All Quiet on the Auto Front

On the fifth floor of Detroit's General Motors Building, in the center of a room ornately decorated in ivory and burnt orange, sits a 52-ft.-long table of highly polished walnut. Before each of the table's 42 seats is a built-in microphone activated by a hidden button. It is a fitting setting for a spirited, but civilized, debate between powerful opponents who have come to know each other well. Such a square-off is exactly what is likely to begin this week when Leonard Woodcock, president of the United Auto Workers, reaches across the table to shake hands with George Morris, GM vice president for industrial relations, and open new contract negotiations between the union and the automakers.

The auto negotiations are the main event in this year's crowded calendar of bargaining bouts. Nearly 700,000 of the 4.5 million workers involved in bargaining this year labor under pacts with GM, Ford, Chrysler and American Motors that expire Sept. 14. Every auto negotiation carries the threat of a strike that could disrupt the economy, but veteran bargainers on both sides rate the chances of settling without a strike this year as the best in memory. Main reason: the industry is booming, its workers are prospering and neither side sees much to justify a knockdown fight.

Last Midnight. No negotiator, of course, would dream of admitting that publicly. The union will, as always, choose a target company with which to conclude a pattern-setting agreement (the betting in Detroit is that it will be Ford) and doubtless continue talks down to the last midnight. Meanwhile, both sides are indulging in the usual rhetoric. GM Chairman Thomas Aquinas Murphy has warned that labor contracts that raise costs without improving productivity are "fateful mortgages upon our economic future," and Woodcock has spoken portentously of "the final countdown" to bargaining. Yet even the sloganeering has lacked fire. For example, a U.A.W. convention early this year displayed a banner demanding REASONABLE WAGE INCREASES--hardly the battle cry of hot-eyed militants.

In truth, both sides have good reason to be satisfied with the way things are going. The auto companies' first-quarter profits amply demonstrated Detroit's rise from the recessionary dumps: GM earned $800 million, Ford $343 million, Chrysler $72 million (American Motors, however, suffered a $4 million loss in the most recent quarter). Only 30,000 workers at the four companies are still on layoff, one-tenth the number that were idle in February 1975. The contracts signed in 1973 raised the average assembly-line worker's wages 570 an hour and contained an unlimited cost of living adjustment (COLA) that has added another $1.09. As a result, those workers now make about $6.57 an hour, a figure that other unions are scrambling unsuccessfully to match.

Consequently, U.A.W. leaders have talked surprisingly little about wages. Instead, they have made job security their No. 1 demand, responding to membership wishes. As one rank and filer succinctly puts it: "I got a wife and four kids. If they make sure I keep working, I'll be happy with any contract."

For years, the union has favored reducing the 40-hour work week in auto plants as a means of expanding the work force. A top Ford official protests that, counting vacations and holidays, workers with ten to twelve years' seniority average a 35-hour week around the year now. The union has often talked about a four-day week, but officials confide that they will not put that demand on the table, because they know the companies would take a strike rather than grant it.

Possible Compromise. Another issue is supplemental unemployment benefits (SUB), which combined with regular unemployment compensation provide laid-off workers with as much as 95% of their customary take-home pay. The SUB funds, which are stocked by management contributions, ran out at GM and Chrysler during the recession. Some senior workers who were laid off later got nothing because payments to younger employees who were idled earlier had depleted the kitty. The union will likely ask for higher company contributions to the funds; a possible compromise would be separate funds for junior and senior union members.

The issues are thorny but solvable. If they are in fact resolved without a strike, the settlement would put the capstone on a bargaining year that lately has been turning out more peaceful, and no more Inflationary, than might have been expected. It started badly: the Teamsters in April settled a three-day strike with a contract that might raise wages and benefits a high 33% over the next three years. Some 60,000 rubber workers hit the bricks in late April and are still out; an eventual settlement is bound to be costly.

On the other hand, electrical workers late last month settled quietly with General Electric on a Teamster-like pact--which is regarded by Ford Administration economists as being barely within the limits of inflationary tolerance. One of four unions bargaining with Westinghouse struck last week, but chances are strong that the Westinghouse workers will soon settle for a pact close to GE's. And economists note with relief that dozens of contracts reached so far in the construction industry average first year wage-and-benefit boosts of only 6% to 6.5%.

A moderate and strike-free auto settlement would vastly strengthen that healthy trend. It also would bring to a triumphant end the union career (Woodcock, who, having turned 65, will have to retire next year, and strengthen his chances of landing a Government job --just possibly, Secretary of Labor in a Carter Administration.

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