Word: abell
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Pious Thoughts." All week long L.B.J. kept his blowtorch trained on the negotiators. He had Labor Secretary Willard Wirtz looking over United Steelworkers' President I. W. Abel's shoulder and Commerce Secretary John Connor hovering near Top Management Negotiator R. Conrad Cooper. When that tactic flagged, he sent Wirtz over to hound management and Connor to rile labor. After a breakfast meeting with congressional leaders, he sent them trotting out of the White House clutching conveniently typed statements calling for a settlement. Almost minute by minute he received progress reports from his aides...
...lock. The industry claimed that it could not possibly boost its offer of a 40.6? hourly wage increase for a 35-month contract without raising prices, stirring Johnson's ire and losing sales to foreign steelmakers and competitive materials such as aluminum, plastics and cement. The steelworkers' Abel, who got elected earlier this year on a promise of plumper contracts, was equally adamant in refusing to scale down his demand...
...step backward," snapped U.S.W. President I. W. Abel, 57. Reminding steelmen that the union had meekly accepted "modest" settlements in 1962 and 1963, and that generous contracts were being signed in other industries "almost daily," Abel refused to scale down his demands. One of Abel's major goals was to win retirement on full pension after 30 years of work, reflecting a nationwide trend among unions to emphasize such fringe benefits as earlier retirement and longer vacations-mostly designed to soften the blow of automation by spreading the work thinner. That was the idea behind the U.S.W...
...buoyantly confident that a strike would never come off, was beginning to take them seriously. Lyndon Johnson put the squeeze on the negotiators, reminded them that both sides would suffer black eyes if a strike were called while "our boys are still fighting in South Viet Nam." He telephoned Abel and Cooper separately, told each that he wanted "a decent and responsible settlement." Said Abel: "We too have a responsibility-to our membership." At week's end, the President named Oregon's Senator Wayne Morse and Under Secretary of Commerce LeRoy Collins as special mediators to seek...
High Price for Both. Industry observers were betting that Abel would be unable to match the 4.1% increase he negotiated last May for the U.S.W.'s aluminum workers, figured that the final settlement would probably give the steelworkers an increase of roughly 15? an hour, or 3.4%, slightly higher than the President's 3.2% guideline for noninflationary wage and price increases. Almost certainly, it would also mean a round of rises in the price of steel...