Word: umw
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Another key dispute was the threatened coal strike this fall. There, stentorian pronouncements about milk and children issued from UMW headquarters until their author met with the President shortly before November 4. Then they ceased. Lewis, never known for his amenability toward government limits on his union, cheerfully wended his way South. No strike hindered the Democratic Party's electoral fortunes, and when Truman announced he had overruled his Wage Board and its carefully drawn precedents, the affair justifiably enough took on a musty odour...
...Board, having set the maximum wage on the basis of carefully established calculations, gives the miners more than they deserve, it sets a dangerous inflationary precedent. Should the coal miners receive more than they are entitled to, the way is clear for excessive demands by other workers. The UMW's strike can only succeed if it forces the Board to scrap the principle of stabilization on a rational basis...
...Board can, however, satisfy the Union's demands without causing a flood of overblown demands, Lewis' main argument for the increase is the disparity between the UMW's fringe benefits and those of other workers in heavy industry. If the miners will accept the 40 cents difference in the form of increased vacation pay, the strike can come to an early and honorable...
...attempt to cover the subject of John L. Lewis in one volume makes exciting, highly colorful reading. It draws on interviews more than anything else for its facts, and thus gains a high degree of emotional impact in describing the conflicts that have always surrounded the big, ham-handed UMW boss...
...Murray may have been far more representative of the sentiments of labor than was Lewis when Murray took over the CIO, and that he certainly has followed since then a policy more sensitive to the needs and desires of the country than the course followed by Lewis and the UMW...