The Strike
The AA tried to apply pressure on Sheet Steel by organizing U.S. Steel—the company which supplied Sheet Steel with most of its raw material. The AA settled on staging a recognition strike. U.S. Steel executives, worried about the impact of a strike during a high-demand time of the year and angered that Sheet Steel executives had provoked a strike with stridently anti-union actions, demanded a compromise. Subsequently, Sheet Steel officers agreed on July 13, 1901 to recognize the union at 18 of the company's 23 nonunion plants. But AA president T.J. Shaffer rejected the deal; after having demanded the unionization of every Sheet Steel plant, he would not be satisfied with anything less. A meeting between Morgan and Shaffer (accompanied by AA secretary John Williams) resulted in an additional wage agreement. But this wage agreement, which covered only the existing unionized plants, was rejected by the AA executive board.
At a meeting on August 3, 1901, Morgan refused to renegotiate the wage agreement. It had been agreed to by Shaffer and Williams, and he considered it binding. The AA executive board ordered Shaffer to call a strike, to begin on August 10. The strike was crushed. At several plants, workers refused to turn out at all. Union members in Illinois and Pennsylvania turned out in small numbers. Unionized facilities at the National Steel and National Tube subsidiaries turned out almost to a man, but the overall effect on U.S. Steel was too weak. Strikebreakers were pouring into plants by the thousands, and shuttered works were reopening. Shaffer appealed to Samuel Gompers, asking for American Federation of Labor support and the calling of a national labor conference to make the strike the federation's main issue. Gompers refused.
The strike against U.S. Steel ended on September 14, 1901. The AA settled for terms far worse than those offered in August. Only plants which had started and ended the strike were covered, which meant that the union lost recognition at 15 plants. The company even won a pledge from the union not to organize any plant not already unionized, and to reject any offer of affiliation from a unionized plant.
In March 1903, the American Sheet Steel Co. merged with U.S. Steel, ensuring its future as a nonunion company.
Read more about this topic: U.S. Steel Recognition Strike Of 1901
Famous quotes containing the word strike:
“It would strike me as ridiculous to want to doubt the existence of Napoleon; but if someone doubted the existence of the earth 150 years ago, perhaps I should be more willing to listen, for now he is doubting our whole system of evidence.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)
“All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event—in the living act, the undoubted deed—there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask!”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)