Pay Up, Fight On

With National politics finished, organized Labor and organized Steel last week publicly resumed their titanic battle for control of the nation's half-million steelworkers (TIME, June 15 et seq.).

In Pittsburgh, Philip Murray, pious and progressive captain of the Committee for Industrial Organization's drive to unite U. S. steelworkers in one big industrial union, announced that new recruits to date totaled 82,315, cried that the re-election of Roosevelt was a signal to "go forward."

Steelmasters returned a potent answer. With U. S. Steel in the van as usual, the industry popped with announcements of an average 10% pay raise, worth some $75,000,000 per year. Biggest increase went to common laborers, such as those whose basic pay has been 47-c- per hour, will now be 52 1/2-c-. U. S. Steel's increase was based on the cost of living as of July 15, 1936, anticipated a 10% rise in that cost. If the rise, as measured by the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, should go to 15%, Big Steel's men would automatically receive another 5% raise. If the cost of living should go down, their pay would go down 5%.

Stressed in the steelmasters' announcements was the point that they had arrived at the new pay scales by negotiation with their company unions. In the Homestead, Pa. plant of Carnegie-Illinois, biggest U. S. Steel subsidiary, the company union promptly accepted the raise and a grimy group of pit men lined up for news photographers, singing Happy Days Are Here Again (see cut, p. 26). But most of the Carnegie-Illinois sheet & tinplate mill workers' representatives held out for a 15% raise. At Carnegie-Illinois' Duquesne plant, company union men balked at the cost-of-living scale. They claimed that talk of genuine negotiation was nonsense, said the 10% raise had been arbitrarily thrust at them.

Steelmasters ascribed the raise to returning prosperity, warned that it would be promptly followed by a rise in the price of steel. C. I. O. leaders denounced it as a bribe to persuade workers against joining their union. To the mighty argument of $75,000,000 they replied with scorn. Cried Philip Murray, asserting that the raise had been decided on weeks ago and held up in the hope of crediting it to a Landon victory: "Thoroughly licked in Tuesday's election and thoroughly afraid, the steel industry is making a last belated attempt to keep workers away from our organization by giving this miserable concession."

Roared C. I. O. Chairman John Llewellyn Lewis, generalissimo of the steel campaign: "The steel barons are engaging in some amusing antics. They are shadow-boxing with their self-created company unions in an attempt to mislead the steel workers and the public into believing they are bargaining collectively with their employes. They are fooling nobody by their mental gymnastics, but instead are making fools of themselves."

Accepting the raise as "welcome but inadequate," Leader Lewis objected most strenuously to U. S. Steel's cost-of-living feature as freezing the worker forever at his living standard of July 1936. "If the rent goes up," said he, "the steel man may hope to get additional pay to make up the difference--but he can't rent a better home." Nonetheless, Leader Lewis cheerfully insisted that the raise was due solely to fear of his organizing drive. He declared: "The wage increase and the re-election of President Roosevelt will do more to make workers conscious of their own power than anything that has happened in a long time."

Flushed with the triumph of his great & good friend's return to the White House was John Lewis as he buckled down in Pittsburgh at week's end to map his moves in the other major battle in which he is presently engaged. In Tampa, Fla. next week meets the American Federation of Labor to decide, by ratifying or rejecting the Executive Council's suspension of John Lewis' United Mine Workers and its C. I. 0. allies (TIME, Aug. 17), whether organized Labor shall be fatefully split into two rival factions. Prime movers for peace have been two C. I. O. leaders David Dubinsky of International Ladies' Garment Workers and Max Zaritsky of United Hatters, Cap & Millinery Workers. At their instance, the A. F. of L. Executive Council last month appointed a committee of three to meet with a C. I. O. committee, discuss reconciliation. But Chairman Lewis, who had tied his fortunes securely to those of Franklin Roosevelt, refused to bargain until after election. Last week in Pittsburgh he confidently refused the Dubinsky-Zaritsky demands for a negotiating committee. Best he would offer was to meet personally with A. F. of L.'s President William Green. His peace terms, said strong John Lewis would be: 1) reinstatement of suspended C. L O. unions; 2) A. F. of L. consent to the organization of U. S. mass-production workers in industrial unions. Since the fight was about nothing but the conflict of C. I. O. industrial unions with A. F. of L. craft unions, Leader Lewis thus proposed to A. F. of L. not compromise but complete surrender.

President Green promptly telegraphed his willingness to meet with the C. I. O. chairman, but added that he lacked authority to alter the Executive Council's policy.

Growled Chairman Lewis, rejecting this proposal as futile, "I'm too busy to meet Mr. Green socially."

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