STEEL: Definite Steps

The steel industry, following its promise to President Harding that the twelve-hour day will be abolished (TIME, July 16), is settling down to the work of putting that promise into effect. During the past two weeks, the U. S. Steel Corporation, the Bethlehem Steel Corporation and others have had conferences and taken steps in that direction.

The foremost question was the adjustment of wages. Hitherto unskilled labor has been receiving 40¢. an hour at the steel mills—$4.80 for a twelve-hour day. On a three-shift instead of a two-shift system, pay would be $3.20 for eight hours. It is improbable that the steel mills could secure workers at that wage. Hence, it was considered necessary to increase hourly wages at the same time that the working day was cut. After a meeting of the directors of the Iron and Steel Institute, Judge Elbert H. Gary, its President (also Chairman of the U. S. Steel Corporation), announced that the pay of workmen would be increased (no definite date) 25%—to 50¢. an hour and $4.00 a day.

The abolition of the two-shift system will take place only for the workers engaged in “continuous processes” —that is, to those workers who tend furnaces operating 24 hours a day. This number is about 120,000, or 25% of the 480,000 men in the industry. The three-shift system, according to Judge Gary’s calculations, will require 60,000 additional workers and add $45,000,000 a year to the pay roll of the industry, increasing the cost of steel 15%.

There are those who contest these last figures. They declare that by careful adjustment of the number of men on hand at various hours, and because the men are more wide awake and do more work, the personnel need not be increased 50%. They estimate an increase of from 11% to 35% will be ample. If this is true, Judge Gary’s figures are excessive.

The abolition of the two-shift system in the continuous processes does not mean the universal institution of the eight-hour day in the steel industry. There will be many workers who will work ten hours, some twelve hours—but for twelve-hour work “overtime ” will be paid.

The question of where the extra men for the three-shift system will come from is one which the steel heads profess to find difficult. They are anxious to have the immigration law altered to admit more immigrants, which would help to keep down the prices of labor and probably decrease the chances of the industry’s being unionized. President Grace of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation is one of those most insistent on the need for more immigrants.

Judge Gary declared that the elimination of the twelve-hour day would “now begin” and “progress as rapidly as the supply of labor will permit.” It seems likely that a beginning will be made soon, but it is possible that the steel companies will not be an ious to bring about a completion of the change for some time. By this means they could bring pressure to bear on the next Congress for modification of the immigration laws, on the plea that this is necessary in order to bring about an eight-hour day in the steel mills.