EYECATCHERS: Middleman Moves Over

After several weeks of difficult negotiations with himself, 49-year-old W.J. (“Bill”) Usery Jr. has decided to throw his hat into the ring alongside those of all the other labor leaders who are hoping to succeed 79-year-old George Meany as head of the roughly 14 million-member AFL-CIO. Usery will leave his $40,000-a-year post as President Nixon’s chief labor negotiator and director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service—from which an appointment as Secretary of Labor might have been easy to grasp. As head of the AFL-CIO’S newly created department of organization and field services, he will be come the No. 3 man in the union, behind Meany and Secretary-Treasurer Lane Kirkland, 51.

A big, back-slapping Georgian who went to work as a welder in 1941 and later was an official of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, Usery has made no enemies as the Government’s “middleman” in labor disputes. He has been a tenacious round-the-clock bargainer who often appealed to negotiators’ patriotism. Usery was instrumental in averting a walkout of 13,000 railroad signalmen in 1969 and later settled a bitter, eleven-week teachers’ strike in Philadelphia. In directing and coordinating the political, civil rights and community-affairs activities of the AFL-CIO’S extensive field staffs, he is expected to wield enormous influence within the labor movement. His lack of a solid power base within the AFL-CIO, however, may block his advance if Meany steps down in the near future.