The Golden Handshake

In an era when labor and management tend to reason rather than wrangle, the United Auto Workers' Local 833 and Wisconsin's Kohler Co. remained locked in a mastodontic duel for more years than most Americans care to remember. The longest major labor dispute in U.S. history, the Kohler strike began in April 1954, when workers at the plumbing-fixtures plant stormed out in a disagreement with the family-owned firm over a series of union demands for higher wages and fringe benefits. After a two-month closure, the factory resumed production with nonunion labor, touching off six years of intermittent violence in the company town of Kohler. Pickets wore gasmasks, clashed bloodily with non-strikers; in one battle 300 people were arrested. The company charged more than 1,000 acts of vandalism.

In 1960 the National Labor Relations Board ruled that Kohler had refused to bargain in good faith after the strike began, ordered it to reinstate 1,700 workers who were still out. Even so, it was two more years before management and labor could agree on a contract. Since then they have been acrimoniously deadlocked over the question of company compensation for the strikers, who had drawn some $12 million from the U.A.W. in strike benefits.

That last bitter issue was finally ironed out last week. Kohler agreed to pay some 1,400 former strikers a fat Christmas gift of $3,000,000 in back wages. The company will also fork over $1.5 million in pension-fund contributions. The settlement, tied to a new one-year contract, was sealed by U.A.W. Secretary-Treasurer Emil Mazey and Kohler Vice President Lyman C. Conger with a handshake. Despite the most extensive boycott campaign ever mounted by organized labor, the effect of the long dispute on the company was hardly shattering; Kohler today is still a leader in the industry, ranks third nationwide in annual sales.

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