Seventieth'Year EDITED AND MANAGED $Y STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN UNDER AUTHORITY OF BOARD IN CONTROL OF STUDENT PUBLICATIONS STUDENT PUBLICATIONS BLDG. * ANN ARBOR, MIcH. * Phone NO 2-3241 Steel Situation )Ainions Are Free Swill Prevail" Examined POLITICAL PROBLEM: President Responsible For Ending Walkout By JAMES SEDER torials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints. I Y, OCTOBER 25, 1959 NIGHT EDITOR: KENNETH McELDOWNEY U' Should Cut Budget, Serve Itself and the State FE MACHINE ground out a $38 million budget Friday. Human and IBM gears ed neatly into place, producing another >rd request. Only testiness and grimness on faces of a few Regents at the meeting sig- ed that 'approvial was slightly less than hanical - and unrealistic. 'oming on the heels of the use tax decision accompanying financial. chaos, the mam- h request could be viewed only with irony. even if an income tax bill is ever pieced ether and passed by the Legislature, chances t it will happen soon are not good. Mean- le the state will lose $300,000 a day in use revenues which would have been gathered ept for the decision. 'he cash crisis, already an interval ratherj n a crisis, must grow worse before it gets er. And the state's $100 million cash defi- icy will probably grow worse, so that when . if income tax revenues come in they will used to pay off these debts. )R THE NEXT seve'ral years the State Con- broller is inevitably committed to juggle, ex- ses, to make ends meet as nearly as pos- e and .to cut expenses as much as is feasible' rder to keep the state on its feet. n light of the monetary wreck that is the e at present, a University serving the state nrealistic when it requests a budget for the al year 1960-61 which is $1,326,723 higher n last year's request, and approximately $5.2 .ion more than the state appropriation for current year. heoretically, since the University is sup- ted by the state, it has no choice but. to cate the state's citizens "up to the point re it has used its resources to the fullest neeting the need" - so President Hatcher said. Likewise, the University is committed expand its facilities and resources to pro- room and services for the citizens of the e. he budget for 1960-61 was motivated by this, onale. In fact, official University news :ces have called an expected enrollment of 500 to 1,000 the major reason for the :er request. IS OBVIOUS to the most cursory news- aper reader that the state cares more at moment about its financial troubles than about. providing for expanded education. It wants most to keep bad matters from becoming worse in terms of dollars and cents. If the Uni-I versity is to sei've the state at this particular moment, it should be cutting budget estimates to conserve state dollars and censt. And it is not up to the Legislature, but the University, to make these cuts. When setting up the budget report, officials can choose to cut or expand requests, or hold the line. The University's budget-machinery inevitably encourages finances to expand. In the fall, just after one request is made, work on another is. begun. Reports from depart- ments, schools, offices, branches, and institutes throughout the University filter into the ad- ministration building. These are then consoli- dated into three {or four huge loose-leaf note- books, questioned and changed on policy, and presented to the Regents for their suggestions on revision. Again revised according to their proposals,, the final budget is presented to the Regents for final approval. It takes effort and. a long time to make a budget. UNDERSTANDABLY, then, the budget could .not have' been hurriedly remade when the use tax decision signalled Thursday that the state will be under 'financial siege" for a long period. Nevertheless, the budget requests could have ground to a halt and reversed direction. Perhaps the expansion momentum is not founded on a goal to serve, the state, but on a lust for size itself. Although the "service" ra- tionale for raising enrollment does not hold' at present, the University still asks financial support for more students. Conclusions, maybe only partially unfair, can be drawn from the facts. o ossibly the Regents did argue the merits of a ower budget request in their private meet- ing, but the public will never know if any- one sat back and looked realistically at the University's dollars and cents vis-a-vis the state's dollars and cents. Can't any administrator look at the budget realistically? Or is the University too large a mass to protect itself from the gravity of a, situation which is forcing the state, and itself, to slide downhill? The University, as of Friday, is not serving the state -- and ih the long run, itself as a part of the state, --NAN MARKEL THERE IS AN academic and journalistic tradition of drawing analo- gies between modern United States and ancient Rome. By partially perverting this tradition, one can sum up the steel strike situation: President Eisenhower is burning while the steel indus- try and the United Steel Workers Ilddle. The negotiations between the Steel Companies' Coordinating Com- mittee and the USW. began last spring. They accomplished nothing. When the contract expired July 1, the old pact was extended for two weeks at the request of President Eisenhower. At the end of this period, the steel mills shut down. . Negotiations continued on an on-again off-again basis all summer --with a conspicuous lack of success. * *. * S THE PRESIDENT had been expressing increasing concern over the Oleadlock..His decision to use his power under the Taft-Hartley law re- flected this. The one reason for the President's concern is purely economic. The country is beginning to'feel the pressure of the steel strike. Companies dependent on steel for manufacturing or construction purposes have started to slow down their operations and lay off workers. The President is evidently afraid that the layoffs are beginning to snowball into a serious economic paralysis. The President also must be concerned with the time lag between the strike settlement and the date when the mills can reach full pro- duction. Steel executives estimate this' will take approximately 35 days. 1uring this period Industries dependent on steel will still be hobbled. THE PRESIDENT seems equally concerned with the fact that both sides have shown extreme reluctance to bargain in good faith. There doesn't seem too much justification for the strike. The steel companies are rich enough to afford to be somewhat generous and the workers, who are among the highest paid industrial workers in the world, can certainly afford to settle'for a; modest increase. Three is now supposedly anoth- er issue - a "more basic" issue- ..e..-H Cber' involved in the, strike. This is the fight concerning the right of man- agewent to alter local working he. said. "Some strikes are the rules. price of. a free society," Management claims it wishes to "In our society, continuous pro- end "featherbedding and loafing" duction and stable labor relations and "increase plant efficiency." require a fantastic amount of mu- The USW claims the i n d u s t r y tual accommodation," Haber said. wishes to re-impose "industrial The alternative is "'industrial au- dictatorship." -Daily-David Cornwell A TOOTH AND NAIL AFFAIR CAN'T STOP BIG STRIKES: Present Taft-Hartley Act Inadequal By PETER DAWSON Da~iy Contributing Editor THE PROVISIONS of the Taft- Hartley Act are "inadequate" for stopping big strikes. Prof. Wil- liam Haber of the economics de- partment said yesterday. If a strike is not settled during the 80 days of its injunction, he said, the 'law provides no remedy, and Congress may have to deal. with it by special legislation. "It is most unfortunate," Prof. Haber said, to have to wait- long-- in this case, 90 days - until the President appoints a fact-finding board. He should be given explicit authority to designate a fact-find- ing board with power to subpoena at any time, "even before the strike starts, and certainly at any time after." * * * A FACT-FINDING board has an advantage over the present media- tions service, Prof. Haber said. It brings the issues into the public eye and mobilizes public opinion. The mediation service works be- hind the scenes, he said, "as it must." The idea of early appointings of AS I SEE yIT. ... By THOMAS TURNER INTERPRETING: .Indus try-Labor War Maims Foreign Policy By J. M. ROBERTS Associated Press News Analyst ROJECTION OF President Eisenhower's.picture of steel strike effects onto the world screen produces the clear implication that the na- tion's chief weapon in the cold war is being dulled. Not because of its interference with construction of missiles and their bases, or for any direct effect on military defense, which is serious enough,. Instead, because it is damaging the national economy. Soviet Russia, having the initiative in the cold war, chooses the wea- pons. In the beginning she chose an aggressive teritorial expansionist policy backed by military strength. Now she has switched to economic warfare.. Her twin goals are to rival the United States in economic capacity and'to demonstrate to countries which are just developing fact-finding boards has been ad- vanced by labor secretary James D. Mitchell. But Haber goes a step" further. Haber would have the board be empowered to make findings and recommend terms of settlement, It should do so, he said, later on- perhaps at the time the President finds that national health or safe- ty are being endangered by the strike. * * * THE recommendations would not be binding, Haber said, but' the making of them would create more public pressure on the disputants to compromise. The pressure would probably be in the direction of the iterms of the recommendations sthemselves. The Taft-Hartley Act prohibits the fact-finding board from mak- ing recommendations, but George W. Taylor, chairman of theboa now in action, has made'. public comments about the parties' posi-, tions,,thus acting a little as Haber thinks he should be empowered to act. Why not make the recommenda- tions be binding? "Almost every- body involved," Haber said, is "strongly opposed" to any law that would force disputants to go to arbitrators and accept their deoisions. "YOU CAN'T turn wage settle- ments over to a court without seriously compromising the nature of our private-enterprise system," NLY ONE-THIRD of ,the University's reve- nue for 1958-59 came from the legislative ropriation, Vice-president for Business and ance Wilbur K. Pierpont told the Regents day. his represented a drop in appropriation from year before, while private grants for re- rch rose significantly. 'o what extent this is cause and to what ex- b effect of the University's announced great- emphasis on graduate Work is perhaps im- sible to determine. But certainly, with the e's finances in their present condition, wth to the 28,000 level President Hatcher suggested -will depend heavily on the rtes of revenue other than appropriations. ith foundations and industries contribut- both relatively and absolutely more heavily he maintenance and growth of the insti- on, the influence they will exert on shap- this growth is considerable. NSEQUENCES of this influence may be interpreted either positively or therwise., new Dearborn Center, for example, repre- s an innovation in education whose value not be realized for some time. Such an ovation would not have taken place had it' i up to the legislature to appropriate funds it. et the impetus for, this innovation came not n the educators who administer the Uni- ity, but from the businessmen of Michigan's industry. By presenting the proposal in Editorial Staff THOMAS TURNER, Editor l POWER ROBERT JUNKER rial Director Ctty Editor ' RLES KOZdLL .............. Personnel Director v KAATZ. ....................Magazine Editor rON HUTHWAITE...... .... Features Editor BENAGH ................ ..... Sports Editor CA SAWATA ...... Associate Personnel Director ES BOW . ................Associate City Editor kN HOLTZEi ........ Associate Editoriak- Director R DAWSON.............. Contributing Editor E LYON.. ..... ...... Associate Sports Editor )KATZ ............... Associate reports Editor Business Staff RONALD PETERS. Busine Mamn . terms too lucrative to be ignored, the industrial- ists exerted pull on the direction of off-campus growth. Whether either in this instance or in others in the future this potential danger will be real- ized remains to be seen. Lack of central direc- tion in terms of the University's philosophy and goals has been alleged in the past; adding cen- trifugal force caused by greater dependence on outside funds to the directional power the legislature holds would aggravate the problem. DISCUSSION of the appropriation-revenue ratio at the Regents' meeting led to an- other problem., Vice-president and Dean of Faculties Marvin Niehuss pointed out that sev-' eral published reports have interpreted the entire revenue figure (over $92 million) . as coming from the state, By. this reasoning, Niehuss explained, Michi- gan is considered to spend more per capita on higher education than any other state.' While it would be good in one sense to have people think Michigan shows so much interest in education, he said, the misconception is dan- gerous because it's used against the University when the budget request is discussed in Lan- sing. Dispelling this illusion is essential, since there will be many genuine problems in Lansing this year. W HICH BRINGS up perhaps the central point from Friday's Regents meeting. Niehuss said student fees would tide the University over through the next pay-day, perhaps through two. After that, presumably, we turn to the banks for substantial loans. But the same demands that were placed on faculty loyalty last Spring will be placed again, as professors begin receiving enticing letters from state institutions in more solvent states. With the same stresses and strains beginning this year this much earlier, faculty losses may. snowball. The administration and Regents obviously realize this: the atmosphere at the meeting Friday was distinctly bleak. There was less of the usual joking, and what there was seemed rather forced. ,j ACULTY pay-raises are prioritized first. tocracy," and we discarded that when we accepted collective bar- gaining as the normal way ofU settling things. "There's no royal road to indus- trial peace." In the present case, he added, -the use of the Injunction may delay settlement. Both parties are under pressure from public opin- ion. Further, the companies es- pecially are under pressure.because, the Great Lakes will freeze in another month. If .they do not settle by then, they will not have, ore for the winter. So they must_ get back into production soon. SHUTDOWN: Both Sides Suffering By PETER STVART, Daily Staff Writer ' RECENT steel union slogan. brandished by pickets dem- onstrating before President Eisen- hower at Palm Springs, Calif., dramatically questions the whole approach to the .steel strike. The slogan is "Steelworkers Want the Right to Win." The question is: Will anybody really "win"' the strike? For the past 109 days, while union and management represen- tatives have traded charge with counter-charge- and plan with counter-plan across the bargain- ing table with no apparent con- tract progress, other Americans have felt the economic pinch. The ,most acute pain is probably borne by' the two principal parties in the dispute themselves, wheth- er they are willing to admit it or not. The million-plus employes of steel mills and allied industries haven't pocketed a pay check in amany long weeks. During .'the 'longest steel shutdown in history rthey and their families have been diving on AFL-CIO "strike fund" ,relief payments, but according to 'recent protests by the wives, this ps not enough. S* * * * * * THE PROBLEM seems to be that labor-management relations have not outgrown militancy. The militant 'attitudes which both la- bor and management assumed when labor was in the organizing stage are no longer relevant to the present stage of. union-manage- ment - at least in the steel in- dustry. Both sides should be able to sit down and calmly settle their differences without p r olon g e d strikes. ,There are, basically, two ways of accomplishing this: judicially .and politically. There is obvious appeal in a "judicial" approach. A non-politi- cal, non-partisan, impartial board cotld be set up to find a "fair" solution. After all, this is ana- tion of laws, not men; it seems better to find the right solution than to 'let two selfish groups paralyze the country. But what criteria could a nego- tiating boar use? The union members want to improve their economic position -- this is an un- derstandable desire. * * * MANAGEMENT opposes the wage demands. They claim they need to maintain their present margin of profit, so that they can afford to re-invest in expanding steel-making capacity - this is also an understandable aim. And there is still another prob- lem. Conservative 'ecofnomisti claim that the steel union is lead- ing the trend toward a "cost- push" inflation which will inev- itably end in a depression "which would. curl your ha(ir." Liberal economists claim that continuous wage increases are necessary to our continuing economic health. All these factors seem to point out thatthis steel strike and oth- er. strikes in =major industries do not. involve simple, "factual" que - tions. * '* a economic systems of their own that the Communist system is best. * * * WHEN THE American way fails to work, Khrushchev can jig as Hitler jigged over the surrender of France in 1940. So far, nobody in the steel strike seems to have done much negoti- ating over the real point of be- ginning on, a settlement. The situation fits' Abraham Lincoln's description of war as something in which the opponents, having be- come sufficiently exhausted, sit down to settle the issues over which they have fought. A Presidential advisory group has reported that the issues to be settled have not yet been even defined. The participants know that these issues will be reached and settled in time. In the meantime, the country is weakened and humili- ated before the world in a critical period of human affairs while each side tries to weaken the other's bargaining position. 4 * OTHER businesses are closing down for lack of steel, despite the belief, in at least some sections of the industry, that a ' seven- months backlog had been pre- pared. This backlog had been ex- pected to do for management what the union had done for itself through creation of a strike fund. The emphasis has all been on pre- paration for war instead of prep- aration for agreement. The ramifications are wide- spread, and not only in the imme- diate effect of layoffs and produc- tion stoppages. Expansion of seemingly unre- lated production is being held back. I know of one company which is ready to come into the markret with a new nroduct_ This CLOSED SHOP: Who Protects Workers? By SHERMAN SILIER Daily Staf Writer THE UNITED STATES Supreme Court this year will have to rule once and for all on the con- stitutionality of compulsory union membership. Six employees of the Southern Railway System are challenging the validity of the closed shop, arguing that they should not be required to pay un- ion dues when part of their money is used for political purposes to which they are opposed., In 1956, the Supreme Court actually decided that compulsory union membership, in itself, was. perfectly legal. However, at the. same time, the high court said that it was reserving judgment as to the constitutionality of cases where dues money was used to promote "ideological conformity" (which wasn't the question in- volved in that 1956 case). This decision contained within it the germ of the suit presently being filed. The only avenue left by the court to' those wishing to defeat the closed shop was simply to try to show that compulsory dues money was used in violation of the individual members' free- dom of speech. This is the point of the case now facing the court. * * * ANY NON-PARTISAN observer can see that there are strong ar- guments on both sides of the fence. The union feels that, mor- ally speaking, since the benefits obtained through the union are derived by all workers. not ist political and lobbying activities which have nothing to do with col- lective bargaining-the actual pur- pose of the union. The union leaders, of course, in- sist quite logically that in order for collective bargaining to be ef- fective, it must be carried out in a climate conducive to a success- ful agreement. This climate, ac cording to the union, can. be achieved mainly by strong lob- bies and the right man in office. * * * THE WORKERS say that many times they approve of certain goals the union tries to attain, but disapprove of others. These members might desire increased wages, for example, but might ve- hemently oppose unemployment compensation insurance. Yet, their compulsory dues are used for all activities which the general un- ion consensus seems . to desire, without their individual consent. The question really appears to be whether certain liberties of the individual union members can be justifiably sacrificed in order, to promote the general good of most members; or whether, by safeguarding the liberties of the few, interests of the many should be endangered. Certainly this di- lemma is not easy, perhaps not possible, to solve. However, one point does emerge, from this controversy: Unions were originally formed to protect the individual worker from the claws of the cruel industrial or- ganization of which was necees- LOOKING AT steel management. after their mills have been at a standstill three months, it is evi- dent that the strike hurts them too. It takes. a steady turnover of capital and products to keep a manufacturing firm operating, smoothly, but with steel produc- tion presently zero the industry's capital input Is the same. Unpleasant news'to the millions of stockholders in the' steel corp- orations is the loss of important markets 'and dividend-producing profits during the strike. . As pre-strike stockpiles of steel dwindle, construction, manufac- turing and general national ex- pansion are stalled, due to their heavy dependence on the metal. One sees the sensitive American economy wavering in its tedious upswing as a result of the orippl- PRESIDENT Eisenhower has moved cautiously in the strike be- cause he was afraid to interfere with the "natural workings" of the American economic system. But the economic system is not involved. The steel strike is simply a dispute between two groups of citizens about how to distribute the income front the making of steel. This is a political question and should be settled through the political processes. There are two basic problems involved in a strike of this nature. The paramount interest is the na- tional interest-large-scale strikes in major industries must be stopped. It is the inescapable obli- gation of the federal government -primarily the President-to see that work is resumed. The other aspect of the strike is the question of how to divide up the profits. The "fair" solution is the solution that the American people decide is fair. T* * * THEY DECIDE this by electinf 7i