The Peacemakers

For seven months the labor situation at the Government's vital Oak Ridge and Paducah atomic-energy plants had been as explosive as an Abomb. The C.I.O.'s Gas, Coke & Chemical Workers union wanted a raise in pay, angrily threatened a crippling strike to get it; Union Carbide & Carbon Corp., which runs the plants, turned down the demands. After a three-day strike last July, Labor Secretary James Mitchell and C.I.O. President Walter Reuther both pleaded for a settlement, but negotiations bogged down again; an 80-day injunction only postponed the inevitable showdown.

Finally, the Government's Federal Mediation & Conciliation Service stepped into the fight. By keeping the negotiators in session for 28 out of 34 hours, patiently smoothing over differences, the FMCS mediator eventually got labor and management to accept its own proposal for a 10-c- package wage increase. Last week, just 30 minutes before the final strike deadline, the pact was agreed on, and Washington breathed a sigh of relief.

Ike & the Scouts. The AEC settlement was a prime example of the way FMCS's troubleshooters head off strikes. In the past 16 months, under Director Whitley P. McCoy, 60, a former University of Alabama law professor, FMCS has handled some 21,000 disputes. Partisanship has no place in the service. McCoy, a staunch Democrat, was named to the job by President Eisenhower, and he insists that his 230 mediators be as impartial as big-league umpires. His philosophy is that the best labor-management agreements are those worked out by the parties themselves; the mediator is most useful when both sides have reached an impasse and need outside help to see their problem in its real light. Says McCoy: "Our efforts center chiefly on helping negotiators who have been unable, for whatever the reasons, to help themselves."

To relax tired and angry negotiators, McCoy sometimes likes to tell a hoary old joke.* But McCoy's men can be tough, too. They sometimes keep labor and management at the table for 60 hours without a break. "If the boys get out," says one of McCoy's men, "they come back with new ideas, and the whole negotiation may collapse." Ounce of Prevention. Just as important as mediation is the FMCS's arbitration service, in which McCoy provides an impartial arbitrator to sit in judgment and hand down a decision. The Government's only role is to suggest a list of arbitrators; labor and management choose the man, pay the costs, and agree beforehand to abide by the decision. Arbitrators have been so successful at their jobs that requests for their services jumped 55% in fiscal 1954.

In Washington last week, Mediator McCoy was clearing the decks for what promises to be one of the toughest battles in years: the C.I.O.'s push for a guaranteed annual wage from the auto industry. Though negotiations will not start until spring, McCoy is already briefing three top FMCS mediators on all the facts and arguments in the case. He hopes to use the negotiations as a testing ground for one of his favorite ideas: the best way to avoid labor trouble would be through preventive mediation. He wants FMCS men to preside over the auto bargaining sessions from the start as neutral chairmen whose job it will be to keep things moving smoothly, stepping in only when asked. Says McCoy: "An impartial third man in the ring can go a long way to prevent the window-dressing issues which breed deep-seated and lasting resentments."

* Sample: Three boy scouts reported that their good deed for the day had been helping an old lady cross the street. Asked the scoutmaster: "Why did it take all three of you to help her across?" Chorused the boys: "She didn't want to cross."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.