Business: Steel Standstill

Almost everybody in Pittsburgh and other steel-producing areas now expects a steel strike on June 30; last week negotiators were farther apart than when they started six weeks ago. The United Steelworkers of America and the industry’s four-man team, representing twelve companies, devoted more time to bombarding each other with press releases than to negotiating. At week’s end the talks degenerated into a pointless skirmish over routine procedures of negotiation, and the union’s 171-member wage policy committee authorized its officers to call a strike.

The closest the talks came to a bargaining base was on an eight-point management contract revision proposal to “improve efficiency and eliminate waste,” thus “generate new economic progress.” The industry’s implied offer of a noninflationary wage boost in return for broader management rights was promptly labeled “industrial blackmail” by Steelworkers’ President David J. McDonald. Said he: “You have nothing but contempt for your employees.”

In what the twelve companies labeled an attempt to split off one of them and make a separate deal (as the union did with Bethlehem Steel Co. in 1949), McDonald asked for negotiations on an individual company basis. But the industry’s team, headed by U.S. Steel’s Executive Vice President Conrad Cooper, said it will not meet separately with the union’s twelve local bargaining groups because it feels the only way to a contract is through top-level negotiations between the union and management four-man committees. If one thing emerged clearly last week it was that union-and-management jockeying for public support through advertising and publicity had replaced hard bargaining. In Washington, Labor Secretary James Mitchell called for an end to the negotiators’ recriminations, and asked for “intensive bargaining” to avoid a costly, crippling strike. He pointed out what the steel industry and Dave McDonald well know: “You can never settle any controversy in the newspapers.”