Word: steelmen
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Benjamin F. Fairless give his answer to the $100-a-month pensions won by the C.I.O. Steelworkers only five weeks before (TIME, Nov. 21). Because of higher operating costs, said Fairless, the company was raising the price of steel by an average of 4%, i.e., $4 a ton. Other steelmen scurried to their adding machines to figure out new price schedules themselves. But by week's end, the other big steelmakers had not yet gone along with U.S. Steel's fourth raise since...
...city in the U.S.; Pittsburgh's domination of the steel world was literally at stake. Markets for steel had moved westward. The Supreme Court's decision outlawing the basing-point system (by which Pittsburgh steel plants had absorbed freight costs to distant markets) had caused consternation among steelmen. Pittsburgh, with much of its equipment overworked and worn out by the war, was faced with determined competition from other steel centers; Chicago, with less steelmaking capacity, had actually outproduced...
Question of Precedent. Although it was obviously true that pensions would cost the steelmen money, the fact finders had agreed among themselves that steel's profits were large enough to absorb the full cost of the pension and welfare plans. Nevertheless, Steelman Fairless was on firm ground when he insisted that this was a matter to be thrashed out at the bargaining table. That was a part of the original agreement...
Pensions & Profits. To many businessmen it looked as if steel had botched the job. Said Barren's Business & Financial Weekly: "Unfortunately . . . few steelmen have seen fit to use rational arguments in presenting their case ... It would be amazing if [the fact finders] did not develop the strongest possible resentment against the steel companies." Actually, to anyone who read all the arguments, the steelmen had built up a good case, answering the union point by point...
Steel had made good profits, the steelmen conceded, but they had been poured into new equipment and modernization programs. This, and not increased labor efficiency, was the reason for higher productivity, they said. Furthermore, the rate of steel production had dropped 15% in the last six months and profits were down. Some small companies, like Lukens Steel Co., insisted that they could not afford to pay increases at the current rate of earnings. Said Lukens' Robert Wolcott: "Wage increases can't be paid out of past profits . . . [In] the four-week . . . period ending July 9, 1949 . . . Lukens . . . showed...