Trouble in the Streets

A speeding car loaded with workers headed toward a mass of cursing, shouting men blocking the entrance to the Westinghouse lamp plant in Bloomfield, N.J. one morning last week. The car plowed through, knocking down a picket and two policemen. In nearby Edison, N.J. four men were injured as they tried to halt cars driving into the local Westinghouse plant. In Sharon, Pa. bricks flew, cars were damaged, and some pickets were hauled off to jail.

Day and night, in 21 U.S. cities and towns where Westinghouse has plants, the same sullen violence or threat of it darkened factories, stultified business, saddened homes, and all too often brought ambulances clanging through the streets. In a final, convulsive effort to end the strife, the mayors (or their representatives) of 15 cities with struck plants gathered in Pittsburgh one morning to propose a solution. But their efforts proved as futile as the efforts of many before them, including ten Senators, three governors, a handful of clergymen, and the full force of the Federal Mediation Service. Said Secretary of Labor James P. Mitchell: "[It is] the outstanding failure of collective bargaining in 1955."

Cold as Tombs. The bitterest strike of recent times had lasted 13 weeks, the longest major strike since 1950. Some 50,000 of Westinghouse's 116,000 employees were out, and almost half of the company's 98 plants (e.g., those producing atomic reactors, electronic tubes, air conditioners) sat as cold and motionless as tombs. At most. 4,500 of the strikers had crossed the picket lines and gone back to work.

The situation was a far cry from the day only three years ago, when James B. Carey, the slight but tough president of the 362,000-member International Union of Electrical Workers, stood proudly beside Westinghouse's President Gwilym A. Price at his union's convention and proclaimed : "We've found a way to sit down, discuss, argue, and then resolve differences in the truly American spirit of give and take." Now, Carey accuses Price and his company of "moral irresponsibility, economic depravity, scab-herding, contract-breaking"; in return. Price accuses Carey and his union of "gangsterism, deliberate planned violence." While strike lines have swollen, the two negotiating teams have met only three times in the last two weeks, only to break up quickly, once with Westinghouse spokesmen storming out and accusing the union conferees of "foul and abusive language."

One v. Five. The strike began on Oct. 17, when a deadlock at the bargaining table erupted into the streets and onto the picket lines. The union insisted on a one-year contract with a 15-c- hourly wage hike. To meet competition and provide for long-range planning, Westinghouse demanded a five-year contract, with yearly raises amounting to 23.5-c- an hour by 1961--terms similar to but not identical with those agreed upon by the union and General Electric. But there was a deeper issue. Westinghouse is trying to put through a companywide, time-study program aimed at increasing production efficiency and regaining the company's competitive position (its profits fell 30% in the first nine months of 1955). The union fears that such a study will result in a loss of jobs (there has been a 25% cutback in jobs at one plant since 1951). It has asked for "satisfactory ground rules" to control the studies but hard-pressed Westinghouse refused on the ground that it had to have a free hand to manage as it saw fit. In essence, both sides are fighting over security.

By now, the long battle has begun to tell on the rivals. The workers are losing more than $900,000 daily in wages, according to the company; the union is spending $250,000 a week in strike benefits. The company has lost over $300 million in sales, according to the union; some executives are drawing half pay, and 40,000 employees on the job are obliged to lay off as often as two weeks a month.

Secret Meeting. Costly as it has been, the strike's misery has so far been generally confined to those directly involved. Sticking to its policy of nonintervention in collective bargaining, the Administration served notice last week that the two sides must settle it between them.

By week's end, there was slight sign of letup. The union and the company sent one man each to a secret meeting in Philadelphia with Federal Mediator John Murray. The meeting, however, was called less to bargain collectively than to set up rules for further meetings. Said Mediator Murray: "The strike couldn't be settled in anything less than two weeks." While they waited, men in the picket lines heaped up more stones, stirred their chilled feet, and chanted in derisive mockery of Westinghouse's advertising slogan, "You can't be sure if it's Westinghouse."

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