Correspondence Between President Harry S. Truman and Vic Housholder with Attachments and Related Notes

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FILED BY 21 MR. HOPKINS 407-13 MAY 28 1952 Steel Stake MAY 2 6 1952 Dear Vic: Thanks for your letter of May 2 about the steel controversy. You say "the only point that I take particular issue with your side on is the one in which the board ordered that 'all laborers in the steel industry must join the C. I.O. 11 x170 and you ask "are the press and radio reports correct on this?" The press has been busy printing the paid propaganda ads of the x144 steel companies and a lot of the country's newspapers haven't xpp782 given anything like the full story on the steel controversy. x 427 x196 It's not surprising, therefore, that many people are confused on this union shop issue, as well as on the more impor- tant facts on the profits of the steel industry. Many of the stiel Stackey, Filed 4074 letters sent in to me reveal a lot of misconceptions and confusion. I am enclosing a copy of a letter which I sent in response to Mr. C. S. Jones. He had written to me and asked about the "closed 4/27/02 shop" issue as well as other issues. That letter was made public to give the American people additional information on the real x340 issues in this case. I think you will agree that I said some x pretty important things in that letter, but only a few newspapers in the country printed it in full or even summarized its main points for their readers. In brief, what the Wage Stabilization Board said was x2900-73 that the union shop was definitely an issue in dispute, that the dispute couldn't be solved without somehow disposing of this issue, and that the parties should go back and negotiate the form of union shop. That is as far as the Board went. The Board never recommended a "closed shop"; it never even recommended any particu- lar form of union shop, such as maintenance of membership. The x407 Board just said the parties ought to negotiate some kind of a union shop arrangement, and there are at least half a dozen varieties of union shop arrangement possible. I don't think the union shop issue is the real bar to settlement in the steel dispute. It's money. The big issue is x 327 a price increase. The companies are still refusing to settle the dispute unless they have a prior commitment on a price increase x342 bofy to Mr Enargon 5/26