Year of the Coffee Break

In three conference rooms around Detroit, preparations are being made for a decisive confrontation. At the corporate headquarters of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, janitors are washing blackboards, flicking pieces of lint from carpets and drapes, buffing and rebuffing elongated tables. Across these tables next week, scores of bargainers from the auto industry's Big Three will square off against negotiators from the United Auto Workers in Round 1 of the 1964 labor negotiations.

At issue are the wages and working conditions not only of the automobile industry's 565,000 blue-collar employees but of millions of other industrial workers, whose new contracts will be strongly influenced by Detroit's pattern. Should the negotiators fail to close a deal by the deadline on Aug. 31--when the '65 models will be rolling out--a strike could brake the industry's three-year boom and dent the whole economy. Noting that the auto companies are enjoying "fantastic" profits, the union figures this is a good year to step up to the higher-priced field itself. President Walter Reuther insists that "only a fool or an economic moron could suggest that we are not entitled to greater equity."

What Walter Wants. The Johnson Administration has asked labor leaders to limit their wage-and-benefit demands to 3.2%, but Reuther says he will fight for 4.9% or more because productivity is rising faster in autos than in some other industries. Detroit anticipates that Reuther will seek a wage raise on top of the annual boost of 2.5% or 6-c- an hour--whichever is higher--that the auto companies already award for higher productivity. A still more important issue will be his demand for earlier retirement and fatter pensions. The rank and file have been pressing their leaders for a plan to cut mandatory retirement age from 68 to 65, to reduce the voluntary retirement age from 60 to something less and to raise pensions to a minimum of $400 a month, including social security benefits.

The most emotional issue involves not money but working conditions. Specifically, the unionists want more free time to escape from the noise, perhaps go to the toilet or relax over a cup of coffee. In most plants, auto workers can leave the production line only for their 30-minute unpaid lunch break and two twelve-minute paid periods during the eight-hour shift. Now the union wants to shut down the assembly lines for at least 15 minutes during each shift--making a total of 39 minutes' released time. Says U.A.W. Vice President Leonard Woodcock, who will conduct most of the negotiations with G.M.: "You have coffee breaks on assembly lines all over the world. Only the U.S. has no coffee breaks on the assembly line."

Drawing the Line. The Big Three negotiators seem disposed to grant some wage increase and some form of earlier retirement. But they draw a firm line against the U.A.W.'s proposed changes in working conditions, particularly those extra minutes of what they call "time-paid-not-worked" that would add millions of dollars to labor costs. In the last negotiations three years ago, both sides reached agreement on economic issues (the U.A.W. got a package amounting to 17-c- an hour), but disputes over working conditions provoked strikes by maverick locals that paralyzed both Ford and G.M. for about two weeks. "The chances of trouble this year are greater than they have been at any time since 1946," says one top negotiator. "Somebody's got to come down off the mountain."

The U.A.W. may well concentrate its attack on General Motors and its tenacious negotiator Louis Seaton, because G.M. has the highest profit margin. Both sides will huff and puff down to the end, orating for their grandstands at the start, then making a hurry-up effort to talk to each other. One auto company vice president observes that "it always comes down to the last week, when G.M. makes another, more liberal offer." There could very well be a strike of sorts in September, but it would probably be settled quickly. Reason: 1964 is an election year, the first one since 1948 to run concurrent with auto labor talks. Walter Reuther does not want to embarrass Lyndon Johnson in the heat of his own battle, and neither side relishes the prospect of federal intervention at the bargaining table.

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