United States. Oil Panel.

The Oil Panel was appointed by the secretary of labor, November 27, 1945 to "investigate the labor dispute relating to the wages which should be paid on the resumption of the forty hour week" in the oil plants and facilities which had been seized by the Navy in accordance with Executive Order 9639. The parties to the dispute included the Oil Workers' International Union, CIO, vs. the Ashland Oil and Refining Company, the Atlantic Refining Company, Cities Services Oil Company, Shell Oil Company, Socony Vacuum Oil Company, Standard Oil Company of Ohio, Texas Company, and Union Oil Company, among others.

As a major source of motive power, the oil industry was considered essential to the reconversion of American industry to peacetime production and any serious breakdown in the industry, such as was threatened by the dispute over wages, would interfere with this reconversion. In a report dated January 12, 1945, the panel recommended a 9.5 percent cost-of-living increase, as well as an additional settlement of 8.5 percent, for a total increase of 18 percent in the wage rate, frozen since the wartime seizure of the plants.

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