pa1778data.pdf
pa1778data.pdf
pa1778data.pdf
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U.S. STEEL DUQUESNE WORKS<br />
HAER No. PA-115<br />
(Page 24)<br />
recognition through federal mediation. A last-ditch effort to<br />
win recognition through direct action in the Monongahela Valley<br />
occurred on May 31, 1935 when William Spang, the leader of the<br />
Fort Dukane Lodge at the Duquesne Works, called a strike to<br />
support striking steelworkers in Canton, Ohio. The strike was<br />
short-circuited, however, when Spang and the other officers of<br />
the lodge were arrested by city authorities for parading without<br />
a permit. 29<br />
While early efforts to overturn the ERP at the Monongahela<br />
Valley steel mills failed over the intervening years, the actual<br />
experience of ERP steelworkers contributed to its eventual<br />
demise. The ERP became a school for independent industrial<br />
unionism. This was particularly evident at the Duquesne Works<br />
where the employee representatives grew increasingly frustrated<br />
over management's failure to fairly address worker grievances<br />
around such issues as the division of work time among the<br />
employees during the Depression, promotions, and the company's<br />
wage policy. The employee representatives who favored a system<br />
based on seniority complained bitterly about the practice of<br />
individual managers to promote workers based upon favoritism.<br />
Wage questions dealt with the inequities in wages paid for<br />
identical jobs in the different U. S. Steel mills in the region,<br />
the employees' quest for the establishment of a base rate of pay<br />
before tonnage incentives, and the application of a general wage<br />
increase. 30<br />
As it became clear that employee grievances at Duquesne<br />
could not be properly addressed through the ERP, employee leaders<br />
joined their counterparts at the Clairton Works in June of 1936<br />
to lead a drive for the creation of a central body of employee<br />
and management representatives from each of U. S. Steel's<br />
Carnegie-Illinois Steel mills nationwide. The principle figures<br />
in this effort were Elmer Maloy, chairman of the employee<br />
representatives at Duquesne, John Kane, general secretary of the<br />
employee representatives at Duquesne, and John Mullen, chairman<br />
of the employee representatives at the Clairton Works. Although<br />
U. S. Steel resisted the move, the ability of these men to<br />
successfully organize employee representatives from the<br />
Pittsburgh, Youngstown, and Chicago districts, forced the company<br />
29 Staughton Lynd, "The Possibility of Radicalism in the Early<br />
1930's: The Case of Steel," Radical America 6(November-December,<br />
1972): 37-64.<br />
30 Fifth and Sixth Joint Conference Minutes of the ERP at the<br />
Duquesne Works; Grievance Files of the ERP at the Duquesne Works in<br />
the Industrial Relations Records of the Duquesne Works at the Labor<br />
Archives, University of Pittsburgh.