Backlog of Decisions

While mills ran near to capacity last week, steel was being poured at its highest level in five years: 2,700,000 tons. Yet the record was clouded by the continued stockpiling of steel by customers who fear a strike in May, when the industry's contract with the United Steelworkers expires.

Users are now stockpiling at the rate of 1,000,000 tons a month, a rate that would give them 9,000,000 tons on hand at the strike deadline. Though that is well below the 12 million tons on hand when the 1959 strike broke out, it is enough to curtail steel demand for several months if the strike is short or never comes off.

The uncertainty has been heightened this year by the United Steelworkers' presidential-election struggle being waged by President David J. McDonald and Challenger I. W. Abel, the union's secretary-treasurer. All contract negotiations have been suspended during the fight and, as the Feb. 9 union election approaches, a bitter campaign is being fought. It is replete with denunciation and sarcasm, lapel buttons and helmet stickers, kleig lights and sound trucks at mill gates and union halls. Abel portrays McDonald as a has-been who prefers nightclubs and Palm Springs to the open hearth and McKeesport, calls for the rejection of "tuxedo unionism," and charges that the Steelworkers have suffered from McDonald's "happy-go-lucky, old-buddy, old-pal negotiations" with industry. McDonald, warming to the fight and seeming to pick up strength as he does, belittles Abel's qualifications, calls him "a pretty good bookkeeper," and says that before Abel can run a union, "he'll have to go somewhere to learn to negotiate."

To illustrate that he already knows how, McDonald last week opened contract talks with the major can companies with demands for substantial wage increases and greater job security. These negotiations, said McDonald, may set the pattern for the steel talks. But the fact remains that only after the 976,000 Steelworkers decide who will lead them --and where--can the U.S. begin to know with any certainty what course the 1965 economy will follow.

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