Labor: Comic Connotations

The nation’s marathon airline strike last week reached almost comic proportions, but nobody felt much like laughing. After collective bargaining broke down, President Roy Siemiller of the striking International Association of Machinists agreed to urge his 35,400 members to submit the dispute to binding arbitration. That seemed a sensible enough way to end the strike without having Congress vote the machinists back to work, but it must have been too sensible. Siemiller conferred with his underlings and A.F.L.-C.l.O. Chairman George Meany, then backed down and ruled out voluntary arbitration. Later in the week, said angered Labor Secretary Willard Wirtz, an agreement to settle the strike had apparently been worked out to the satisfaction of both sides—when the union once again changed its mind and withdrew.

That left matters still very much in the lap of Congress. Two weeks ago, the Senate passed a resolution under which Congress would order the machinists to return to their jobs with the five struck airlines for a 30-day period, after which the President could set up a mediation board and keep workers on the job for up to 150 days more. Cautioned by the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s Meany that they should not take action that they “would regret for the rest of their lives,” and placed in the unenviable position of offending organized labor in an election year, balky House Commerce Committee members haggled for days last week before finally approving by a 17-to-13 vote a bill virtually identical with the Senate’s.

As the strike moved into its sixth week, the Johnson Administration and a handful of Congressmen stepped up their behind-the-scenes pressure to get negotiators to agree on a contract. House members fervently hoped that a settlement would be reached before they had to vote on the back-to-work bill, which the House was due to take up this week in what promised to be a stormy debate. If the bill becomes law, will the machinists abide by it? Yes, replied Siemiller, but “they’ll just be a little slow at getting back.”