Shell Game

For three months, in Detroit's Sheraton Hotel, Walter Reuther's auto workers and the Chrysler Corp. had tried to outguess each other with their separate versions of the newest and most complicated gimmick in labor contracts--pensions for workers. Last week Reuther gave a sleight-of-hand demonstration of how to baffle the adversary and how not to get 89,000 workers back on their jobs.

He had called the strike in January, He had demanded a 10-c--an-hour package like the one he had won from Ford. Reuther reckoned that the 10-c- would pay for improved insurance benefits and $100-a-month pensions (with social security) for Chrysler workers over 65. But Chrysler had turned him down.

The strike stretched out. In March, while workers walked the streets, Chrysler offered to deposit $30 million against payment of pensions as they came due. Reuther turned the offer down, arguing with some point that the proposition was not on a sound actuarial basis, and furthermore was not a 10-c- package. Then early this month he abruptly dropped his 10-c--an-hour demand, offered to settle if Chrysler would establish a pension trust fund that was actuarially sound. After thinking it over, Chrysler agreed to the new terms. Everyone expected peace.

But peace was a pea under Reuther's walnut shells. Quicker than the eye, Reuther switched the pea. He announced that though Chrysler's new pension offer was good (he actually had won what he asked for), other benefits were inadequate. What Reuther's statisticians had discovered was that the cost to Chrysler for such pensions would be less per man per hour than the cost to Ford, because Ford workers are generally older and have had more years of service. Even though he had got his trust fund, Reuther was determined to make Chrysler cough up 10-c- an hour, as Ford had. Reuther had his eye on the next company on the negotiation line --giant General Motors. He wanted to be able to go to G.M. with a record of having won maximum demands.

At week's end the pea of peace was still out of sight. In the 60-odd working days that had been lost, Chrysler employees had lost more than $72 million, an average of $809 a man. Chrysler had lost the profits on almost 500,000 autos that were never made. And Chrysler dealers had lost an average of almost $18,500 per man in Walter Reuther's shell game.

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