Unfinished Business

"America will not--indeed, it cannot --tolerate for long the crippling of the entire economy as the result of labor-management disputes in any one basic industry," said the President midway in the speech delivered from the White House just before he took off for Europe and Asia. "The choice," said he, "is up to free American employers and American employees. Voluntarily, in the spirit of free collective bargaining, they will act responsibly; or else, in due course, their countrymen will see to it that they do act responsibly."

After that stern admonition, Ike affirmed his faith in free collective bargaining by asking labor and management to negotiate "around-the-clock" to avert a new steel crisis when the strike-halting Taft-Hartley injunction expires Jan. 26. "What great news it would be if, during the course of this journey, I should receive word of a settlement of this steel controversy that is fair to the workers, fair to management and, above all, fair to the American people," said he. But the steelworkers and steel companies, deeply entrenched and unshakably stubborn after a 116-day siege, did not hop to please the President.

Instead, United Steelworkers' President Dave McDonald asked that Ike abandon his objection to direct Government intervention, proposed that the President instruct his Taft-Hartley Board of Inquiry to recommend a strike settlement. If the Government would take that unprecedented step (not provided for under Taft-Hartley), McDonald pledged vaguely, the steelworkers would bargain "within the framework of the board's recommendations." U.S. Steel Corp.'s R. Conrad Cooper, chief negotiator for eleven major steel companies, promptly blasted McDonald's suggestion as "just one more attempt" by union leaders "to avoid their own great responsibilities by seeking to have a settlement decreed by Government action." So obstinately opposed were the parties to the dispute that Chief U.S. Mediator Joseph F. Finnegan, without hope of meeting the President's plea for nonstop negotiations, said he would "schedule meetings as they seem most productive."

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