Word: settlements
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Please Go Home. Although he considered Bethlehem's response excessive, the President granted that the cost of the industry's new labor contract was "high." Ironically, one consideration facilitating settlement was the knowledge that a steel strike, with its inevitably depressing consequences for both the economy and the Viet Nam war effort, would have provoked White House intervention. Union representatives and Chief Industry Negotiator R. Conrad Cooper of U.S. Steel shrouded their meetings in unaccustomed secrecy, avoided the usual inflammatory statements. When Federal Mediator Simkin showed up to offer his assistance, he was politely told to go home...
Echoing the President's opinion that sweeping price increases were unwarranted, White House aides claimed that the higher cost of the steel settlement could be partially made up in higher productivity. They also noted that labor accounts directly for only 40% of the price of steel. In any event, suggested one Government economist, steel companies could help combat inflation by absorbing at least part of the cost of higher wages instead of "asking the American people...
United Steelworkers President I. W. Abel allowed that he was "not totally happy" with the agreement, and a number of union locals showed their own displeasure by staging a series of wildcat strikes. Even so, the $1 billion-plus settlement was the biggest in the union's history. The contract will add at least 900 to the $4.93 the average steel-worker now receives in wages and benefits. By comparison, total compensation back in 1950 amounted to $1.91. Be sides a three-year pay increase of 440, the new pact calls for broadly improved pensions...
...industry seems certain to face a far rougher second half. New orders had begun tapering off even before last week's settlement, and some steelmakers expect second-half shipments to decline by more than 20% from their first-half level of 53 million tons. The industry is also concerned about competition from foreign steelmakers, who increased their inroads into the U.S. market by taking advantage of the abnormally high domestic demand for steel earlier this year. Steel from abroad is expected to account for at least 15% of the nation's total 1968 shipments...
...which will be capable of handling 40,000-ton freighters. More millions will go toward making the river navigable as far as Tete, some 90 miles from the dam. One day the Portuguese hope to see a huge iron and steel works rise on their modest 400-year-old settlement there...