<P> U.S. Steel maintained the labor policies of Andrew Carnegie, which called for low wages and opposition to unionization . The Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers union that represented workers at the Homestead, Pennsylvania, plant was, for many years, broken after a violent strike in 1892 . U.S. Steel defeated another strike in 1901, the year it was founded . U.S. Steel built the city of Gary, Indiana in 1906, and 100 years later it remained the location of the largest integrated steel mill in the Northern Hemisphere . U.S. Steel reached a détente with unions during World War I, when under pressure from the Wilson Administration it relaxed its opposition to unions enough to allow some to operate in certain factories . It returned to its previous policies as soon as the war ended, however, and in a 1919 strike defeated union - organizing efforts by William Z . Foster of the AFL . </P> <P> Heavy pressure from public opinion forced the Company to give up its 12 - hour day and adopt the standard eight - hour day . During the 1920s, U.S. Steel, like many other large employers, coupled paternalistic employment practices with "employee representation plans" (ERPs), which were company unions sponsored by management . These ERPs eventually became an important factor leading to the organization of the United Steelworkers of America . The Company dropped its hard - line, anti-union stance in 1937, when Myron Taylor, then president of U.S. Steel, agreed to recognize the Steel Workers Organizing Committee, an arm of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) led by John L. Lewis . Taylor was an outsider, brought in during the Great Depression to rescue U.S. Steel, and had no emotional investment in the Company's long history of opposition to unions . Watching the upheaval caused by the United Auto Workers' successful sit - down strike in Flint, Michigan, and convinced that Lewis was someone he could deal with on a businesslike basis, Taylor sought stability through collective bargaining . </P> <P> The Steelworkers continue to have a contentious relationship with U.S. Steel, but far less so than the relationship that other unions had with employers in other industries in the United States . They launched a number of long strikes against U.S. Steel in 1946 and a 116 - day strike in 1959, but those strikes were over wages and benefits and not the more fundamental issue of union recognition that led to violent strikes elsewhere . </P> <P> The Steelworkers union attempted to mollify the problems of competitive foreign imports by entering into a so - called Experimental Negotiation Agreement (ENA) in 1974 . This was to provide for arbitration in the event that the parties were not able to reach agreement on any new collective bargaining agreements, thereby preventing disruptive strikes . The ENA failed to stop the decline of the steel industry in the U.S. </P>

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