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One aide to General Electric Vice President Virgil Day, the informal business leader, is onetime U.S. Steel Chairman Roger Blough, a dirty word to many unionists. The labor men, for their part, have taken to sending alternates to most meetings. The choice of AFL-CIO President George Meany, who has been recovering from an attack of chest pains, is Nathaniel (Nat) Goldfinger, his acerbic director of research, whose constant needling frequently infuriates Chairman Boldt, who is a Federal judge from Tacoma.
This week the board is scheduled to begin considering its third position in six weeks on employee merit raises, after members decided that their first two decisions would prove unworkable or unfair. Such backtracking has convinced many critics that the board lacks top leadership. Woodcock, for one, has said that Boldt "may be an excellent Federal judge but in my opinion he is not qualified to be chairman of such an important body" as the Pay Board. Boldt strenuously rejects such criticism. "I have not just been sitting on my fanny around here," he told TIME Correspondent Mark Sullivan. "I am confident that from now on we are going to have a majority of individuals voting to tighten things up to hold down inflation." The tightening should also be applied to the board's own operation. After labor members freely discussed the aerospace vote with newsmen waiting in the lobby last week, P.R. Man Herbert Wurth was nonetheless forbidden by the board's new executive director, Robert Tiernan, to write a press release about it until the rejection had been framed in legalese. Furious at such mindless rules, Wurth quit.
Worn Welcome. Meanwhile, one of the fonder dreams of C. Jackson Grayson, chairman of the Price Commission, was realized with stunning speed. When he announced a 21% yardstick for price increases in November, Grayson said that he hoped that some prices would go down while others went up. Last week, after several days of unpublicized price fighting in the steel industry, U.S. Steel Corp. announced that it will reduce prices $5 to $25 a ton on several major products, including some that the company had been given permission by the Price Commission to increase. As a result, the price hike in key items like cold-rolled sheet steel, which is used in the manufacture of cars and household appliances, will be cut by one-third to one-half.
The U.S. Steel move was aimed at heading off plans by Inland Steel Co. to offer discounts on large sales. Both companies were reacting to strong pressure from automakers, who must get approval from the Price Commission in order to pass on any large increase in steel prices to their customers. For General Motors, such an application would have been the third one for a price hike since Phase II began; for Ford and Chrysler, the second. None are anxious to wear out their welcome on Grayson's doorstep, and they thus began demanding relief from their suppliers.