Strike, Strike, Strike

Who can blame an employer for resisting high and rising demands for wage increases? His business is soft, his costs are climbing crazily--and he has to draw the line somewhere.

But who can blame the American worker for demanding more? In the private, nonfarm sector, his real hourly compensation has been declining for more than 15 months--and he has to get off the treadmill some time.

The bitter result of this dilemma is that record numbers of U.S. workers are going on strike as contracts expire in a wide range of industries. Last week 506 stoppages involving 218,000 workers further slowed the economy. Iron miners were out in Michigan and Minnesota. Construction workers were out in California, Washington, Nebraska, Illinois and Tennessee. Other strikes dragged on at Dow Chemical and National Airlines and, of course, among National Football League players.

More strikes threaten. Aerospace industry bargaining has just got under way. Later this year there will be contract talks covering 500,000 railroad workers. In November, just in time for winter, 80,000 mine workers will be seeking a new contract. They may try to hold down output so that supplies could fall perilously low and managements feel pressure to settle generously.

Wrong Number. Last weekend negotiators struggled to avert a nationwide walkout by 710,000 Bell Telephone System employees. The Bell workers' motives were not unlike those of employees in other industries riddled with or threatened by strikes. American Telephone & Telegraph had offered wage increases averaging 9.4% this year and totaling 15% over the next three years.

That was not enough for the 500,000 Bell workers represented by the Communications Workers of America (whose pro-strike vote ran 7 to 1) or for the 210,000 other telephone workers in two other unions. C.W.A. President Glenn E. Watts argued, and the members concurred, that the first-year offer alone should be 14%--that is, 11% to keep up with inflation and 3% more as a reward for Bell's productivity gains. If there is a nationwide telephone strike, it would have an immediate, though slight impact on users who would not be able to get telephones installed or repaired.

Throughout the economy, strike pressures have grown intense as more and more teachers, policemen and other municipal workers joined members of unions in basic industries in a heavy number of work stoppages. During this year's first half, there were 3,240 ongoing strikes involving almost 1.6 million workers--650,000 above the same period in 1973. The militancy has produced some results. Compensation per man-hour--which includes wages, fringes and the employer's share of Social Security taxes--rose at an annual rate of 13.8% in this year's second quarter; but price increases gutted the gain.

Administration inflation fighters worry most that while wages are rising, productivity in the private nonfarm sector of the economy is declining. It went down at an annual rate of more than 5% in the first quarter and almost 3% in the second quarter. As a result, the so-called unit labor costs--that is, the cost of labor to produce a given quantity of goods--has jumped at an annual rate of 14% this year. This, of course, will further fuel inflation, which in turn will fire the workers' frustrations.

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