THE ECONOMY: Aspirin for Steel

On the 116th day of the longest nationwide steel strike in U.S. history, the Supreme Court upheld the emergency procedure of the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act as “a public remedy in times of emergency,” gave force to a Taft-Hartley injunction ordering 500,000 steelworkers back to the ore mines, furnaces and mills for 80 days. The court’s 8-to-1 decision (Justice William O. Douglas dissenting) cut tersely through the United Steelworkers’ lengthy legal challenge, which had already won more than two weeks’ delay in the courts. In upholding the injunction handed down by the U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh Oct. 21 and affirmed six days later by the Circuit Court of Appeals, the Supreme Court ruled solidly on the three main points raised by the union in its appeal:

¶The emergency procedure of the twelve-year-old Taft-Hartley Act is constitutional. It does not, as the union contended, unconstitutionally require the courts to “legislate” policy on a strike. “The statute does recognize certain rights in the public to have unimpeded for a time production in industries vital to the national health or safety,” ruled the court.

¶The steel strike satisfies the Taft-Hartley requirement for evident danger to “the national health or safety” before an injunction may be issued. Contrary to union argument, said the court, the Government does not have to prove something as vague as “damage to national health,” because the steel strike in fact imperils “national safety” by specific effects upon defense projects.

¶To the union contention that the U.S. could easily satisfy its defense needs by channeling requirements to a few reopened mills, the court replied that it is not the job of the U.S., before applying for a Taft-Hartley injunction, to reorganize “the affected industry.”

Within hours of the court’s decision, three loaded ore boats sailed out of Duluth harbor for the steel centers; within two hours maintenance workers began heating up coke ovens in Pittsburgh. By midweek the first pig iron would pour down white-hot from ten-story-high blast furnaces, thence become raw steel within less than 24 hours, bars and sheets within a week or so. Despite these quick reactions, the injunction was little more than an 80-day aspirin for an economy aching for a real cure of the steel crisis.

Nearly half the time will have gone before the mills reach anything like capacity production; layoffs because of steel shortages, which rose from 10,000 a week in mid-September to 45,500 a week in late October, will continue to rise for perhaps six weeks (see BUSINESS) before the output of new steel will be felt through the steel-strapped economy.

The 80 days will serve the public purpose only if they become the cooling-off period envisioned in the law. Under terms of the law, federal mediators must lead the negotiators back to the table, but they cannot make them bargain. After 60 days the President’s Board of Inquiry must report on progress and specify management’s last offer. Within 15 days—at least five days before the injunction expires—the National Labor Relations Board must take a secret ballot among workers to see whether they will accept the offer.

At week’s end the war seemed hotter than ever. The day before the court decision, U.S. Steel Executive Vice President R. Conrad Cooper, top industry negotiator, told the Virginia Manufacturers Association that the union enjoys “vastly” greater power than the companies; that Steelworker President David McDonald is the “only man who can choke off our nation’s steel supply at will.” When the Supreme Court order was announced, McDonald agreed to obey “the law of the land,” but struck a do-or-die pose. Cried he: “Steelworkers do not quit. They will not bow down to industrial tyranny.”