'Greedy steelworkers'?:
Bensman, David
'GREEDY STEELWORKERS'? AN AMAZING PROPOSAL THE PRESS TREATED it as a classic concession story: greedy steelworkers reject moderate wage cuts de-signed to restore their employers' competitiveness....
...It should be an interesting time, but not an easy one...
...That's a far cry from the picture the newspapers painted...
...An amazing proposal...
...DAVID BENSMAN...
...Not only would steelworkers have paid their own future unemployment benefits, they were asked to pay for aid they had received in the past...
...Despite the fact that the targeted locals repre-sented President McBride's most loyal supporters, he surren-dered to the companies' insistent demands...
...Many local presi-dents were outraged...
...There would never have been 231 votes against the international leadership's recommendations had not unionists felt it impossible to cast their fellow locals adrift...
...an analysis of the proposal submitted by President Lloyd McBride of the United Steel-workers Union to local presidents meeting in Pittsburgh on November 19 indicates that the package McBride recom-mended was worse than the proposal the steelworkers rejected in July, much worse than the one auto workers accepted last spring, perhaps the worst contract an international union pres-ident has presented to his members since the Second World War...
...During the concession bargaining, corporate negotiators insisted that 80 locals representing warehouses, specialty mills, container plants, and fabricating shops, be dropped from the Master Agreement...
...In its place, the companies offered a bonus plan that would only have provided payments tied to the cost of living when a company's steel operations were yielding good profits...
...Of course, not all of the presidents who voted for or against the plan on November 19 knew of these arcane details...
...the fact that local presidents repudiated his proposal suggests the union will never be the same...
...But the steel companies are insisting on more than that...
...In return, unemployed steelworkers would have re-ceived emergency relief allowing them to ride out the steel industry's current depression...
...When one local president requested a four-day recess so that leaders could study the thirty-seven-page summary of the contract, Mr...
...Furthermore, the concession package would have abolished the union's protection...
...But the proposal Lloyd McBride asked steelworkers to accept called for more than 10 percent in wage cuts...
...Those bonuses would not have been included in the workers' wage base when overtime, Sunday premiums, or holiday pay were calculated...
...The fact that McBride felt compelled to recommend such a contract indicates that the steelworkers union is in a real crisis...
...This change would further have reduced steelwoi-kers' wages, a twist ignored by media stories...
...Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that President McBride sincerely believes the steelworkers' wages will have to be brought down to restore the corporations' competitiveness...
...Steel and Bethlehem wanted to "sever" these locals in order to force them to accept much worse contracts than basic steelworkers were offered...
...It was no secret to unionists the U.S...
...Yet the contract McBride presented did not contain one cent of additional aid from the companies for the unemployed...
...But the press hadn't done its homework...
...and if customers stockpile steel this spring, as they've done in the past, that strike will be long and costly...
...The entire emergency relief was to come from the pockets of working steelworkers - at 750 per hour...
...Under terms of the settlement President McBride proposed on November 19, part of the 750 per hour steelworkers were to pay for emergency relief would actually have gone to the companies to compensate then for payments they had made to laid-off employees during recent periods of mass joblessness...
...The Wall St...
...The president wanted an immediate vote...
...Yet that wasn't the worst of McBride's proposal...
...Altogether the total cost in wages for the first eight months would have been $2.65 per hour, on average, which amounts to $105 per week, or nearly $5500 per year...
...In addition to a $1.50 per hour reduction off the top, McBride's proposal included a cut in incentive pay that would have further diminished wages 190 per hour on average...
...McBride ruled him out of order...
...Journal and the New York Times reported that the pact proposed a wage and benefit cut totaling about 10 percent the first year, and less thereafter...
...they want a long-term restructuring of labor relations in their indus-try, and this steelworkers are unlikely to accept...
...Press accounts reported that steelworkers rejected wage and benefit cuts amounting to 10 percent of their current compen-sation...
...A strike in August seems assured...
...In the meantime, the local presidents' repudiation of the proposal advanced by McBride and the Executive Board guarantees a lively political debate within the union over future bargaining strategy...
...Not only did the leaders of the threatened plants argue heatedly in defense of maintaining their membership in the Master Agreement, but local presidents from basic steel rose to their defense...
...These press accounts were wrong...
...While most press accounts ignored the severance of the 80 targeted locals, that issue dominated the debate in Pittsburgh...
...In addition, the companies would have realized large savings on benefits over the life of the contract...
...That was no accident...
...DAVID BENSMANe...
...In other words, this was a self-insurance fund...
...According to press accounts, the union concessions were justified by the proposed emergency unemployment pay-ments...
...What were the facts...
Vol. 109 • December 1982 • No. 22
