Preliminary Bout

Like a battalion deploying for battle, a crowd of nearly 1,000 surged through Manhattan's Roosevelt Hotel last week as formal bargaining opened between the steel industry and the United Steelworkers Union. So numerous were the advisers, statisticians, supernumeraries and just plain hangers-on that the cost to management and labor was estimated at nearly $25,000 a day. President Eisenhower tried to set the tone for negotiations by warning again that both sides must show "good sense and some wisdom" to avoid an inflationary wage hike (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS). But both sides had hardly started negotiating when they fell to battling.

The battle started with a statement by R. Conrad Cooper, chief negotiator for the steel industry, that the industry is considering a mutual-aid pact or even an industrywide shutdown should the union decide to strike one or two firms instead of striking the whole industry at once as in the past. Such a pact would be similar to the profit-sharing pact signed by struck airlines last fall (TIME, Nov. 10), except that the airlines later got tentative approval from the Civil Aeronautics Board, which can exempt airlines from antitrust procedures.

From the union came a roar: "Conspiracy to violate the antitrust laws." Union officials sent letters to Washington, asking the Justice Department to investigate the pact, the National Labor Relations Board to determine whether steel firms could act together on a shutout, since they do not bargain as a unit (U.S. Steel acts as the front man for the industry). But legal experts saw no clear reason why the steel industry could not legally act together on a shutout to protect itself, and the NLRB turned down the union's request because it had made no formal charges.

Alarmed by the uproar, Cooper backtracked, allowed that the industry never expected to use such a plan. Said he: "We have never locked out the Steelworkers, nor have we had to consider the problem. It has always been the union that has exercised the full force of its nationwide power to bring the entire industry to a halt in order to enforce uniform demands."

Furthermore, Cooper had an answer for Steelworkers Union President David Mc Donald's claim that a wage hike carved out of profits or dividends would add new purchasing power to the economy. The stockholders, said Cooper, need the money worse than the workers. He cited a 1953 survey which showed that 53% of U.S. Steel individual stockholders had an average annual income from all sources that was actually less than the average annual income of the Steelworkers.

At week's end the advisers and supernumeraries departed, and a four-man team from both management and labor got ready to sit down this week to begin the serious bargaining that will result in a new contract--or a strike.

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