Labor Looks to Some Big Gains

Loss for inflation fighters

While Jimmy Carter was waging his diplomatic offensive in Europe, his home front troops continued to lose ground last week in the campaign against inflation. Barry Bosworth, chief of the Council on Wage and Price Stability, repeated that inflation will not be slowed until pay increases in major union settlements decline to 7%, from 10% in recent contracts. But 13 railway unions were busy wrapping up a much richer pact.

Four of the unions, covering 340,000 of the nation's 496,000 railway workers, signed a "memo of understanding" for a threeyear, 35% increase in wages and cost of living allowances. John Sytsma, president of the Locomotive Engineers, declared that his members had shown "admirable restraint" because they had originally asked for a 45% raise. Said Sytsma: "It's not quite fair to make labor the whipping boy for inflation."

Once again, Administration officials tried to say that this labor settlement would be an "exception," because they got into the rail negotiations only after most of management's offers were already on the table. In fact, the talks had been going on for ten months before the Wage and Price Council began to preach moderation. Bosworth, speaking with a refreshing candor that may start getting him into trouble, said the Administration had "fumbled," adding, "This negotiation is one that got away from us."

There can be no such excuses or explanations for the other pace-setting labor negotiation of 1978, covering 570,000 postal workers. Those talks should come to a climax this week, and Bosworth's jaw-boners have been in on them from the start. The unions demand a 14% increase in the first year of a two-year contract, well above the 5.5% that the Administration has recommended for federal employees. Postal workers already earn an average of $8 an hour, vs. $5.51 for private nonfarm workers, and they enjoy a "no layoff' clause that the Postal Service wants to modify but the union seems determined to preserve.

Some 4,000 postal workers, many from New York City branches that struck illegally in 1970, demonstrated noisily in front of Postal Service headquarters in Washington. Waving placards reading NO CONTRACT, NO WORK, they threatened to defy federal law and walk out if a settlement is not reached by the deadline this Thursday.

Carter's inflation fighters cannot afford another grossly inflationary settlement, after having lost earlier this year on the mine workers and then the railway men. If postal workers do, in fact, win a fat raise, it would not only lead to higher postage rates, but leave no hope of holding the line on the Teamsters, the Auto Workers, the Electrical Workers and Building and Construction Trades unions next year.

One top Administration official concedes that the White House does not have real links or leverage with labor. Says he: "We have much better lines to businessmen. They seem more willing to talk and to act, up to a certain point. Labor is more suspicious and thinks that we're antilabor. We're trying to improve our ties to labor, but we're not doing too well."

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