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What Result? The U.A.W. strike will almost certainly set the pattern for others to come. This week the C.I.O.'s United Steelworkers take their strike vote, and no one doubts the outcome. Like the U.A.W., the Steelworkers have asked for a raise ($2 a day) geared to profits. Big Steel has been just as adamant as G.M. in resisting the demand. A steel strike before Christmas is a possibility.
For the first time since Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Government has taken no decisive part in a major strike. One of Labor Secretary Schwellenbach's assistants took a look at the G.M. strike the day after it began, went to Washington the next day. Except for this, and an invitation to U.A.W. and G.M. officers to discuss the strike in Washington, Government has sat tight.
How long can it stay out? Under the Roosevelt Administration in war or peace, labor's certainty in any major strike was that the Government would bail it out. Perhaps U.A.W. still harbors the hope that if its strike is long drawn out, it can be bailed out again. But this week there were no signs; to hear narrow-eyed Walter Reuther tell the story, it was a fight to a finish.