"We Got to Back It Up"

I WILL SUPPORT MY UNION, proclaimed red and white buttons displayed by workers in steel mills across the U.S. last week. It seemed certain that when the 600,000 United Steelworkers vote in a Taft-Hartley election a fortnight hence on whether to accept management's "last offer," the answer will be an overwhelming no. Steelworkers are in wide agreement with the union contention that steel management, in its demand for the right to change plant work practices, is out to bust the union. "We can't go against our union," explained Andrew Szocka, electrician at the U.S. Steel works in Gary, Ind. "The union may not be worth very much, but we need it, and we got to back it up."

Company by Company. With the rank and file solidly behind him (93%, he claimed), the Steelworkers' President David J. McDonald was in a demanding mood. He stayed away from a scheduled mediation session with steel-industry spokesmen and Chief Federal Mediator Joseph F. Finnegan. He demanded that the steel industry agree to negotiate company by company (industry negotiators surprised him by agreeing, but made it clear in asides that the agreement was a mere gesture). He sent his lawyers into the U.S. district court in Pittsburgh to seek rulings requiring the industry to 1) grant an immediate 4-c--an-hour cost-of-living increase, and 2) make the final package retroactive to Nov. 7, the day the 80-day Taft-Hartley injunction sent the workers back to the mills.

This week the presidential Taft-Hartley fact-finding board, headed by Mediator George William Taylor, will receive from the steel companies the offer that the workers will vote on in company-by-company, secret-ballot referendums. The offer: a three-year wage-and fringe-benefit package that, as the industry reckons it, would increase labor costs by 2.7% a year, or about 30-c- an hour over three years (present steel wages average $3.10 an hour, plus fringe benefits). According to Labor Department figures, 2.7% has been just about the average yearly increase in steel-industry productivity (output per manhour) since World War II, hence would be noninflationary. In addition, industry wants to submit the work-practices dispute to a two-man panel--one member chosen by the industry, one by the union--with compulsory third-party arbitration if the panel fails to reach agreement by mid-1960.

Noninflationary Settlement. And when the workers overwhelmingly reject the offer, what then? Chances are that with the Taft-Hartley injunction running out on Jan. 26, leaving the union free to resume the strike (which ran a record 116 days before the injunction), the Administration will demand third-party arbitration, and the industry will accept it.

A wise arbitration panel, mindful of the public interest, might say: Let management drop its bungled demand for authority to change work practices; let the union accept management's demand for a noninflationary wage settlement keyed to productivity. But past performances of federal mediation boards suggest that the panel may split the difference between the industry's 2.7%-a-year package and McDonald's demands, which the industry estimates at 5% a year. Such an outcome would stir a new ripple of price increases. Predicted a high steel executive last week: "If a third party writes the settlement, there will be an increase in the price of steel."

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