C. I. O. Unwanted

Almost from the day when he scraped up enough money to buy a tin-plate plant, Ernest Tener Weir has fought the national labor unions. He continued to fight them as his tin-plate plant grew into the big Weirton Steel Co. of Weirton, W.Va. and Steubenville, Ohio. His policy was to pay his workers well; frequently he paid better than the rest of the steel industry. The last strike he had was in 1933. He did his bargaining with company unions.

Such a rugged individualist as Republican Ernest Weir was bound to draw the fire and ire of Philip Murray's C.I.O., the Roosevelt Administration and the National Labor Relations Board.

His was the only big steel company that C.I.O. could never organize. In 1937, he was accused of unfair labor practices. He fought the case for 13 years, until last August. Then he was forced to obey an NLRB order and quit bargaining with the Weirton Independent Union. Reason: NLRB had decided it was a creature of management and a federal court ordered it dissolved. The court ruled that no other union could be set up in the plant for three months. This gave the C.I.O. time to go in and organize. Last week NLRB put it to a vote of Weirton employees: Whom did they want to represent them? They decided, by a vote of 7,291 to 3,454, to reject C.I.O., put their faith in a newly formed independent union.

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