The Whole Stack

"I don't know if anybody can do anything," declared the President. "But I'm willing to try."

In his determination to avert a nationwide steel strike last week, Lyndon Johnson tried just about everything. He summoned both sides from Pittsburgh, installed them in Room 2751 of the Executive Office Building across the street from the White House, and posted guards outside the drab chamber to keep newsmen and lobbyists away. At his prompting, industry and union bargainers labored as long as 1 1/21 hours a day. As the strike deadline loomed, Johnson cut the lunchtime lag by sending in steaks and ice cream "to keep them hard at it." Toward week's end he talked direly of transporting both teams bodily to the LBJ Ranch where, he is fond of observing, the September sun can be a powerful persuader.

Planted in Concrete. Johnson's chief object was to prevent a strike, but that was by no means his only aim. Worried over new pressures on the economy (see following story), he wanted a settlement that was not only "fair and just" but also "noninflationary." According to the guidelines laid down by his Council of Economic Advisers, that meant a maximum 3.2% total increase in wages and fringe benefits for the steelworkers, and the President made it clear that he thought this would be fair shakes for both labor and management.

It was not until the talks became hopelessly deadlocked in Pittsburgh that the President decided to intervene. When the negotiators were put to work in Room 2751, he urged them not to "plant your feet in concrete" but to "put the national interest first." Setting the stage for a Taft-Hartley injunction in case all else failed, he read economic reports warning of the "tragic consequences" of a strike, quoted one document from a Defense Department agency claiming that it "could not afford the loss of a single day's production."

When the negotiators reached another impasse, Lyndon got them to postpone their deadline for eight days, went on nationwide television to announce the reprieve only 27 hours before some 450,000 steelworkers were due to strike.

"A Few Pious Thoughts." All week long L.B.J. kept his blowtorch trained on the negotiators. He had Labor Secretary Willard Wirtz looking over United Steelworkers' President I. W. Abel's shoulder and Commerce Secretary John Connor hovering near Top Management Negotiator R. Conrad Cooper. When that tactic flagged, he sent Wirtz over to hound management and Connor to rile labor. After a breakfast meeting with congressional leaders, he sent them trotting out of the White House clutching conveniently typed statements calling for a settlement. Almost minute by minute he received progress reports from his aides.

For a while even Lyndon's intense heat treatment failed to melt the dead lock. The industry claimed that it could not possibly boost its offer of a 40.6-c- hourly wage increase for a 35-month contract without raising prices, stirring Johnson's ire and losing sales to foreign steelmakers and competitive materials such as aluminum, plastics and cement. The steelworkers' Abel, who got elected earlier this year on a promise of plumper contracts, was equally adamant in refusing to scale down his demand for 49.8-c-.

Finally, after days of such pressure, both sides began to wilt. At the first sign of a break, the President strode in to confront the negotiators, spent a full 43 minutes bombarding them with hard statistics and "a few pious thoughts," as he called them. He was in rare form. He flattered both sides, declaring that "Abel is an able fellow and a hard trader, but he has met his match in this fellow Cooper." He assured the industry that, with profits running at an alltime high, it could well afford a reasonable wage boost.

He reminded the steelworkers that their hourly wages ($4.40, including benefits) were already one-third higher than the average for industrial workers; they hardly needed a massive, inflationary raise. Then, in stern-fatherly fashion, he urged both sides to weigh the grave damage a strike could wreak on the U.S. economy, on the war in Viet Nam. To underline his point, he noted that the record 116-day steel strike in 1959 had plunged the nation straight into a nine-month recession.

TV Credits. Still, with the long Labor Day weekend ahead and L.BJ.'s agents all around, the conferees showed no new signs of agreement. The President was not about to give up. "Mr. Rayburn always used to say that there comes a time for every leader when he must shove in his whole stack," mused Lyndon. "Well, I've shoved my whole stack in."

The last chips were the winning ones. As a final stroke, Johnson sent his top economic advisers to the bargaining table with the Administration's own specific "suggestions" for a three-year contract. That was all the negotiators needed. Both sides quickly accepted the terms, which call for an increase of 3.2% for the steelworkers, the maximum wage boost that the Administration considers "noninflationary."

The President immediately pre-empted prime TV time to distribute credit. "All America is grateful to these men you see beside me," said he--though Abel and Cooper looked far too weary to absorb anything as intangible as gratitude. Added Johnson: "The welfare of the American people--the needs of freedom in Viet Nam and in every continent--took precedence over any other consideration or interest or desire." The long, long stalemate, he suggested charitably, had not been "so the union would win, or the companies would win--but that the nation would win. And the American nation has won." And so, after winning the biggest victory of all, Lyndon Johnson at last got off to the ranch.

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