Business: Toughening Altitude

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The toughening attitude of management in union bargaining, which showed up in the U.A.W.-automakers talks, was demonstrated again last week by General Electric. After seven weeks of bargaining with James Carey's International Union of Electrical Workers, G.E. walked out of the meetings vowing not to return.

The talks were a security-benefits re-opener of the five-year contract (to 1960), and the union wanted to discuss fringe benefits, including higher layoff pay. Instead, G.E. offered a new security-and-savings plan, based on a worker's earnings, to be financed by lowering automatic pay boosts. For every $1 contributed by an employee (up to 6% of his earnings), G.E. offered to contribute 50¢, invest the money in G.E. stock or U.S. savings bonds. G.E. computed that a worker making $5,000 per year would have as much as $5,281 worth of bonds in his savings fund after ten years. The plan got nowhere with high-voltage Jim Carey, who last January called the recession an obvious union-busting plot. He charged that the plan is a scheme to drive up the price of G.E. stock, enriching top executives who "have secured stock free of charge as part of their profit sharing." Said G.E. Vice President Lemuel R. Boulware: "Carey is unable to distinguish between bargaining and giving in. Three years ago we gave in. Not now." What strengthened G.E.'s hand was the fact that in three key G.E. locals (Lynn and Pittsfield, Mass.; Schenectady, N.Y.), representing more than a third of the union's dues-paying membership, Carey could not get a strike vote. Though more than 40 other locals backed Carey, he was clearly not sure just where he stood. At the I.U.E. convention last month, he got the union's strike-vote clause changed from a required two-thirds of membership to a simple majority. "I have the authority to strike," he said last week, "but not the backing I think I need."