informal body established in June 1940 to promote the conversion of industry to a wartime footing), the Army Quartermaster Corps, the Army Corps of Engineers, and other War Department units. Despite these moves, the original names of the buildings remained attached to each. To handle the massive influx of military workers, city officials began working with the Capital Traction Company and the private companies providing public bus service to plan new streetcar and bus lines to serve the structures. Only a single major accident was reported during the building's construction. On July 4, 1940, 43-year-old construction worker Roy Trowbridge suffered a fractured spine when scaffolding he was standing on gave way and he fell four stories to the ground. By early July, the $14 million buildings were due to be completed by September 1, 1940. Strikes Despite the earlier pledge by AFL and CIO officials to not strike war-related construction, strikes plagued the work on the two buildings in the summer of 1940. The first strike occurred when 250 workers at the Smoot Sand & Gravel walked out to protest a job classification by the federal Wage and Hour Division. The men worked on barges dredging gravel, and wanted to be classified as seamen so they could qualify for overtime and work more than the federally approved 42-hour work week. The strike began on July 9, lasted five days, and idled more than 6,500 workers (including those working on the Social Security and Railroad Retirement Board buildings) as no concrete could be delivered. The men won reclassification as seamen, a 10 percent wage increase, and pay for five days they were idle. A second strike hit the construction site on July 18. This jurisdictional strike involved 250 carpenters, who were involved in a dispute with the plasterers over who had the right to build sawhorses. More than 2,000 of the 3,000 workers on the two-building job site were idled as the strike continued. The strike ended on July 19 after both labor unions agreed to allow the Building and Construction Trades Department (BCTD) of the AFL to arbitrate the dispute. A third strike hit the site on August 2. This jurisdictional strike involved 180 plasterers and cement finishers, who walked off the job in a dispute over who would install more than of acoustic ceiling tile. The strike didn't idle many workers, just 60 lathers and plasterers' assistants. The Federal