Letter to President Harry S. Truman from Robert A. Lovett with Related Material

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THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE WASHINGTON JUN 25 1952 Dear Mr. Prosident: Pursuant to your memorandum of June 10, we immedia tely took steps to make maximum use of the production capacity of that portion of the steel industry which is not affected by the current strike. In addition, a series of meetings has been held to consider ways and means of carrying out the joint pledge of the union and the companies, given at the time negotiations were broken off on June 9, to "cooperate in assuring production of military requirements essential to our forces engaged in combating communist aggressors." Those meetings, called by Dr. Steelman, have been attended by representatives of the National Production Authority, the steel companies and the union, as well as of the Department of Defense, TRUMAND and have resulted in certain understandings pursuant to which it is anticipated that some limited part of our most critical steel s ARCHIVES& "NATIONAL RECORDS ADMING GENERA requirements will be met. the Those understandings relate principally to the removal of finished steel from strike-bound plants and warehouses. The union has agreed that finished steel bearing CMP allotment symbols "A", "B", "C" and "E" may be removed at onee from any of the facilities included on a list which we have furnished to the union. (That list accounts for plants whose inventory is probably about 70 to 80% of such finished steel. The remainder of the closed plants will be handled, as identified, on a case-by=case basis with the union.) In addition, the union has agreed to the removal of finished steel required for the production of machine tools (the "z-2" category) and for the production of key components (the "B-5" category), and has agreed to provide the manpower necessary to inventory all unfinished and semi-finished steel material in strike-bound plants with a view to converting such material to the production of items in the "A", "B", "c" and "E" categories. The union has taken the position that, until finished steel has been removed or inventoried under the plan described above, it is not appropriate to consider the resumption of production, even on a limited basis, in any of the plants affected by the strike. This means that

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