To the Brink in Steel

As Pittsburgh's steel industry talks moved toward this week's strike dead line, it was apparent that the results, for once, would have little immediate effect on the economy. A strike would lay off 450,000 men and idle the nation's most important basic industry--but probably not for long, since President Johnson would almost certainly ask for an in junction under the Taft-Hartley law to keep the mills rolling. Even with a settlement, however, production is sure to tumble sharply as steel customers work off the record 14 million-ton stockpile that they have accumulated as a hedge against a strike.

Both sides were ready .for a strike, if it came. United Steelworker locals dusted off strike signs, prepared rosters of pickets, set aside emergency relief funds; in case there was an unexpectedly long walkout, the parent union could dip into a $20 million surplus. Steelmen halted deliveries of coal, limestone and iron ore as of this week, began clearing their yards of freight cars to avoid paying demurrage charges, sent orders out to start cooling off the giant open-hearth furnaces.

Fringe Trend. What separated the steel negotiators was a matter of roughly 50 an hour for the lifetime of a three-year contract. The United Steelworkers were demanding an increase of 17.9-c- an hour, or 4% more than the hourly $4.40 in wages and fringe benefits currently earned by the average mill hand. The industry, which started out by offering half the amount sought by the U.S.W., last week came up to some 13-c- an hour in what Chief Management Negotiator R. Conrad Cooper, 62, called "a last-ditch effort to avoid a steel strike." At the same time, Cooper, an executive vice president of U.S. Steel, insisted: "This is as far as we go."

"A step backward," snapped U.S.W. President I. W. Abel, 57. Reminding steelmen that the union had meekly accepted "modest" settlements in 1962 and 1963, and that generous contracts were being signed in other industries "almost daily," Abel refused to scale down his demands. One of Abel's major goals was to win retirement on full pension after 30 years of work, reflecting a nationwide trend among unions to emphasize such fringe benefits as earlier retirement and longer vacations--mostly designed to soften the blow of automation by spreading the work thinner. That was the idea behind the U.S.W.'s pioneering 13-week vacation plan adopted in 1963. In the current shipping strike, the Masters, Mates and Pilots Union is interested almost exclusively in guaranteed vacations and pensions. Black Eyes for All. Abel was not anxious to strike. His men have barely recouped income losses suffered during the record 116-day walkout in 1959, and the union is still racked by internal dissension as a result of longtime President David McDonald's disputed election defeat by Abel last February. Nonetheless, Abel was anxious to make his first contract a fat one.

Strike threats and angry words are all part of the traditional game of brinksmanship in steel talks, but the Administration, which had been buoyantly confident that a strike would never come off, was beginning to take them seriously. Lyndon Johnson put the squeeze on the negotiators, reminded them that both sides would suffer black eyes if a strike were called while "our boys are still fighting in South Viet Nam." He telephoned Abel and Cooper separately, told each that he wanted "a decent and responsible settlement." Said Abel: "We too have a responsibility--to our membership." At week's end, the President named Oregon's Senator Wayne Morse and Under Secretary of Commerce LeRoy Collins as special mediators to seek a last-minute settlement.

High Price for Both. Industry observers were betting that Abel would be unable to match the 4.1% increase he negotiated last May for the U.S.W.'s aluminum workers, figured that the final settlement would probably give the steelworkers an increase of roughly 15-c- an hour, or 3.4%, slightly higher than the President's 3.2% guideline for noninflationary wage and price increases. Almost certainly, it would also mean a round of rises in the price of steel.

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