Kohler Holds On

Who has lost most from the nation's longest, bitterest big labor dispute? The United Auto Workers' three-year-old strike against Kohler Co. of Kohler, Wis. has cost the U.A.W. $10 million in strike benefits paid to about 2,800 original strikers, plus $2,000,000 in other expenses, e.g., promoting a nationwide boycott of Kohler plumbing fixtures. But the union contends that Kohler Co. has lost $25 million to $35 million in sales. The family-owned company, run by hard-bitten President Herbert V. Kohler, 65, disputes this claim. Although it publishes no annual report, the company says that the boycott gained it more sales than it lost, contends that it has held production close to normal by hiring nonunion workers. Last week the Milwaukee Journal's Labor Reporter John D. Pomfret turned up evidence that the U.A.W. is losing much more than Kohler.

Checking the state income taxes paid by Kohler in recent years, Pomfret found that "the firm has continued to report a substantial net taxable income in Wisconsin, and certainly has been making money." In the last pre-strike year, 1953, Kohler paid $390,509 to Wisconsin, Pomfret reported. This dropped drastically to $124,144 in 1954, when the strike closed the Kohler plant for two months, but bounded back in 1955 to $455,261. Last year, paralleling the start of the boycott and the slump in housing starts, the figure settled to $336,856. Kohler's competitors said last week that the company is holding fast to its traditional No. 2 spot in the plumbing-ware industry, just behind the American Radiator & Standard Sanitary Corp. Admitted one competitor: "Kohler is in on all the jobs. We do not see it losing from the boycott."

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