**Date:** 7-14-67
**Source:** Unknown
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By Combined Wire Services
AKRON, Ohio—The United Rubber Workers (URW) struck Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., the nation’s top producer, early Friday less than 12 hours after reaching a contract agreement with another major rubber company.
Negotiators for Goodyear and the union met until late Thursday night then recessed talks until Friday morning at 10 a.m. Goodyear spokesmen said the URW had rejected an offer “similar” to one it accepted from General Tire & Rubber Co. earlier Thursday.
URW spokesman George Scriven said, the Goodyear proposal was “not similar in all respects to the general offer.” “It was substandard in some parts,” he said, “that’s all I want to say about it.”
The union’s move to add Goodyear, smallest of the industry’s big five, has been on strike only since June 22, with 1,850 out at a plant here and nearly 1,200 others at Waco, Tex.
Goodyear has been operating on a day-to-day basis since expiration of the old URW contracts and the start of the strike against Firestone, Goodrich and Uniroyal 12 weeks ago.
The tentative agreement with General Tire & Rubber was heralded as a break in the longest strike in rubber industry history and a possible pattern for other settlements. But the four larger companies have many workers other than tire builders, who make up the union membership at General Tire, and so have additional bargaining problems.
The URW-General agreement was reached in negotiations at Cleveland, and the Hamad offer amounted to a wage increase of 43 cents an hour over the three years — 15 cents in each of the first and second years and 13 cents the last year.
In addition there would be a 5 cent-an-hour increase the first year for skilled workers.
Tire builders in the top pay group currently average $3.88 an hour.
Vacations were improved, Hamad said, to give workers with 22 years service five weeks, and 30-year veterans six weeks.
Formerly workers received five weeks after 25 years.
Supplemental unemployment benefits, a reported key point in negotiations, were increased from 68 to 80 per cent a week for laid-off workers. These benefits extend for 39 weeks, the same as before.
Workers also received a 10th paid holiday, and the company’s contribution for pensions and in surance was increased from $3.25 to $5.50 a month for each year of service.
In the past, the first agreement with the union has set a pattern for others. This seemed even more likely this year since the Big Five entered into a mutual aid pact before the strike.
The pact was the first in the rubber industry’s bargaining history and provided that those companies not struck would give “substantial” aid to those shut down.
Goodyear has been the only major rubber company working since June 22, but all the Big Five had stockpiled products early in the year as a strike hedge.