Word: coppermen
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What has upset coppermen more than the strike is a wage settlement made with the unions last week by Kennecott Copper Co., the world's largest producer (1976 sales: $956 million). If it sets an industry pattern, the agreement will increase production costs by at least 15? per lb. over the next three years-at a time when prices are still sagging...
Rear Guard. Kennecott broke ranks with the industry and settled quickly with the unions on what other coppermen see as more than generous terms. Kennecott could well afford the settlement. The company is sitting on a comfortable cushion of $1.2 billion in cash and securities-the proceeds of an enforced sale of Peabody Coal, which Kennecott acquired in 1968, to a consortium led by Newmont Mining. The Federal Trade Commission ruled in 1971 that Kennecott's Peabody purchase violated antitrust rules barring concentration in any given industry, arguing that the company could have entered the coal business by investing...
...resumed on the London Metal Exchange for the first time in almost 14 years, spot copper, which had been artificially pegged by the British government at 31? a Ib., nosedived to 26.3? on the first day. Before the week ended, the price was back up to 28?, but coppermen felt that this was only a short reprieve. Britain has not yet begun to sell copper from its null stockpile, and Chile, which has kept 65,000 tons off the market in fond hopes of getting 36? a Ib., now is anxiously ready to sell at the world price...
...have to revise their price lists. The price of artillery shells, bomb fuses and many another military item bought by the Defense Department was sure to go up. Were these sudden price increases an abuse? In the case of copper producers, it scarcely seemed so. The profits of the coppermen have been dwindling, squeezed between higher labor costs and the ceilings. Moreover, at a time when domestic producers have been frozen at 24½? a lb., the U.S. fabricators have been paying the world price of 36? a lb. to Chile, for copper produced mainly by U.S. companies there...
...around 12? a pound. It was the lowest level at which U. S. copper producers have ever been sold out. Reason for their moderation at the banquet table is one of the major phenomena of U. S. national unity-a shotgun wedding between the Defense Commission and big-time coppermen. Cooperating with Commissioners Henderson (prices) and Stettinius (materials), coppermen had accepted the New Deal program on prices-i.e., kept them down. But the remarkable extent of their cooperation became evident only this week...