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Show in 569 days Herbert B. Maw and Gus P. Backman will retire to private life The Searchli <a e F. 72 T L. S ES e alternate Jensen, Salt e eee Friday Publisher Lake 5-3989 City, $2.00 SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH, JUNE 11, 1943 3. e every Street, Dial A Specialist in Neglected Truth VOL. IV, NO. N Published 10c PER Utah a year COPY Unused Manpower Further examination into the manpower shortage in this area discloses that in addition to the failure of a large majority of emplovers to avail themselves of labor-management production committees to boost production, certain employers in Utah are refusing to work their men more than 5 days a week. For instance, Columbia Steel operates its iron mines in the vicinity of Cedar City only ) days a week. The Company employs about 140 men. They have made repeated demands on the Company to work the mines a full six days each week. Accordingly about 140 man days a week— every week—are lost because Columbia Steel insists on operating its iron mines only 5 days a week. The Company seems to fear that its profit rate will be cut a trifle if it works six days and is obliged to pay time and a half for the sixth day. Apparently it is more concerned with profits than with increased production. The men have to pay 50c a day bus fare. Their net monthly wage now averages about $130, a sum living costs. pitifully small to meet current If the sixth day were added the miners obtain would about a net $175 a month. And production would be increased about 17%. If a labor-management production committee were added the ore output still higher levels. Under (Continued on could be boosted to the page circumstances 7) Workers Condemn Ickes Fine Action of duction; Ranks Secretary Assailed Sympathy of Organized for as Coal Disturbing Miners Pro- Sweeps of $5 on each coal miner who For any practical purpose Nevertheless Labor As we go to press news dispatches indicate that Secretary Harold L. Ickes has levied a fine that public necessity during the war crisis gives moral if not legal validity to that right. left the coal pits in the five-day work stoppage. The Secretary announced he had extended the terms of the agreement between the operators and the United Mine Workers of America, and under authority of that agreement had invoked the penalty of $1 a day prescribed in the contract for any outlaw work stoppage. While there has been no approval by the Supreme Court of the right of the Government to extend the terms of any contract between workers and employers, it is conceded we it is unassailable. are shocked at the action of the Secretary. Never have we witnessed such high-handed procedure by a Government official. Had Mr. Ickes warned the United Mine Workers that any stoppage on the 20th, when the current truce expires, would be met with fines under the contract, the would have been forewarned. But no of the drastic Most miners inkling act of the Secretary was given. of the miners were under the impression there was no agreement in existence. They believed they were working at the orders of the President while a contract was being worked out. Lewis and his legal staff may have known the actual situation. But clearly the coal miners did not. (Continued e on UUIN if page to 8) 3 ‘ fi 1949 od |