Top Troubleshooter

Talks between men's suit makers and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers had reached an impasse that moved the normally peaceful union to launch its first strike in 53 years. Then W.J. ("Bill") Usery Jr., director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, stepped in. Knocking labor and management heads together during three days of protracted bargaining sessions, he coaxed the two sides to make peace. The new pact, ratified by 90% of the union's members last week, will raise hourly wages from $3.60 to $4.60 over the next three years, provide an escalator to protect the purchasing power of the wages, and substantially sweeten pensions.

It was a routine performance for Usery (pronounced Us-ery), who in five years in Washington has solved more than a score of seemingly intractable disputes. Among his coups: settlements of airline, railroad and postal strikes, and an agreement that stopped violent highway protests by independent truckers during the energy crisis.

Now Usery faces his biggest challenge. Already, the 483-member FMCS is having to mediate more strikes than at any time since it started keeping records in 1959. Last week Usery himself was involved not only in the clothing strike, but also in helping to arrange a settlement of a 116-day walkout staged by 7,600 workers against Whirlpool Corp. in Evansville, Ind. More trouble looms later this year in critical coal and longshore negotiations. Says Usery: "There is now under way a tremendous pressure for higher wages to come to grips with inflation and for cost-of-living adjustments." He adds, "No contract is going to make it without these ingredients." Usery, 50, is a big, backslapping former welder from Georgia, with folksy charm and an almost uncanny knack for sensing areas of agreement between negotiators who have been cursing each other out. Before joining the Government, first as an Assistant Secretary of Labor and since last year as head of the mediation service, he was a regional coordinator for the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. When tempers get short in a bargaining session, he is quite willing to let both sides take out their anger on him. Says he: "If they want to make me into a pissing post, that's O.K. if it's necessary for a settlement."

Too Tired. Usery also has an incredible store of energy that enables him to keep bargaining sessions going so long that the disputants become simply too tired to fight any more. Example: during the impassioned, politically charged 1973 Philadelphia teachers' strike, Usery kept one session going for 32 hours, called a three-hour break, then resumed the bargaining. "We felt even worse after the nap," one participant recalls, "but Usery looked just great. The thought of having to go another 32 hours was so appalling that a new atmosphere of work settled over the room." That session produced an agreement--20 hours later.

Usery, a Democrat, is about the only top Administration official who gets along well with the leaders of the AFL-CIO. Last year he accepted an offer to become the AFL-ClO's director of organization and field services, the No. 3 job in the union hierarchy and a position that would make him a candidate to succeed President George Meany. He changed his mind when President Nixon appointed him to be a special assistant for labor relations. Some union leaders would like to see Usery become Secretary of Labor because the incumbent Peter J. Brennan has, among other things, opposed minimum-wage legislation that big labor favored. Should Brennan stay on, though, Usery would still be the Administration's top labor troubleshooter, and for the foreseeable future that promises to be more than a full-time job.

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