The Big Strike

As the massive furnaces were banked, the brilliant flashes of light that mark the pouring of molten steel disappeared from the night sky over Pittsburgh, Youngstown, Gary, and many another steel town. In the Pittsburgh borough of Homestead, hard by the home of giant U.S. Steel Corp., only a few lonely figures moved along the strangely deserted streets. In Manhattan, businesslike industry and union negotiators stuffed papers into briefcases and headed for home.

Thus was the nation's fourth major steel strike since World War II signaled in the hours after Saturday midnight. Out of work were 650,000 members of the United Steelworkers of America, A.F.L.-C.I.O.; shut down by their strike were the mills of twelve companies that account for 90% of all U.S. steel production.

Halfhearted Session. The strike in the nation's basic industry had come as something of a surprise. In the preceding month negotiating teams headed by the Steelworkers' President David McDonald (see below) and U.S. Steel Vice President John A. Stephens had argued the issues in smooth, gentlemanly tones -first in Pittsburgh, then, to get away from local pressures, in Manhattan's Hotel Roosevelt. But gentlemanly tones or no, it became apparent last week that neither companies nor union were going to yield in time to stop a walkout. Six hours before the Saturday night deadline, a last, halfhearted session showed the negotiators as far apart as ever on the key issues: wage increases and length of contract.

There were other differences, but what the Steelworkers' McDonald wanted most was to boost the average $2.47-an-hour pay of his union members by package benefits of some 20-c- in the coming year, while avoiding the encumbrances of the four-year-and-four-month master contract asked by the industry. (Without making a formal offer, the union let it be known that it might settle for a suitable three-year contract.) What steel's Stephens and the dozen companies most wanted was to keep package benefit increases to 14 or 15-c- an hour in the coming year, tie future raises -which steel claims will average 13-c- per year -to the terms of the long-term contract. Only in such a way, industry argued, could its costs be sufficiently stabilized to justify a planned multi-billion-dollar expansion program.

Local Reaction. The shutdown choked off the vast weight that the steel industry pours daily into the U.S. economy: 250,000 tons of steel and $10 million in wages. In Birmingham, there was evidence aplenty of what lies ahead for mill towns such as Youngstown and Gary. For nine weeks 25,000 Birmingham steelworkers have refused to cross the picket lines of a strike called by the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen; throughout the area, sales have skidded and general unemployment has risen.

Most Government economists reckon that the big strike's chain reactions will be confined largely to steel-producing areas; the overall U.S. economy is too strong to be seriously staggered. A two-week strike, say the economists, would have very little effect on manufacturing because inventories (except in specialized heavy construction) are comfortably large. On the union side of the picture, many a millhand, his vacation pay already earned, is delighted to escape the blistering heat of the plants in July.

But the possibility of a long strike worries Administration economists, worries industry, and worries the union rank and file. With the Federal Government committed to staying out of the picture as long as possible, it is precisely the economic pressures of the industry-union worry that will prompt a more rapid, more solid settlement.

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