Down to a System

The final all-night conference broke up with a formal exchange of recriminations for the record. "A wasteful and unnecessary thing," said Chrysler. An "arrogant and stubborn attitude," said the United Auto Workers. Smiling cheerfully, the U.A.W.'s cocky President Walter Reuther stalked out of Detroit's Sheraton Hotel, trailing a school of lesser negotiators behind him. One of them stopped for a moment to give the word to waiting newsmen: "The strike is on, my boys."

His word was hardly necessary. A full 15 minutes earlier, U.A.W. workers had quietly started filing out of the gates at Chrysler plants all around industrial Detroit. Outside the main Dodge plant in Hamtramck a newsboy unloaded a six-foot stack of extras and was peddling strike headlines ten minutes before the deadline.

"Free Vacation." It all rolled off as smoothly as a new Plymouth coming off the assembly line. At the big Highland Park unit, a mobile crane operator stopped his machine just inside the main gate, swung down, lunch box in hand, to join the departing crowds.

The strikers grinned self-consciously and joked among themselves. "Free vacation," shouted one. "Let's go to Florida." Remarked another, matter-of-factly: "This isn't so good. The best time to strike is when it's a little warmer." Within a couple of hours only token picket lines plodded mechanically back & forth.

Explained one union official: "Look, we've got this thing down to a system. I'll admit that it's boring. The whole town's unionized and nobody's going to cross a picket line, whether pickets are there or not. Why wear out shoe leather?"

"A Mean One." But for all the studied indifference, the U.A.W. was digging in for a long and wearing struggle with the nation's second largest automaker. Ever since last July, Reuther had been haggling with Chrysler for the same kind of pension package he won from Ford and hoped to get from General Motors: 10-c- an hour for pensions and insurance benefits.

Chrysler turned him down cold. It was willing to pay whatever it took to provide $100-a-month pensions (including social security), but it was dead set against putting a price tag on the bargain. Chrysler would guarantee the pensions; it was none of the union's concern how much they cost or how they were administered.

This week, with no sign of a break in the deadlock, the walkout of 89,000 Chrysler employees was spreading to Chrysler suppliers. Briggs Manufacturing Co., which makes many of Chrysler's bodies, had laid off 23,000 workers, other parts makers had laid off thousands more; altogether nearly 120,000 were out of work. Crumped one Chrysler employee: "This could be a mean one."

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