Owens Illinois Muncie plant to unionize

LOCAL PLANT

OPENS DOORS

TO UNIONS

Owens-Illinois Obeys

Recovery Act.

ACTION REWARD

Glass Makers Aid in

Beer Return.

Glass machine operators and mold makers of the Owens-Illinois Glass Company plant here are being unionized, Philip W. McAbee, plant manager, announced today.

Machine operators will be union­ized by the Glass Bottle Blowers' As­sociation of the United States and Canada and the mold makers by the American Flint Glass Workers Union.

Hemingray Glass Company (now the Muncie plant of the Owens-Illi­nois Glass Company) became an open shop in 1921.

Work of the unions in securing the return of beer and the passage of the national industrial recovery act are cited as reasons for the return to labor unions. Orders for beer bot­tles placed the Hemingray factory in full operation after several months of inactivity.

Cites effective Work.

"Owens-Illinois Glass Company, feeling that much effective work has been done during the last 10 years by the Glass Bottle Blowers' Associa­tion and the American Flint Glass Workers’ Union, working toward a modification of prohibition laws, which has resulted in the present modification regarding 3.2 beer, and which it seems indicated may re­sult in the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment, and also feeling that they should meet in a proper spirit of co-operation the very clear pro­visions of the National Industrial Recovery Act, have agreed to permit the unionization of their glass ma­chine operators by the Glass Bottle Blowers’ Association of the United States and Canada, and of their mold makers by the American Flint Glass Workers' Union, at their Mun­cie plant," was Mr. McAbee’s official statement.

Operators and mold makers al­ready were being paid more than the union scale, Mr. McAbee said, the union wage minimum being approxi­mately 53 cents an hour.