**Date:** 6-5-67
**Source:** Unknown
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According to a story in an Ohio newspaper, one group of union negotiators, reportedly from Goodrich, may be preventing the United Rubber Workers and Big Five rubber companies from moving toward rapid settlement of the 4-day strike against three of the companies. Arrangements reportedly had been made for representatives of all five companies, Goodyear Firestone, UniRoyal, Goodrich and General Tire, to sit together at the bargaining table with representatives of the union locals from each firm.
Word was that all the companies and URW policy committees from four of the firms has agreed to the industry-wide bargaining. The Goodrich negotiators reportedly wouldn’t go along.
The mass talk plan was viewed as significant for two reasons: All parties involved in the negotiations would know exactly what was going on. The full range of negotiable matters, including pensions and insurance, could be put on the table. Current talks have involved only wages and working conditions. Contracts covering pensions and insurance haven’t expired.
URW members from Firestone and Goodrich plants say they don’t want to face another strike in three months. And they say there is nationwide sentiment for wrapping the whole thing up in one sitting.
URW President Peter Bommarito rejected the companies’ offer of wage increases in a two year package plus other improvements, saying it was worth about 2.5 per cent and most settlements in the last year or so had been in the 5 per cent range.
Bommarito has been saying that the companies just aren’t bargaining and Thursday went so far as to charge Firestone with just that, refusal to bargain, in a complaint to the regional office of the National Labor Relations Board in Cleveland.
The Rubber Companies have a mutual pact which calls for the firms not to strike to give financial help to the ones that are. Bommarito said the industry has taken its pact to the bargaining table.
Union insiders admit they haven’t been able to exert much economic pressure on the companies because of the pact. But they say the real problem is that because of the pact the companies first have to negotiate with each other and reach agreement on what to offer before they can talk at the tables.
The massed meeting would eliminate this type of union griping, URW sources say. It would put everyone face to face with most decisions made on the spot or in adjacent caucus rooms.
The URW has been negotiating with Goodyear and UniRoyal in Cincinnati, Firestone and General in Cleveland and Goodrich in Columbus. The industry-wide meeting would have been in a neutral city, Pittsburgh.
Locally, the picketing has remained calm at the gates of the Footwear, Chemical and Synthetic plants. The striking workers have resigned themselves to no early settlement.
A few hopeful strikers rumor that work will begin next week, but tracing down the rumor, no confirmation.