LABOR: Steel's Table Talk

Steelworkers' Chief David J. McDonald reached across a table in Pittsburgh's Hotel William Penn one day last week and handed a sheaf of papers to Clifford Hood, president of U.S. Steel. Thus the steelmakers opened negotiations for a new contract. There was nothing new or unexpected in the union's 22 contract demands—a guaranteed annual wage, "substantial" wage increases, premium pay for weekend work—and the first session brought out no fireworks. Nevertheless the session made history. Sitting around the table were representatives not only from giant U.S. Steel but from Bethlehem and Republic as well—the Big Three which employ 60% of all steel labor and make 55% of all steel. It was the first time that the steel companies had voluntarily sat down to industry-wide bargaining. Previously they had always talked separately, with U.S. Steel generally setting the pattern which was then followed by the others.

Company spokesmen were careful to deny that a precedent for industry-wide bargaining had been set. Said U.S. Steel's Chief Spokesman John Stephens: "McDonald has not sold the idea of a joint conference to us." But Dave McDonald was jubilant. Actually, for all their apprehensions about joint bargaining, the idea had some attractions for the steelmakers; e.g., in case of deadlock they could present a united employers' front, make it more difficult for the union to negotiate separate agreements and pick them off one by one. By seeming to bow to McDonald's strategy, the steelmen were also boosting the union chief's stock with his men. The industry likes McDonald, a reasonable, conservative unionist, raised by the late Phil Murray from stenographer to become his successor as head of the 1,250,000-man union.

This week the talks went on in a setting deliberately chosen by both sides to speed an early settlement and beat the June 30 strike deadline. The negotiators are moving to Manhattan, away from Pittsburgh and intense local pressures. In place of massive negotiating committees, each side has slimmed itself to a four-man team, with Stephens heading the industry group (U.S. Steel, Bethlehem, Republic, Jones & Laughlin, Inland, and Youngstown Sheet & Tube) and McDonald heading the union bargainers.