Labor: A Satisfactory Steel Settlement

“Some people said it couldn’t be done,” said United Steelworkers President David McDonald, “but we’ve done it.” “A significant development in the history of collective bargaining,” agreed R. Conrad Cooper, a U.S. Steel vice president and the industry’s chief negotiator. The White House passed on word that President Kennedy was “gratified.”

The news was not unexpected, but that did not dampen its revolutionary impact. After 51 months of meetings, labor and management agreed on a 13-week paid sabbatical vacation once every five years (on a rotating basis) for all hourly workers in the top half of the seniority ranks at each steel company. In all of U.S. industry, only the canmakers have even a roughly similar agreement, and Dave McDonald has been trying to get one from the steelmakers for seven years.

McDonald also won higher sickness, accident and health insurance benefits —but no wage hike. In return, the union promised management a contract guaranteeing no new demands before Jan. 1, 1965, and agreed to hold off a strike for 120 days after a contract reopening instead of the present 90 days. At a cost of roughly 8½¢ an hour on a yearly basis, the new contract granted the smallest increases in the industry since World War II and was well within the limits of a noninflationary settlement asked of all unions by President Kennedy.

The sabbaticals will give steelmakers a lot of bookkeeping problems, but the union regards the three-month paid holiday as one answer to automation. McDonald figures that senior employees going on long vacations will create up to 25,000 new jobs for people who will have to fill in for them. Even at that, the union will not wholly offset job losses in the steel industry. Steel is automating so fast that in March, with 25,000 fewer workers, it turned out nearly a million more tons of steel than it did last year.