strategy to<br />
negotiate a settlement with the steel companies for union<br />
27 My evidence on the organizational makeup of the ERP's at<br />
U.S.Steel is drawn from the minutes of the Fifth and Sixth Joint<br />
Conference of Employees and Management Representatives - Duquesne<br />
Works, February 11 and June 2, 1936. The minutes can be found in<br />
the Industrial Relations Records of the Duquesne Works at the Labor<br />
Archives, University of Pittsburgh and are hereafter referred to as<br />
the Fifth and/or Sixth Joint Conference minutes of the ERP at the<br />
Duquesne Works.<br />
28 The Daily News, McKeesport, PA, September 28 - October 11,<br />
1933; The Pittsburgh Post-Gazetter September 26 - October 11, 1933;<br />
A more complete account of the Clairton strike can be found in Joel<br />
Sabadasz, "Understanding Workers: Labor Relations in Steel from<br />
1930 to 1941 in the Lower Monongahela Valley", manuscript in the<br />
possession of author.