Tardy Bargaining May Lead To Steel Strike

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30688, 2 March 1965, Page 16

Tardy Bargaining May Lead To Steel Strike

[From FRANK OLIVER, N.Z.P.A. Special Correspondent]

WASHINGTON, March 1.

The dock strike ended after 33 days of tie-up and an estimated loss to the economy of two billion dollars. Now the threat to the economy is the possibility of a disastrous strike in the steel industry.

A new steel industrycontract should go into force on May 1 but because of quarrels within the union contract talks are behind schedule and the prospect of agreement on a new contract by the due date is remote.

The steelworkers cannot seem to make up their minds clearly about who they want to run their union. An election to choose between the man who has run the store for some years, David McDonald, and his challenger for leadership, I. W. Abel, has been completed and each man has claimed victory.

Newspaper reports of the count have given Mr Abel a win by a small majority. It is expected the courts will be asked to decide unless the official tally, expected in a few days, gives one a clear and definite majority. Discontent with the McDonald administration has been simmering in the union for months. Members do pot like the way he has handled local issues in his system of industry-wide bargaining.

Local issues are exceedingly important, as was seen in the recent trouble in the motor industry. General Motors reached accord with the union but workers refused to return to the assembly lines until a host of pettifogging issues had been settled at dozens of plants. The election campaign between McDonald and Abel has been fought sternly, even bitterly, in the Steel Workers’ Union and almost all union activities have been halted. The steel companies have been waiting while they wanted to be negotiating. The companies have suggested that in the circumstances the present contract should be extended for a period, during which contract talks could be resumed. Mr George Meany feels the same way.

But Mr McDonald does not seem to agree. He is president of the union until June 1 and clearly he wants to do the negotiating. The election results, says one newspaper, are so close it could be weeks and even months “before there is a decision that will stick.” The fear is that if the due date arrives without a new contract the slogan, “No contract, no work,” will result in a shut-down that could last weeks and perhaps endanger the wave of prosperity now sweeping into its fifth year. It will take the shipping industry, the export industry and, as a result, the manu-

facturing industries a little while to recover from the effects of the 33-day dock strike. A steel strike in May may have serious effects, particularly in the motor industry, which is now really leading the economy and hopes to produce between nine and 10 million new vehicles in 1965.

It seems possible that a main steel contract could, with much hard work, be negotiated by May 1. But the local issues would still have to be resolved.

For the last 10 years, under Mr McDonald, the Steel Workers’ Union has sought industry-wide bargaining as a matter of policy. The idea made considerable strides when top union officials began more or less constant negotiations with a group of representatives of the steel companies.

The idea, as it has developed in the last three or four years, has been to keep formal negotiations to a minimum, leaving increasing responsibilities for contracts to the Human Relations Committee, the joint union-industry committee.

In theory local issues have continued to be dealt with on a company-by-company basis But the importance of such talks has decreased and workers have become increasingly restive over the limits placed on their contract talks at local levels. This seems to have generated the discontent with Mr McDonald. In political terms the workers, or at least those who supported Mr Abel, want more democracy in their affairs. The McDonald idea is highlevel negotiation with the steel industry as a whole. In the motor industry the union gets a good contract from one company and then uses it as a lever to get other companies to offer good terms. The steel union fight is between two philosophies of bargaining.