Profits, Polemics & Politics

After a long and lazy summer of labor-management discussions, the Big Three auto companies offered the United Auto Workers a proposal only two weeks before the Aug. 31 expiration of the contract. It was a wage and benefit package that amounted to 41-c- over the next three years, accepted the union's premise that better retirement and pension benefits are imperative this year, but ignored the U.A.W.'s persistent demands for longer coffee breaks.

Christ & Churchill. As it is expected to in the script, the union turned down the offer, but it did so with such heat and haste as to banish any hope of a smooth settlement. Walter Reuther rather proudly paraphrased Winston Churchill to declare that "never have so few with so much offered so little to so many." Later Reuther managed to bring Christ to the bargaining table by asserting that He "would have given the most militant trade-union argument you ever heard." At week's end Reuther decided to increase pressure on the auto companies by delaying until this week the selection of a "target company"--the one that the U.A.W. will strike first if no settlement is reached.

There could well be a strike. Though the Big Three's offer might have been considered generous in other years, 1964 is the year of the greatest auto profits and production in history--and the U.A.W. fully intends to take advantage of that fact. It argues that productivity in the auto industry is increasing by 4.9% annually and that its workers deserve nothing less than a 4.9% wage hike. The industry's offer amounts to about 3.5%, higher than the 3.2% guideline laid down by the Administration to stave off inflationary wage raises. Walter Reuther does not care much for guidelines, snapped that "no economics professor is going to write our contract." The final settlement will be somewhere between 3.5% and 4.9%, and thus assuredly well above the Government standard.

Itching for the Hustings. Deadlines are as important as guidelines as a factor in whether there will be a strike. Even if both sides agree to a contract extension beyond Aug. 31--as it now seems almost certain they will have to--chances are good that U.A.W. locals with their own grievances (26,700 in all) may start wildcat strikes that could shut down one or more automakers. Any strikes would, however, probably be short-lived. The auto companies are anxious to launch their 1965 models, Walter Reuther is itching to get on the hustings against Barry Goldwater, and the U.A.W. (together with some auto-industry bosses) would like to avoid embarrassing Lyndon Johnson, who kicks off his campaign with a Sept. 7 Labor Day speech in Detroit.

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