Next, a Steel Strike?

"Give us the right to cut their guts!" shouted an angry delegate into a microphone at the United Steelworkers' biennial convention in Atlantic City last week. "Give us back our dignity. Give us the right to strike again!" That outburst, thunderously applauded by 3,500 union men, pointed up the increasingly rebellious mood among the nation's 1,200,000 Steelworkers--and the rising odds on a strike in the mills when contracts expire next Aug. 1.

The hottest issue involves the "no-strike clause" that has been a part of every U.S.W. contract since 1936, and is a common feature of most other labor agreements. It forbids any wildcat strike during the life of a contract, providing instead for binding arbitration to settle local grievances. The clause is fundamental to the U.S.'s tenuous labor peace--in contrast with Britain, where workers can walk out in mid-contract. If the no-strike clause is abolished, said a U.S.W. official, "it will be just like the old days again: work on Monday and Tuesday and strike on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday."

Mutinous Mood. Last week, however, no fewer than 1,000 resolutions from union locals demanded an end to the no-strike clause and the slow arbitration process. Union President I.W. Abel managed to prevent the issue from coming to a vote, but he will be under continued severe pressure from the membership to abolish the clause. Abel's reasoned brand of trade unionism is being challenged by militant union members, who are angry about inflation, unemployment, student protest and the direction of society in general. As evidence of the rank and file's mutinous mood, several of the union's largest locals voted their veteran president out of office in elections last June.

As the convention delegates cheered last week, Abel set an aggressive tone on other matters. "We will want a wage increase, and not just another wage increase, but a very, very substantial one," he said. "We want a shorter work week. We want still better pensions." Besides all that, Abel gave his "solemn pledge" that a cost-of-living escalator, which the U.S.W. gave up in 1959, will be restored. He will also propose that the entire steel industry shut down for two weeks' vacation in the summer. That would be a costly proposition to the mill managers, who would have to bank their furnaces during that time.

Catch Up Is Not Enough. Steelworkers used to set the pace for labor. Says Morris Burmmit, a union local president at the Jones & Laughlin mill in Aliquippa, Pa.: "Now we don't want just to catch up. We want to set the pace again." The average steelworker earns $4.19 an hour in base pay, or $170.53 weekly. If he earned that year round, as few do, his annual earnings would be $8,860--or $739 less than the auto worker's average income. The auto workers are now in the fourth week of their own strike, and any settlement they make will widen that gap. Meanwhile, the steel companies' profits are melting because of the auto strike, and the companies will be even less willing than usual to give in to their workers' hard demands.

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