Bending Those Guidelines-Again

Advice for the Administration: "Stay the hell away "

When they sit down to bargain with the car and truck manufacturers this summer, the United Auto Workers intend to drive right over President Carter's wage guidelines. This was made clear by the 3,500 delegates who crammed Detroit's Cobo Hall last week for a special convention to sort out contract demands. Douglas Fraser, the U.A.W.'s blunt president, vowed to ignore the guides when negotiations begin on the new contract (the current one expires Sept. 14). Thundered Fraser: "The Teamsters bent the hell out of the guidelines. I don't believe the 7% is a reality any more." The whole anti-inflation program, he added, is "for all intents and purposes dead."

It does not look very lively, after the Teamsters won wage-and-benefit increases that stand to amount to 31%% over three years. Naturally, the 1.5 million member U.A.W. would like to match the Teamsters' sweet deal. Fraser contends that the President's guidelines restrain wages while allowing prices and profits to rise. Angered by the Government's intervention in the Teamsters' negotiations, he warned against interference by Carter's arbiters during the U.A.W. talks. Said Fraser: "My advice is that they should stay the hell away and let us settle with the auto companies by ourselves. They will not be welcome. We'll lock the goddamn door."

Behind the door, talks may focus less on higher wages than on another goal. Declared Fraser: "Cost of living protection for retirees will be the No. 1 priority demand for the U.A.W. in 1979."

Outside Cobo Hall, demonstrators pressed for a cost of living adjustment (COLA) for 205,400 retired auto workers and 29,100 surviving spouses. The current agreement does not have a COLA clause but pays pensioners about the same $700 a month that they were getting six years ago. Some union delegates are now talking about a raise to $1,100, plus a COLA.

Union officers flinch at the mere mention of a strike. Woody Ferguson, president of Detroit Local 174, which has 17,000 members, notes that the high cost of living would almost prevent a long walkout. Said he: "We can no longer strike over 50 for weeks on end." But if there is a strike, which company would be the target? Union representatives believe that Chrysler is too weak financially to weather a major stoppage. Ford was the target of the last strike, which lasted 28 days in 1976. So it might be General Motors' turn to take the heat.

Still more of the bounce seemed to be taken out of Carter's guidelines program in Akron last week. Negotiators for the 55,000-member United Rubber Workers, a strike-prone union whose contract expired last week, claimed that they had come to a tentative agreement with three of the nation's four major tiremakers. The deal, according to the union, would include raising the current average wage of $8 an hour by $1.14 over three years, increasing the COLA clause and pensions, giving a Christmas bonus to retirees and providing for retirement after 25 years on the job. All in all, said U.R.W. President Peter Bommarito, the package would "substantially exceed the wage and price guidelines."

Carter asked Inflation Adviser Alfred Kahn, Chief Economist Charles Schultze and Labor Secretary Ray Marshall to meet with both sides and try to reduce the terms. Schultze publicly hinted that the Government would act against any company that signed a guidelines-busting agreement, perhaps by withdrawing federal procurement contracts. Representatives from Goodyear, Firestone, BF Goodrich and Uniroyal met with Carter's advisers, but Bommarito declined, although he said he would get together with Federal Mediator Wayne Horvitz and officials of Uniroyal this week. In any case, Bommarito warned, if the tiremakers try to settle for less than the union had announced, he was prepared to call a strike. Likely targets: Goodyear or Uniroyal.

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