Cement Mix-Up

In and around many a key city in the eastern U.S. last week, cement-mixers, supplying the foundation of the nation's biggest construction boom, lay silent on their jobs. The sudden silence came after strikes were called by 17,000 United Cement, Lime and Gypsum Workers (total membership: 41,000) in 70 of the country's 160 cement plants. With kilns cooling and stockpiles quickly dwindling, contractors laid off about 20,000 construction men in New York, paralyzing work on $400 million in highways, schools, hospitals, airport facilities, piers. In Pennsylvania, expressway construction stopped on a six-mile stretch near York; in Boston. Jacksonville and as far west as Cincinnati, the story was the same.

Cement-union strategists began planning last year for this first all-out assault on manufacturers, aiming especially at an industry-wide blanket contract instead of the customary plant-by-plant settlement. In the dusty cement bag dumped on the negotiation tables by the union were demands for a 13-c--an-hour increase (to $2.20), a 10% premium for Sunday work, four-week vacations after 30 years service, and a clause forbidding companies to hire outside service personnel when inside manpower is available.

Though a few small Midwestern plants made quick settlements, many of the larger companies, e.g., U.S. Steel's Universal Atlas Co., settled down to fight just as stubbornly as the union. A long fight may be in the making. A New York Times report speculated that cement manufacturers, looking forward to the golden days of the $50 billion federal highway program, are getting set to hike cement prices; a strike, settled in due season--with added costs--would provide just the occasion. "When the negotiations make very little headway all over," added a Government labor expert in Washington, "such a concentrated front suggests some timetable is working. Such a remarkable uniformity of attitude is more than a coincidence."

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