D-Day in Detroit

The peace negotiations took on the color of desperation. Yet the last-minute dickering continued--for the alternative might well prove to be the biggest, longest and costliest strike, or series of strikes, the U.S. had ever seen.

In their struggle with General Motors, first target among the auto industry's Big Three, the United Automobile Workers played a last diplomatic trump card-- an offer to arbitrate. But the union demanded that the arbiters have access to General Motors' books--a provision that was anathema to the company.

If war came, the battle lines were drawn up. The opposing generals were U.A.W.'s Walter Reuther v. General Motors' Charles E. Wilson, U.A.W.'s Richard Leonard v. Henry Ford II, U.A.W.'s Norman Matthews v. Chrysler's K. T. Keller. An air of tension hung over Detroit as citizens waited for the firing of the first shot that would be heard in every U.S. home.

Each side knew that it might be catching a tartar. The Big Three are among the biggest and richest employers of U.S. labor. The Auto Workers, with 609,000 dues-paying members and a $4,000,000 strike fund, are one of the biggest and scrappiest of all U.S. unions. In the fight between two such giants, nobody could be sure which--if either--would win.

Unkindest Cut. One of the last chances for averting a strike disappeared last week when young Henry Ford, white hope of the union, turned out to be no comfort at all. U.A.W. leaders had counted heavily on a generous offer close to their own demand for a 30% increase. Instead Ford gave them their sharpest come-uppance yet.

"We do not believe that this is the time to settle on general wage increases," said a Ford letter to the union. "The wage rates we will be able to pay will, after reconversion is completed and we have reached volume production, depend entirely on' these two questions: whether we are able to keep other costs down while obtaining better productivity from our employes.....

"[Under the checkoff system] the company has collected for the union in dues, initiation fees and special assessments a total of $7,799,924. . . .

"The result has been that the union has had membership and financial security, but the company has had no compensating security. . . . Peaceful relations have not materialized. The experiment has been an unhappy one. . . . We must insist upon guarantees by the union against work stoppages and losses in productivity. . . .

"We therefore propose that you come to our forthcoming negotiations prepared to give us some better plan for giving the company the same degree of security as we have given the union itself."

Attached to the letter was a list of 31 demands, a new kind of problem for U.A.W. to handle. Most important:

P: No union jurisdiction over inspectors, timekeepers, production and shop clerks.

P: Layoffs on a basis of "knowledge, experience and ability" rather than seniority.

P: Fewer seniority privileges for union committeemen.

P: Punishment by loss of seniority for willful absenteeism.

P: Union financial responsibility for strikes or work stoppages in violation of the contract.

Shocked and shaken by this unheard-of-procedure--management actually demanding guarantees of labor--U.A.W.'s Ford Leader Richard Leonard retorted: "A union-busting, irresponsible and strife-provoking document. . . . There is a simple way to avoid work stoppages. That is to stop provoking them."

Questions & Answers. Why had Henry Ford changed his mind about the union and its wage demands? Trade gossip in Detroit maintained that the Ford Company had suffered from the sharpest of all declines in worker productivity, was therefore in the poorest position of all the Big Three to give a raise, that young Henry had not been fully aware of these facts when he first heard the union's demands.*

There was also a report that the Big Three had met and decided that wages were an individual company problem but that they would present a united front in demanding more control over those workers who feel that a union card exempts them from earning their pay.

Whatever the reason, the union's last chance of dividing and conquering the Big Three without strikes was apparently gone.

* For news of Ford and other auto prices, see BUSINESS.

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