Plunk in the Middle

Labor Secretary Arthur Goldberg and his aides struggled mightily to head off a threatened strike of three major airlines by disgruntled flight engineers. Fortified by innumerable hamburgers and countless cups of coffee, they closeted themselves by day and night in the Labor Department's Washington office, working for a union settlement with Trans World Airlines that would stand as a model for the other two airlines involved. Finally, having spent 55 of the previous 72 hours in negotiations, Goldberg emerged to announce a historic settlement"--and to claim, by inference, a victory for the Administration's policy of plunking itself in the middle of labor-management disputes.

But the triumph soon ran into trouble. Hardly had the TWA contract been signed when the flight engineers at Eastern Air Lines and Pan American lambasted it as "completely unacceptable" and "a complete abdication." At week's end, both groups went on strike. Pan American got a temporary restraining order from a federal judge to halt the strike. But the order did not apply to the Eastern flight engineers, who stayed on strike despite a new plea from President Kennedy.

What was more, there was considerable doubt that the TWA contract would stick. It must be ratified by the TWA chapter of the flight engineers' union, and Ronald Brown, the union president, said of the members: "They don't like it. I don't think they'll buy it."

The Third-Man Theme. The TWA agreement assured the engineers that they would get top priority for assignment as the controversial third man in the cockpit while the fourth man is being eliminated; it would oblige TWA to give pilot training to any flight engineers who seek it, including those temporarily laid off. The agreement promised the engineers' union, fearful that it will be swallowed up by the Air Line Pilots Association, that it "will not suffer an increased risk of loss of its representational rights" by adopting the agreement. But it also aimed at an ultimate merger by setting up a joint Government committee with the unions to "review the possibilities of merger of the representational functions of the two organizations."

If accepted, the agreement would indeed mark a breakthrough in a major labor-management problem: the "third-man theme" that plagues not only airlines but other industries such as the railroads, which are trying to eliminate the firemen riding in diesel cabs. Last week the nation's railroads broke off negotiations with five operating unions--for the second time--over moves to eliminate just such unnecessary jobs.

Without Help. Since labor is jealous of surrendering any jobs, the Government's intervention does not always work--and sometimes results only in a compromise that prolongs an impossible situation. Thus, neither Continental nor United Air Lines has any problem with a third man. Without Government help, they both withstood strikes from the flight engineers without yielding, have since given engineers pilot training and trimmed their flight crews from four to three.

Arthur Goldberg cannot be everywhere at once, so it was left to other federal mediators to help bring a United Auto Workers strike against the Ford Motor Co. to a more successful conclusion. Before it was settled--on undisclosed bases--the 16-day strike against Ford's Walton Hills stamping plant in Cleveland had idled 77,000 workers, forced Ford to close down all 16 of its assembly plants for lack of parts. A major issue in the strike: whether the standard production rate used for auto panels at Walton was too high for workers to meet.

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