Members and families of United Steelworkers Local 6500 went through an unusually hard winter. But as spring floods cover towns in the area, the strikers are holding solid in defense of their working conditions.

Inco, the arrogant imperialist giant that dominates Sudbury, is hurting. The huge stockpile it accumulated in hopes of discouraging a strike is being used up rapidly, and there has been an unexpected increase in the demand for nickel.

The spirit and solidarity of the strike has even forced local business interests to go along with the needs of the strikers by allowing delays in home and car payments.

The heating and housing committee of the local, serving throughout the winter, successfully prevented any attempts to freeze out strikers or drive them out of their homes.

Strikers have been touring Canada for months speaking to union and at support meetings. Contributions in April alone will total about $250,000. This is in addition to more than $1 million per month in strike benefits from the USWA strike and defense fund.

In a phone conversation on May 3, Wilf Collin, a member of the union local executive board, pointed out that the solidarity the strike has received from unionists—in Canada especially, but also from the United States, Great Britain and even Poland—has had a big effect on keeping up morale.  
 
May 17, 1954
The CIO Textile Workers Union of America has joined the growing body of unions, AFL and CIO, in calling for a shorter work-week with no loss of weekly pay.

At its national convention held in Atlantic City, the TWUA delegates on May 5 unanimously endorsed a program calling for a 35-hour work week at 40 hours pay. A number of other important unions have raised the slogan of the 6-hour day, 30-hour week with 40 hours take home pay.

Soloman Barkin, research director of the textile union said that the 35 hour work week is the “first step” necessary to “stem the tide of depression” in the textile industry.

The resolution adopted by the convention, however, did not call for the shorter work-week as a contract demand on the companies. It appealed to Congress to set up an “industry-labor-public” agency to enforce a basic 35-hour week. No real union action was proposed.

The appeal of the program for a shorter work-week with no loss of weekly income, embodied in the “30 for 40” slogan is increasing with the continued rise of industrial mass unemployment.

By finagling with the figures and including the pre-Easter seasonal rise, the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics managed to produce a “decline” in unemployment between March 10 and April 10. They claimed a drop of 260,000 to a total of 3,465,000.

But in manufacturing—the decisive economic sector—unemployment rose another 250,000 in the same period.  
 
 
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