STEEL: Last Licks

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Philip Murray waited for silence. The C.I.O. Steelworkers' president was concluding his final plea for a 30¢ -an-hour package of wage increases, pensions and social insurance. Across the oak-paneled hearing room sat Enders Voorhees, chairman of U.S. Steel Corp.'s finance committee, who had presented the core of Big Steel's arguments. Voorhees, snapped Murray, did not understand the working man: "He's lived a ... juicy life . . . [this] fat, sassy and very opulent man." And if Voorhees did not believe in pensions, asked Murray, "why does he not mention his own $70,323 pension?" The union rested its case.

This week the steel companies got in their last licks. Said Robert Patterson, ex-Secretary of War and now a lawyer representing the small companies: "The facts brought out . . . make it plain that there is no fair basis for any increase in labor cost at this time."

After three weeks and 800,000 words of testimony, the cases for & against a raise for the nearly 1,000,000 members of the

United Steelworkers of America had been made before President Truman's fact-finding board.

Wives & War Bonds. The union's case, argued chiefly by Murray and Labor Economist Robert Nathan, was based mainly on the claim that the workers needed more money. Said Murray: "To the wife of any steelworker the high cost of living is a household reality . . . Savings have been depleted. War bonds have been cashed in."

Furthermore, said Nathan, the workers had earned a raise: "The buying power of hourly rates of pay ... in the steel industry increased one-seventh between 1939 and 1949, whereas productivity per man-hour rose by 50% ... In the short run, changes in productivity are more affected by changes in ... labor skill than by technology." (Another labor witness later conceded that "it is almost impossible to separate the contributions made by the worker, the machine, or management to increased productivity.")

According to union statistics, the steel companies could afford to pay. For the first half of 1949, the union said, profits of the 19 leading companies were estimated at $301 million, up 54.6% from 1948's first half (when operations were slowed down by a coal strike). In fact, said Nathan, profits had been even larger; many companies had hidden them in swollen depreciation funds. In the end, he argued, the raise would be good for the entire U.S., since "higher wages are proposed as a means of lifting buying power."

Suspicions & Possibilities. In their turn, the steel companies bitterly denounced the whole idea of a fact-finding board as an abrogation of collective bargaining. They suspected, with reason, that the Steelworkers had played for a fact-finding board from the start, hoping that their friend Harry Truman would appoint friends of labor to such a board.