October 1, 1949: When the Steelworkers Struck the Minnequa Mills
According to The Pueblo Chieftain, 8,300 steelworkers were idle in Pueblo on October 1, 1949, after the United Steelworkers struck CF&I’s Minnequa mills at midnight.
The Pueblo County Historical Society’s journal, Pueblo Lore, reprinted a Chieftain item from that day in its October 2009 issue. The item says the CIO union “struck the Minnequa steel mills here last midnight.” The date line is October 1, so the Ledger reads the walkout as the start of that day.
What the Chieftain item says
The item opens with “the business of stilling the Rocky Mountain region’s biggest industry,” which it says kept CF&I management busy. The work meant settling with the union which men could cross the picket lines at the mill’s three gates to finish banking the furnaces and coke ovens, and which skeleton crews would maintain the plant.
The item counts 8,300 idle steelworkers in Pueblo. That includes 2,100 who had been laid off the week before when cancelled orders led to the rail mill closing. It adds that CF&I coal mines in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming were also being closed.
This is a secondary copy of a newspaper item. The Ledger has not seen the original 1949 page. The reprint also contains a typing slip in the same entry, so exact wording should be checked against the newspaper.
The national strike
Pueblo’s walkout was part of a larger one. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, in a report dated June 2, 1950, says the basic steel strike involved 500,000 employees in 29 states and began on October 1. It says the union’s original proposals included a wage increase and a social-insurance and pension plan. The strike followed the parties’ failure to agree on the recommendations of a presidential Steel Board.
The Bureau says the stoppage did not break until October 31, when Bethlehem Steel signed a contract that became the pattern for later settlements. That agreement provided a noncontributory pension plan, meaning one financed by the company, and a contributory social-insurance program. Workers reaching 65 with 25 years of service were to receive at least $100 a month through company-financed payments that supplement Social Security.
U.S. Steel signed on November 11, according to the Bureau. It says the bulk of the industry resumed operations by the end of November, and that a December 12 settlement with Timken Roller Bearing virtually ended the strike apart from a few local disputes.
What the archive holds
The Steelworks Center of the West’s guide to the CF&I archives describes a work-stoppages series covering 1945 to 1990. It says the series documents “the lengthy and bitter strikes of 1949 and 1959.” One folder is labeled “Strike-Actual Oct. 1, 1949.” The guide is a finding aid and does not describe the folder’s contents.
A University of Southern California project on CF&I lists a 1949 steel strike called by the Steelworkers. It says the nationwide strike resulted in a first pension agreement, sick and accident benefits, and life insurance. It does not mention Pueblo.
What we don’t know yet
None of the sources the Ledger opened gives the date the Minnequa mill returned to work, or the date CF&I settled. The Bureau’s report does not mention CF&I. The dates above are national, and they do not establish when Pueblo’s strike ended.
The records most likely to answer that are Pueblo newspapers for late October through December 1949, and the CF&I archive folder at the Steelworks Center of the West.