Steeling for a Critical Battle

lorwith Wilbur Abel, president of the 1.4 million-member United Steelworkers of America, is usually reserved. But last month in Las Vegas, addressing the union's biennial convention for the last time--he is 68 and will retire next June--Abel turned uncharacteristically vitriolic. He stormed that "shifty busybodies" telling "Hitler-type lies" were trying to take over the union because they covet its "healthy treasury."

No need to mention names. Everyone knew Abel meant Ed Sadlowski, the 38-year-old director of U.S.W. District 31, which includes Chicago and Gary, Ind. The engaging, rough-talking Sadlowski plans to announce this week that he will run for U.S.W. president against pro-Abel Candidate Lloyd McBride, 60, the head of St. Louis-centered District 34. Sadlowski has some chance of winning the February election, given the Steelworkers' tradition of successful insurgencies. Abel himself ousted David J. McDonald as union president in 1965, and Sadlowski won his district presidency in a bitter 1974 campaign against an Abel-backed candidate.

Machine Oiler. If Sadlowski does become the Steelworkers' chief, both the economy and the climate of the nation's labor-management relations could significantly be affected. The U.S.W., one of the unions whose contracts often set a pattern for others, has recently developed a tradition of peaceful and cooperative bargaining. It has not called an industry-wide strike since a marathon 116-day struggle in 1959.

Sadlowski, who went to work at 18 as a machine oiler for U.S. Steel in Gary, and has been working in union jobs since age 22, will have none of that tradition. He talks an unabashed 1930s brand of labor radicalism, naming as his heroes Socialist Eugene V. Debs and John L. Lewis, and describes his goals for the Steelworkers in the single word change. He rails against "tuxedo unionism" --the proclivity of leaders to hobnob with management--and pledges to reduce union salaries, presumably including the president's $75,000 a year. He wants less noise and dirt in the workplace, less harassment of workers by supervisors. "I'm not concerned with production figures," he says. Abel, by contrast, once signed and let his picture be used in an industry newspaper ad pleading for higher productivity.

Among Sadlowski's biggest targets is the Experimental Negotiating Agreement, signed in 1973 by the U.S.W. and the steel companies and first applied to an actual contract in 1974. The agreement was hailed as a model of labor statesmanship because it combined flexibility on wages and benefits with a prohibition against strikes. The three-year contract now in effect, for example, gave the workers large increases the first year, guaranteed smaller raises the second and third years and allowed the union to reopen to press for more. But it provided that disputes over wages and benefits be settled by binding arbitration. One aim was to free the industry from the boom-bust cycle that used to attend union bargaining. Steel users would pile up huge inventories during the talks to carry them through a strike, then cut stockpiles after agreement was reached, sending the mills into a slump. Organization Candidate McBride is willing to keep the no-strike approach, if possible, when contracts are renegotiated next summer. Sadlowski thinks the discarding of the strike weapon emasculates the union.

Sadlowski's campaign faces serious problems. Most important, perhaps, Abel supporters point out that during the contract that Sadlowski derides, union wages have risen $1.97 an hour, or 35%. That is more than twice the climb in the Consumer Price Index. Also, though Sadlowski's grassroots, "Hi ya, buddy" style is appealing to rank and filers, he is not well known outside his district. Some Steelworkers familiar with Sadlowski are suspicious of his friendships with such men as liberal Washington Attorney Joseph Rauh and former J.F.K.-L.B.J. Speechwriter Richard Goodwin. McBride, who went into the mills at 14, and has made a name for himself as an organizer, accuses Sadlowski of neglecting his organizing duties as head of District 31. Sadlowski supporters concede that their man has not accomplished as much as he might have, but say the reason is that he inherited a staff of pro-Abel hacks.

If Sadlowski can somehow overcome these deficiencies and win, mavericks in other unions will doubtless be encouraged to mount similar campaigns, and a feisty season could ensue in the labor-management arena. Within the Steelworkers, the factional fight has already literally drawn blood. A man distributing Sadlowski leaflets was shot in the neck in July outside a Hughes Tool Co. plant in Houston, and another Sadlowski supporter was punched around by three old-liners during the convention in Las Vegas.

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