Business: These Mulish Men

Despite President Eisenhower’s call for a swift steel peace (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS), management and labor could agree last week only to continue disagreeing. Just before both sides met with federal mediators for the first time since a Taft-Hartley injunction sent the workers back to the plants, the steel industry announced that its earlier offer of 30¢—an-hour package spread over three years was its “last offer for a strike settlement.” This so incensed Steelworkers President David McDonald that he walked into the meeting heatedly waving a copy of the statement. He repeated union arguments that the contract actually provides only a 24¢-an-hour package, puts off for a year a decision on the controversial work rules. Naturally, the meeting got nowhere.

McDonald later proposed that the President’s board of inquiry, which was set up under the Taft-Hartley Act, recommend the terms of a settlement; he promised to settle “within the framework of the board’s recommendations.” The President turned down the suggestion in favor of another try at collective bargaining. In high moral tones that stressed the nation’s welfare, both sides pledged once more to forge ahead for a settlement—then went right back to bickering.

Watch the Boss. Much of the bickering was over a campaign by both sides to win the Steelworkers’ secret vote on industry’s last offer, required by the Taft-Hartley Act some time between Jan. 6 and Jan. 21. Out from the eleven negotiating steel companies went letters and brochures to each employee setting forth the industry’s “final” offer (it can still make another), which was actually made fortnight ago (TIME, Nov. 30). Dave McDonald called it “a propaganda offer aimed at confusing the Steelworkers,” and the union’s official paper, Steel Labor, warned workers against bosses who go “out of their way for a pleasant ‘Good morning, Joe,’ ” and “cheery letters from corporation presidents, no less.”

The vote will probably be no—as it has always been in such cases—but industry was gambling that there would be enough yeses to embarrass McDonald. In any case, union leaders are not bound by the vote; they can call another strike even if workers want to accept the offer. If no settlement is reached, the Taft-Hartley injunction will be dissolved shortly after the vote. The Government will have no way of preventing a new strike, since the President has exhausted the measures he can take under the present law. Federal Mediator Joseph Finnegan called union and management together again at week’s end, called the talks “constructive.”

Too Much Too Soon. In Washington, high Government officials admitted that they are appalled by the mulish stubbornness of both sides, but privately they tended to blame management more. They feel that management is trying to do too much in one contract, that it should settle the wage question now, leave the local work rules until later. Labor Secretary James P. Mitchell rapped labor for holding to “status quo at any price,” and reproached management for “attempts to change by the bang of a single gavel working habits built up over many years.” A renewal of the strike in January, said Mitchell, is “unthinkable.”

As steel output began to level off at 92.3% of capacity, the steel-short auto industry hopefully scheduled an alltime record output of 2,200,000 cars next quarter, 87% higher than this quarter.