Slow Siege

"Collective bargaining" was the textbook term for what had been going on during the nine weeks of the Chrysler strike in Detroit. But the 10,574 Chrysler dealers with nothing to sell, the 89,000 employees of the 25 Chrysler plants, and the thousands of parts suppliers and their workers who live by Chrysler earnings knew it last week as a long and distressful siege.

"I knew it meant something ominous when I walked out that gate," said Tom Vamplew, a chubby little gear and axle inspector at the Lynch Road plant. "I felt it was gonna be tough--the weather was wrong for a strike. Last one we had in 1948 was a picnic compared to this."

Tom had felt the pressure sooner than most because his six husky youngsters could eat their way through hi $240-a-month pay envelope quicker than a horde of grasshoppers could clean an alfalfa field. During the first month he had been forced to cut out the weekly ration of 28 quarts of milk, and cut down the weekly six dozen eggs. Later, Tom himself began eating breakfast and lunch regularly at Local 961's strike kitchen, then tried to go easy when he sat down with the family to their meatless dinners.

"We'll stay out as long as we have to," said Vamplew, "but everybody is getting to the end of everything and the longer it goes on the harder it'll get. I hate to think any longer."

Like Tom Vamplew, some 10,000 Chrysler workers were on relief; the city of Detroit had already spent $1,000,000 to feed and support them. Better-off strikers cashed bonds and used up savings.

Chrysler had lost production of 347,000 automobiles and trucks during the nine weeks. And still the negotiators bargained in the Federal Conciliator's salmon-pink Sheraton Hotel room. The union's demands: an increase of 10-c- an hour to provide "adequate" monthly pensions and insurance benefits. Two weeks ago management offered a $30 million pension fund to pay $100 a month (including social security) on retirement at 65 or over. It insisted its plan promised more than United Auto Workers' President Walter Reuther had asked for. Reuther spurned the company's offer as "fancy bookkeeping." "Deliberately misrepresented," retorted Chrysler. Then, at the conciliator's suggestion, they adjourned their collective bargaining session, to "cool off."

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