"But I Love You"

Every inch the husky, handsome, silver-haired leader type, United Steelworkers President David McDonald stood before 900 workers in Midland, Pa., and presented his case for reelection. He wanted a new term, he said, "not for personal pride, but because I love you. I can only say I'm heartsick over what has happened."

McDonald, 62, has ample cause to be sick of heart: after twelve years as head of the union dealing with the nation's most basic industry, he is, by every present standard, a less than even choice to retain his job in the elections to be held next Feb. 9. McDonald is, in fact, confronted by a rank-and-file revolt, and beneath a multitude of more formal complaints festers the grievance of the men in the mills that their president is not one of them and does not really care about them.

To many of the fire-eating unionists of the open-hearth and blast furnaces, McDonald has been suspect from the start. A college graduate (Carnegie Tech, '32) who once aspired to a career in the theater, he was a mill clerk when he attracted the attention of the union's founding president, Philip Murray, with his organizational talents. Murray selected McDonald as secretary-treasurer of the union in 1942, made it clear that McDonald was his heir apparent. When Murray died in 1952, McDonald stepped almost automatically into the presidency.

The Good Life. His control was shaky from the start. He moved into an American Locomotive Co. strike early in 1953, negotiated a private settlement with the firm's president--and saw his own strike committee promptly repudiate the agreement. He further alienated the rank and file by successfully backing a crony, without significant mill experience, for a union vice-presidency in 1955 against the candidacy of the Buffalo district's rough-hewn Irish leader, Joseph P. Molony. The extent of the Steelworkers' restlessness was demonstrated in 1957 when Donald Rarick, a relatively unknown Irwin, Pa., local leader, protesting a union dues hike, ran against McDonald for president, polled 223,516 votes to McDonald's 404,172.

Instead of seeking rapport with his members, McDonald grew increasingly aloof. He golfed with steel executives, used his $50,000 salary (he also gets a generous expense account) to patronize nightclubs from Manhattan to Los Angeles and in many other ways enjoy the good life. In addition to his seven-room fieldstone home in a Pittsburgh suburb, he bought a second house in Palm Springs, and spent much of his time there.

High living by union leaders is a common complaint among rank and file these days (see U.S. BUSINESS). Yet anti-McDonald Steelworkers peg their campaign more formally to the charge that he has neglected the problems of the union's 2,600 locals. While overall wage patterns and working conditions are negotiated in union contracts with the big steel companies, locals are bound by no-strike pledges in arguing local grievances--and the grievance machinery has completely bogged down. It takes three years for some such cases to be resolved. Instead of working to soothe such gripes himself, McDonald has been in the habit of sending out his competent, hard-working secretary-treasurer, I. (for lorworth, a name of Welsh derivation) W. (for Wilbur) Abel, 56.

Out of the Show. McDonald's loss of popularity has become "Abe" Abel's gain. "McDonald has been moving away from us for years," growls the union's Milwaukee district director, Walter J. Burke. "McDonald has at tended one district conference and come to Milwaukee one other time for the dedication of a union hall. Abel's been here 30 times or more. Abel's name is a legend among the members. He eats with them, talks with them and knows their problems." Complains the Chicago-Gary area's Director Joseph Germano, head of the Steelworkers' biggest (128,000) district and a longtime loyal McDonald friend, who last week announced his support of Abel: "Our people are just not part of the show any more. They don't feel like hanging around lobbies waiting for news. Abel has always been willing to meet with the people. McDonald hasn't been available."

Abel, who occupies an office just 20 paces away from McDonald's at Steelworkers headquarters in Pittsburgh, is a onetime Canton, Ohio, mill hand and foundry worker who was one of the union's first organizers in 1936. Easygoing and modest, he was pulled to the top by Murray and has worked willingly for the flashier McDonald ever since 1953. Abel's decision to challenge McDonald represents a big personal gamble. He could have ridden out four more years in his present job and retired at $17,500 (half of his $35,000 salary) a year for life. If he loses, he will be out of a job.

Although the dissidents claim that a majority of the union's 30 district directors are with them, Abel's main strength lies in the Midwest, where Germano and Burke lead younger Steelworkers who are more interested in wage increases than in McDonald's emphasis upon "total job security."

Logic & Reason. Yet Dave McDonald can muster some strong arguments in his fight for survival. Although he has not negotiated a general wage increase since 1959, Steelworkers draw an average $3.70 an hour, plus 670 hourly in fringe benefits--one of the highest rates in manufacturing. McDonald held out stubbornly against company demands for greater authority over local working conditions in the record-breaking 116-day nationwide steel strike in 1959, emerged with a healthy wage hike too. He pioneered the labor-management Human Relations Committee, an approach to bargaining that other industries are studying. He recently won a 13-week sabbatical, or vacation with pay, once every five years for all hourly workers in the top half of the seniority ranks at each steel company.

McDonald turns angry at charges that he leads too soft a life, particularly in Palm Springs. "I have a perfect right as a citizen to invest in a piece of property anywhere," he declares. As for Steelworkers' complaints that he is not tough enough in bargaining any more, McDonald has a ready reply. "I've never seen anybody get a labor contract yet by pounding the table," he says. "You get it by the use of logic and reason and arbitration and by no other way."

Such reasonable talk may be deceptive. For with a power struggle going on within the union, there is little doubt that both Dave McDonald and the Abel faction will lead the Steelworkers into new militancy at the bargaining table when contract negotiations reopen this winter.

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