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Show STRIKE THREAT STILL PENDING IN KCC PICTURE Negotiator for Operating Engineer Engi-neer Union Local 3 and Kennecott Copper Corp., Utah Copper Division, Divis-ion, resumed collective bargaining talks Wednesday after a recess of J several days. The union team, representing 355 operators of heavy equipment at the' company' Bingham mine, was headed by I. J. Neeley, district representative. He. said discussion on terms of a contract replacing a pact which expires July 31 "are still in preliminary pre-liminary stages, but another meeting meet-ing has been set for 9:30 a.m. Monday." Meantime, balloting on a strike authorization continued among member of International Union of fine, Mill and Smelter Workers in Utah, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico, according to Verne Curtis, regional director of the union. "The strike vote is continuing and Monday morning ha been et a the time for the strike to begin if no agreement with Kennecott ha been reached in the meantime," Mr. Curtis said. The Mine-Mill leader said he ha notified the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service of the trike date. In response to Mine-Mill's statement, state-ment, Kennecott official issued the following statement: "Mine-Mill's announced intention to strike Kennecott' operating properties next Morjday, coming 48 hour in advance of actual strike vote authorization scheduled with local union and before a new aerie aer-ie of bargaining sessions i due to start under auspice of federal mediators, me-diators, is precipitous and unfortunate. unfor-tunate. "Moreover, the threat is difficult to understand when Kennecott still has on the bargaining table an offer of-fer that is equal to the settlement reached July 9 with steelworker and identical to settlements reached reach-ed earlier this year by Mine-Mill with other major producer in the copper industry." The United Steelworker of Am- erica local union representing I,-890 I,-890 Kennecott Copper Corp. employees em-ployees in Utah and Arizona have ratified terms of a new 2-year contract. con-tract. The contract provide between be-tween a 2T and 24-cent an hour pay increase and other benefit over the two-year period. |