**Source:** Unknown
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AKRON, Ohio (UPI) – The United Rubber Workers (URW) will strike the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. Thursday midnight if no contract agreement is reached, a union spokesman said Tuesday.
The URW already is on strike against four other major rubber companies. Three of them have been closed for the past 82 days.
Kenneth Oldham, a member of the union’s Goodyear policy committee of the URW, said about 22,000 union members will walk off their jobs at 11 Goodyear factories from coast to coast if a satisfactory agreement is not reached by Thursday night.
About 51,000 workers have been on strike against Firestone, Goodrich and Uniroyal of Naugatuck, Conn., since April 20, when contracts expired.
Another 3,000 URW members struck two General Tire plants June 15.
The strike is the longest in industry history.
With Goodyear also struck, about 75 per cent of industry capacity will be idled, and the flow of tires and other materials to the defense industry will be sharply cut.
Shortage of defense products, according to some observers, may be sufficient to allow the federal government to invoke the Taft-Hartley Act, and force the rubber workers back to work for an 80-day “cooling-off period.”