The Master Mediator

Willie Julian Usery could easily lay claim to holding the most impossible job in Washington. His chief title is Secretary of Labor, but he is also a Special Assistant to the President and the Ford Administration's top labor-management mediator. As such, he is supposed to make sure that neither long strikes nor inflationary wage settlements slow the nation's economic recovery--in a year when contracts covering no fewer than 4.5 million workers expire and rising corporate profits are emboldening unions to demand fat increases in order to catch up with past inflation.

If current experience is any guide, the nation can expect labor peace --at a stiff price. Last month Usery produced a settlement that ended a Teamsters strike after only two days but will oblige trucking companies to raise drivers' wages and benefits by nearly 33% over three years. His next job will be to settle the month-old walkout of rubber workers (negotiations resume this week) before shortages of tires begin closing down auto plants. After that come tricky negotiations in the construction, electrical and auto industries.

At 52, the bluff, barrel-chested Usery faces the challenge with the respect of both labor and management as "the best mediator in the country," to quote Bill Dempsey, the railroads' chief negotiator. Usery rose from welder to become a top negotiator for the International Association of Machinists. So impressive was he at the bargaining table that George Shultz, President Nixon's first Labor Secretary, asked him in 1969 to put aside party loyalties (he is a Democrat) and become an assistant secretary for labor-management relations. That job led to a 1973 appointment as head of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service. Along the way, Usery honed his skills as a peacemaker in dozens of bitter disputes, including the 1970 postal workers' strike, the 1972 teachers' strike in Philadelphia, last September's walkout at National Airlines and even the wildcat strike of players in the National Football League.

Usery typically begins a negotiation with an unabashedly patriotic appeal to both sides about the moral obligations of making collective bargaining work. If the parties seem particularly antagonistic, Usery will stoke up his meerschaum pipe and keep everyone together for a session of stories and jokes. "We might spend an entire day talking about women," he says. "It isn't bargaining, but it's something everyone can agree on."

Once he has created a reasonably cooperative atmosphere, Usery gets down to business. "He's got an uncanny ability to grasp the issues," marvels Chuck Chamberlain, head of the Brotherhood of Railroad Signal men. "He knows when one side is ready to make a concession." Usery also resorts to mild trickery to push for progress. He will, for instance, separate labor and management, telling each group that he will try for a modification in the other's position. Then he will retire alone to his room, letting each side stew-and work on modifications of its own.

Another tactic is to wear everyone down with round-the-clock bargaining. Last December, when negotiations had apparently collapsed on the eve of a nationwide railroad strike, Usery ordered a final meeting. It lasted all night--but the haggard negotiators produced a settlement. "No matter how tired I am," says Usery, "I never walk into a room. I burst in. Negotiators think, 'Hell, we better settle this before he kills us all.' " One labor leader puts it more bluntly: Usery, he says, has "the biggest bladder in the business."

In his nearly four months as Secretary of Labor, Usery has tried to help the Administration set economic policy. "I'm no economist," he admits cheerfully--he never finished college--but that does not stop him from lobbying hard for the workingman. Even if his colleagues do not agree with him, Usery captures their attention. He deploys the most fractured English since Casey Stengel, sometimes talking of "the next physical [for fiscal] year." Usery once stunned a French trade minister by saying, "If I might digest for a minute." He meant digress.

All his duties keep Usery so busy that he has barely enough time for his morning calisthenics, much less his family (he has a wife and a son, 29). Preferring to see him a few weeks a year rather than a few minutes a day, they never moved to Washington from Macon, Ga. Still, the hard work has not dimmed Usery's enthusiasm for the front line of mediation, and he looks forward to the rough bargaining sessions ahead. "It's hard to explain," he says, "but there's no feeling quite like seeing people who have been mad and aggravated come out of a meeting shaking hands."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.