Fourth Quarter

Last week for every automobile manufacturer but one, fourth-quarter production totals were well above the mark of a year ago (biggest gainer: Ford). Fourth-quarter sales were enormously up. The one whose production was down--to zero --was Chrysler Corp., beset for seven weeks by C.I.O. trouble.

At the start of the fracas, what Chrysler executives wanted was a satisfactory new contract with C.I.O.'s United Automobile Workers, whose old agreement had just expired. Chrysler bargained for the lowest possible wage increase, also hoped to defeat union demands for 1) all-union hiring in the corporation's plants; 2) arbitration of plant grievances, 3) a voice in setting production speeds. Only issue finally disposed of last week was the all-union shop (which U.A.W. swapped off for a tentative compromise on arbitration).

Chrysler's chunky President Kaufman Thuma Keller stayed away from most of the conferences in Detroit last week. He could not abide the taunts of U.A.W.'s keg-headed Richard Frankensteen, who continually brings up the story that back in the bad old non-union days, Chrysler planted a spying boarder in the Frankensteen home. But Mr. Keller's able, labor-wise Vice President Herman Weckler, negotiating with "Durable Dick" Frankensteen and his boss, U.A.W. President Roland Jay Thomas, actually seemed to be getting somewhere. Within sniffing distance was settlement, re-employment of 58,000 idle Chrysler workers and perhaps 150,000 more in closed supply plants.

Then the union blundered onto a tender corporate toe. A nominally separate union of C.I.O. foremen demanded recognition by Chrysler. "A new attempt to control production," cried Mr. Keller. Roland Thomas hastily announced that the demand had been withdrawn. Far from satisfied, Chrysler's Weckler demanded a guarantee (presumably from John Lewis) that no such demand by any C.I.O. union should again be made during the life of the new contract. "Just so long as the corporation continues to drag extraneous issues into the situation," replied Mr. Thomas with a straight face, "so long will the corporation have to bear the responsibility for failure ... to resume operations."

Both sides continued to avoid calling the strike a strike. But when 57 Dodge foundry hands (mostly Negroes) went back to work at the Dodge plant, picketing strikers were angered, bricks flew (wounding two policemen and six Chrysler employes), and Mr. Thomas indignantly went through the motions of calling his unionists--who had marched in picket lines for 51 days--out "on strike."

To Detroit this week C.I.O.'s cool, canny Vice President Philip Murray brought some hope of peace at last. With Vice President Sidney Hillman, burry Mr. Murray is overlord and trouble-shooter of U.A.W. Two weeks of absentee advice (by telephone) having failed to get results, he appeared in person to read Messrs. Thomas & Frankensteen their umpteenth lesson in how to run a union.

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