Nobody Wins a Strike

August 17, 1959

The losses suffered through a strike—by the companies, by consumers, by the country, by the strikers themselves-are obvious to nearly everyone. Why, then, are there strikes? Surely there must be a gain somewhere—at least to the strikers, assuming they “win”—that more than makes up for all the anxiety and hardships and losses suffered.

This at least is the assumption on which strikes are called. But it is amazing how seldom this assumption is subjected to statistical test; how seldom, either before, during, or after a strike, anybody bothers to draw up a profit-and-loss sheet. Yet in most cases this calculation would not be difficult. It is already clear, for example, that even if the present steel strikers won their full demands, they would still be worse off than if they had not struck.

David J. McDonald’s final demand was for an increase of about 15 cents an hour. But the steelworkers in May, according to official statistics, were already being paid $3.10 an hour and $127.10 a week. The addition of 15 cents an hour would add about $6 a week. This means that it would require more than twenty weeks of work at the increased wage to make up the loss from each week of strike idleness. When the present strike had run two and a half weeks, therefore, the workers had already lost as much as they could make up by a full year’s work, even after a “complete victory.” And as the companies had merely suggested a one-year wage freeze, this means that the strikers are already worse off than if their leaders had accepted the companies’ offer.

LOSSES NEVER MADE UP

Such a calculation is, of course, necessarily to some extent hypothetical, comparing actualities with might-have-beens. It would change with different assumptions regarding the future. But a survey of the actual gains and losses of previous steel strikes since the end of World War II shows that the steel strikers themselves have lost heavily on net balance from every prolonged strike, even when they “won.”

In the steel strike of 1956 each worker lost about $600 in wages as a result of six weeks’ idleness. Even at the end of the three-year contract that he won he made up only $190 of this, leaving him about $400 worse off than if he had not struck.

The 1952 strike was over the issue of a union shop, and not over wages. The strike continued for seven weeks after the companies had offered the wage increase which was finally accepted. During these seven weeks the total wage loss was $595 per worker. Even after deducting one-month additional retroactive pay granted by the companies, and an average of two weeks’ vacation pay collected by some employees for the strike period, there remained a $395 loss which they never recovered.

KEEPING A SCORECARD

In the 1949 strike, the loss of previous average weekly earnings of $64.49 over a seven-week period meant a loss of $454.93 per employee. But as there were no wage increases granted even after the strike, this loss was never made up.

In the 1946 strike, the loss of $53.06 of previous weekly wages for more than four weeks meant a loss of $219.67 per employee. Prior to the strike the companies had offered a 15-cent-an-hour increase if they were allowed to raise steel prices. The intervention of President Truman forced the companies to pay an 18½- cent increase, or 3½ cents an hour more, for a one-year contract. This meant that at the end of a full year’s work at a 40-hour week the steelworkers had earned back only $72.80 additional, and were still about $146 worse off than if they had not struck.

In the four major postwar steel strikes (excluding the twelve-hour strike of 1955) the total direct loss in wages to all the strikers, it can be calculated, came to more than $830 million, most of which was never recovered by the strike “gains.”

Nobody wins a prolonged strike. The strikers lose most of all, even when “victorious.” The union leader, of course, gets in the headlines. He strikes Napoleonic poses and displays his immense power. But if the union members kept a score card, it would considerably change their attitude toward melodramatic strike calls.