AFTER overseeing the nation's key wage decisions for two months, the federal Pay Board seemed well on its way to becoming the laughingstock of Phase II. Having set a guideline of 5.5% annually for wage increases, board members proceeded to approve labor contracts that called for first-year pay boosts of at least 15% for coal miners and 14% for railway signalmen. Last week, however, the board decided to show some New Year's resolve. By a vote of 9 to 5, the labor-business-public group rejected an aerospace agreement that would have provided an immediate 12% wage increase for some 150,000 workers.
The Difference. Board Chairman George Boldt said that the contract terms were "obviously unreasonably inconsistent" with the guideline. In fact, what made the aerospace agreement different from those of the mining and railroad industries was the lesser likelihood of a strike. At the time of the earlier decisions, coal miners had already been off their jobs for six weeks, seriously depleting the nation's coal supply, and signalmen were clearly ready to begin an economy-crippling shutdown of U.S. railroads. By contrast, the nation's ailing aerospace companies have been forced to lay off more than 180,000 workers in the past three years, leaving most of the rest grateful to have any kind of job at all. The board's next major contract review will be a much harder test of its new-found will: it will soon have to consider a 41% pay increase called for in a three-year contract covering some 45,000 members of the tough-talking International Longshoremen's Association.
Labor Member Leonard Woodcock, whose United Auto Workers Union is one of the main labor groups that bargained with aerospace employers, described as "cynical" the board's decision to hold the line on workers employed by a depressed industry. But he also acknowledged its efficacy by pointedly omitting any mention of a strike. Public members suggested a compromise formula that would trim the first-year wage boost to 8.3% but increase the second-year raise from 3% to about 7%. That seemed equitable enough, but labor members, still smarting from their first real defeat on the board, were in no mood to take advice. Said U.A.W. Official Pat Greathouse: "Right now we'd like for the Pay Board to keep its mouth shut." The board complied, declining for at least a week to take a formal vote on the compromise plan. However, since the public members' terms of 8.3% apparently had the support of some of the five business members as well, union leaders had a reasonably clear picture of just how large a settlement could pass.
Storehouse Style. Although the aerospace decision was a welcome first sign of toughness, the Pay Board still showed all too much evidence of disarray. Its formal meetings, which convene around a T-shaped table in a brand-new Washington office building, are often only short voting sessions. The real business is conducted, statehouse style, in caucuses among members of one or more of the three groups. These are attended not only by the official members, but also by a bewildering array of aides and alternates.