U.S.W. Brawls, U.A.W Harmony

UNIONS U.S.W. Brawla, U.A.W. Harmony

The leadership posts in major unions are among the most powerful positions in the U.S., coveted by a host of aspirants. But there is no one way to win them, as the diametrically opposed situations in two giant unions illustrate. The 1.4 million-member United Steelworkers is enmeshed in a mudslinging, red-baiting election campaign, while the United Auto Workers, also 1.4 million strong, last week effectively chose a new chief in an atmosphere of total harmony. Details:

Sadlowski v. McBride

Both are Steelworkers, and both are running for the presidency of the United Steelworkers of America, the largest union in the AFL-CIO. There ends all similarity between Ed Sadlowski and Lloyd McBride. Sadlowski is 38, a scrappy Pole, a third-generation "mill rat" who feels that U.S.W.'s leadership is too close to employers and too distant from the rank and file. McBride is balding, 60, grandfatherly, a lackluster speaker, a defender of the status quo--and the apparent front runner. McBride has one thing going for him that Sadlowski does not: the backing of I.W. Abel, who retires in June as the union's $75,000-a-year president.

Not since 1965, when Abel defeated David McDonald by a gossamer 10,000 votes, has the contest for the 1.4 million-man union's top job been so embittered. Since last fall, when Sadlowski announced his candidacy (TIME, Sept. 20), both sides have traded vicious verbal blows, and sometimes physical ones: a Sadlowski volunteer was shot through the neck while handing out leaflets in Houston. The battle has spilled over into the courts. Three weeks ago, McBride filed a suit charging that Sadlowski had received illegal campaign contributions from employers in other industries; last week Sadlowski countered by filing a libel suit against McBride.

The contest will end Feb. 8, when the union's members cast ballots in 5,360 U.S.W. local halls in the U.S. and Canada. Officials of the U.S. Department of Labor will tally the vote in Pittsburgh and announce the winner. That falls short of Sadlowski's demand that the Government run the election outright to guard against fraud. His fear of chicanery is understandable; in 1973 he ran for the job of U.S.W. district director in Chicago and Gary and was originally declared the loser. But under Government supervision the election was rerun and Sadlowski won by 2 to 1.

The Abel-McBride forces charge Sadlowski with radicalism. McBride is careful not to call Sadlowski a Communist. "I don't really know whether he is or isn't a Communist," McBride said at a Pittsburgh rally last week. "But I do know he's in bed with left-wingers."

Sadlowski has the backing of Ralph Nader, Victor Reuther (brother of the late Walter), liberal Economist John Kenneth Galbraith and General Motors Heir Stewart Mott, who gives money to liberal causes. Most established labor chiefs, like George Meany, head of the AFL-CIO, oppose Sadlowski.

Sadlowski bristles at McBride's charges, which to him seem schizophrenic. Says he: "In one breath they say I'm supported by Communists, and in the next breath they say I'm supported by bankers." He has called McBride a "pathological liar" for "brazenly distorting, twisting, misquoting the things I say." He charges that the union has grown undemocratic and unresponsive to its members and that it has supinely allowed jobs to be lost to automation. Sadlowski calls McBride's style "tuxedo unionism."

Complains J. Bruce Johnston, U.S. Steel's vice president for labor relations, who will have to negotiate a new steelworkers contract this year: "This campaign thus far has been superficial, based on personalities rather than issues." But there is at least one crucial issue--the Experimental Negotiating Agreement, which bans strikes over money by steelworkers when their contract with the mills runs out. If the two sides cannot agree on a new pact, their dispute goes before impartial arbitrators. McBride says he wants to see how E.N.A. works out in this year's bargaining before deciding whether to extend it. Sadlowski denounces E.N.A. as "contrary to my concept of the trade union movement" and goes on to attack the very idea that arbitrators can be impartial. Says Sadlowski: "Who are they? Lawyers, professors, doctors. How can you tell me that a lawyer making $100,000 a year is capable of relating to steelworkers earning $15,000? They ought to have a housewife as arbitrator."

For all Sadlowski's fire, McBride's current lead is likely to hold. Sadlowski's support comes from basic steelworkers, who make up less than 40% of the union's constituents. Others among the diverse membership--barbers, cemetery laborers, workers on mushroom farms--do not feel the heat of blast furnaces and are less impassioned than Sadlowski, more content with the Abel-McBride style of leadership. But even if he does lose, Sadlowski will have made the point that younger union leaders are on the rise, some day to replace the old guard. They are likely to be less pliant than their elders and more forceful when speaking up for the rank and file.

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