Lifetime Security in Steel?

In an era of high wages and high unemployment, American workers generally worry far less about the size of their paychecks than about whether those checks will keep coming. Responding to that anxiety, union leaders are putting job security high on their bargaining agenda--and last week I.W. Abel, president of the United Steelworkers, decided to go all the way. At Washington's Shoreham Americana Hotel, he opened his last round of contract talks in basic steel (he is 68 and will retire in June). As militant Steelworkers, fearful of a sellout to the industry, picketed outside, Abel announced that the union's goal will be nothing less than lifetime security. His definition: "A job for life; a decent, respectable income for life."

Bold Idea. Does that mean the Steelworkers intend to import to the U.S. the Japanese idea of guaranteed employment with the same company from apprenticeship to grave? No one can say: the union has yet to figure out how to put its bold idea into practice. Steelworkers Special Counsel Elliot Bredhoff concedes that the whole concept "is rather nebulous. We'll be exploring all ideas." About the only thing that is certain is the demand will not lead to a strike when contracts covering 337,600 workers at the Big Ten steel companies expire July 31. The talks will be conducted under the Experimental Negotiating Agreement, an earlier and no less interesting Abel-sponsored innovation. It provides that if there is no agreement by April 20, the dispute will be submitted to binding arbitration.

The Steelworkers' overriding intention is to do away with layoffs to every possible extent. To that end, presidents of union locals in basic steel last week suggested some possible components of a lifetime-security plan. They include negotiating a 32-hour week at 40 hours pay, making more unionists eligible for a special 13-week "extended vacation" program, putting some restrictions on overtime and banning millowners from contracting out work, such as construction, that could be performed in house by Steelworkers' members. The aim: more workers will be needed to turn out any given tonnage of steel, so fewer layoffs will be necessary, and mill bosses can guarantee employment to workers who have reached a certain seniority (20 years' service, the union has hinted). Bredhoff speculates that a lifetime-security plan could be funded by an industry-wide pool, providing paychecks even for workers whose employer goes out of business.

Surprisingly, some industry officials have dropped vague hints that the lifetime-security idea may not be totally out of reach. Officially, however, the steel bosses held their tongues. J. Bruce Johnston, vice president of U.S. Steel and chief negotiator for the Big Ten companies, did say that any rise in labor costs would push up the price of steel. Abel's reply: "Pricing is one thing we don't get involved with here."

Bargaining Ploy. Lifetime security has some precedents in American society. College professors earn tenure; East Coast longshoremen are guaranteed pay for 2,080 hours of work a year; printers on some newspapers have been promised lifetime jobs in exchange for their acquiescence to automation. A number of industries in Europe are also experimenting with lifetime-security plans. Says one Steelworkers' officer, with more than a touch of hyperbole: "Members of management can plan their lives on the basis of an assured income. Steelworkers should be able to do that too."

The rejoinder is that in an up-and-down economy employers simply need many fewer workers at some times than at others. Says Jack Meyer, acting assistant director of the Federal Council on Wage and Price Stability: "In a basically free-market economy, there is no such thing as lifetime security." Wall Street Steel Analyst George A. Kuhnreich dismisses Abel's announcement as "a bargaining ploy. Otherwise the cost would break the companies. Lifetime security would be particularly expensive in a down year, and steel is the most cyclical industry there is."

Perhaps. But greater--if not lifetime --security will also be an issue in 1977 bargaining in the construction, telephone, coal, railroad and other industries, involving 4.9 million workers in all. Having achieved comfortable wages for many of their workers--Steelworkers, for example, average $8.11 an hour --union leaders are now out to protect those wages from the threat of layoff. The Steelworkers themselves may well have to settle for far less than lifetime security this year. But if so, they will be back in 1980 under Abel's successor Lloyd McBride, arguing for an idea whose time they think has come.

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