The Big Package

As goes the price of steel, so goes the price of thousands of consumer products. Last week it looked as if steel's wages and prices were headed up again. At the A.F.L.-C.I.O. Steelworkers' "Operation Soundoff," the well-organized bull session in Chicago for President Dave McDonald's 170-man wage policy committee, the union drafted its demands. Topping the list: "supplementary unemployment benefits," the steelworkers' version of the autoworkers' guaranteed annual wage. But where the autoworkers get from 60% to 65% of take-home pay (including state benefits) for 26 weeks if they are laid off, the steelworkers want 65% for 52 weeks. They also said they will go to bat for premium pay for Saturday and Sunday work, plus a boost over the average $2.45 hourly they are now paid.

The big package could cost the industry an estimated 40-c- an hour for every one of its 600,000 employees. But the steelworkers militantly pointed to the industry's peak production and profits last year, claimed that steelmakers could pay their demands without raising steel prices. To this claim Jones & Laughlin Steel's Board Chairman Ben Moreell had a quick answer: "If these demands amount to an across-the-board increase in operating costs, there will have to be a price increase."

Even at higher prices there would probably be no letup in the demand for steel. Plants operated at or near capacity last week despite some cutbacks in the auto industry, and last week there were signs that demand from Detroit's automakers would soon increase. Auto production edged up to 134,272 cars, a gain of 1,403 over the previous week but 21% below the comparable period of last year. Chrysler, on the strength of its February 13.6% jump over January auto sales, called 4,700 men back to work at Plymouth. If construction, appliances and other big steel users continue on an upturn, the steelworkers will go into negotiations this summer with the boom on their side of the bargaining table.

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