pa1778data.pdf

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