Imperial Valley Press

Harvill Walkout at End

INGLEWOOD, Calif, March 24 (UP) - Members of the National (CIO) Association of Die Casting Workers voted today on an agreement to end their 10-day strike at the Harvill Die Casting corporation's plant.

Rank and file ratification of the agreement was regarded as a formality, and 350 strikers will return to their jobs as soon as balloting is completed.

Settlement of the strike, which had threatened to cripple the vital west coast aircraft industry, was announced last night after an eight-hour conference between union and company representatives and Thomas Burns, labor consultant for the Office of Production Management.

"The management and the union have agreed on principle points at issue, including wages, and decided to terminate the strike," Burns said.

Terms of the agreement will not be revealed until they are approved by the union membership, but it was understood that Henry Harvill, president of the corporation, had agreed to a minimum hourly wage of 75 cents, with the provision that he be given five months to put it into effect. Harvill was said to have told the union he would lose $128,472 if he put the scale into operation immediately. The previous minimum was 50 cents an hour.

It was also understood that Harvill was willing to recognize the union as bargaining agent for its members, but wanted a contract clause permitting him to hire non-union workers. He was reported willing to allow establishment of a shop steward system and arbitration committees.

"Settlement of this strike, which has crippled national defense operations for the past 10 days, is most gratifying," he said. "While a number of fundamental issues are not settled, we are entering concluding conferences with the union with the full knowledge that the important thing is to continue all out effort in behalf of national defense."

Harvill's defense contracts are comparatively small: $750,000. However, he manufactures brackets, pulley blocks and instrument panel frames by a process many times faster than the old sand casting method, and is the only source of such parts on the coast.

Plane manufacturers working on a $1,500,000,000 worth of planes for Great Britain and the United States had said they would face a tieup, unless the strike were settled "within a few days."