Autos: Toward a Strike

• Share

In 44 days of bargaining, negotiators have managed to settle just one item in Walter Reuther's 46-page list of United Auto Worker demands. They agreed to add "sex and age" to "color" in a contract antidiscrimination clause. Beyond that, the only consensus in Detroit seems to be that the industry is in for a long, costly strike. The union, snapped U.A.W. Vice President Leonard Woodcock last week, would not hesitate to pick a strike target "if we fail to get a satisfactory offer—and that's a foregone conclusion."

Neither side wanted to show its hand until the last minute. Reuther remained mum about what "substantial wage increases" might mean, offered no clue as to the relative priorities of his 28 other major demands. The automakers decided not to put their proposals on the table until this week, only ten days or so before contracts expire on Sept. 6. The idea was to give the union less time for the usual grandstanding rejections of early offers—but the U.A.W. managed a bit of histrionics anyway. Woodcock saw it all as an industry plot that was "geared to making a strike inevitable."

The Worst Time. A shutdown could hardly hit the industry at a worse time. Because assembly lines stopped relatively early for model changeovers this year, inventories of 1967 models are down to a scant 41-day supply—which means that some dealers are already short of cars. Production of 1968 models, for which the automakers have high sales hopes, went into full swing only last week. In St. Louis to unveil the new

Mercury Montego that replaces the smaller, slow-selling Comets,* Ford Group Vice President Lee lacocca predicted a 9,000,000-car year, barring a strike, which would blow that prospect "sky-high."

Even so, the manufacturers may prefer a strike to a contract that could cast a three-year pall over profits. By General Motors Negotiator Louis G. Seaton's reckoning, the U.A.W.'s demands would add $4 an hour to the average $4.68 that G.M.'s workers now get in wages and benefits. More realistically, the union's goal is probably a full 6% increase—at a time when the automakers are just beginning to feel the cost of mandatory safety modifications and higher prices in steel, copper and rubber. Ford last week announced that, even without a strike and a big wage increase, the company's profits will be down about 40% this year from 1966's $621 million.