United Steelworkers of America

The United Steelworkers of America was a 650,000-member union whose 1951–52 wage dispute with the steel industry became a test of how to protect workers’ pay without interrupting production for the Korean War and the expansion of NATO forces. Led by Phil Murray and affiliated with the Industrial Organizations Congress, the union remained at work for nearly three months while negotiations and government mediation failed to produce an agreement; the strike ended only after Harry S. Truman summoned both sides to the White House.

Organization and Wage Demand

In November 1951, the United Steelworkers, headed by Phil Murray, sought a 35-cent-per-hour wage increase. Steel workers had received no raise since 1950, even as wartime production and industry profits reached record levels. The union gave notice that it would strike when its contract expired on December 31, while management refused to negotiate.

On December 22, Truman referred the dispute to the Wage Stabilization Board. The board recommended an increase of 26 cents an hour, which the union promptly accepted. The steel companies rejected the proposal as unreasonable unless they could also raise the price of steel by $12 a ton, leaving the central disagreement unresolved: workers accepted a moderated wage settlement, but management tied any increase to a substantial price rise.

Mediation and the Threat of a Strike

Negotiations continued but ended in deadlock as the April deadline approached. Truman considered the board’s wage recommendation fair and reasonable, and feared that a stoppage would impair the flow of munitions to Korea and the buildup of NATO forces in Europe. Defense Secretary Robert Lovett warned that even a brief interruption in steel production could endanger American troops, whose ability to hold the line depended on ammunition and industrial output.

Truman declined to use the Taft-Hartley Act to impose an 80-day injunction delaying a strike. He believed another delay would not help secure a settlement, considered the relevant facts already clear, and regarded it as unfair to require steelworkers to continue without a change in pay after they had already stayed on the job voluntarily for nearly three months. He also disliked resorting to a law opposed by labor.

The Strike and Its Settlement

The steel dispute culminated in a strike that Truman later described as a lockout. On July 24, 1952, three days after returning to the Oval Office, he summoned Murray and Benjamin Fairless, head of U.S. Steel, demanded a settlement, and obtained one. He announced that the agreement should lead to a speedy resumption of steel production; the strike was over.

The resolution came through a direct meeting between the union’s leader and the head of the industry’s largest company, convened by the president after months of dispute. It brought the immediate production stoppage to an end, although the evidence here does not specify the settlement’s wage terms.

Significance in the Steel Crisis

The union’s position joined a demand for higher pay to a broader national emergency: any interruption in steel production threatened both the war effort in Korea and the expansion of NATO forces. Truman’s refusal to seek an injunction reflected his judgment that the workers had already borne an unfair delay, while his eventual intervention compelled union and management to reach a settlement. The episode shows the United Steelworkers as a central negotiating party in a conflict where wages, steel prices, military supply, and presidential authority were tightly bound together.