**Source:** THE NEW YORK TIMES
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Chief U.S. Mediator Moves Back Into Negotiations
By DAVID R. JONES
WASHINGTON, July 10–The Government’s top labor mediator moved back into the rubber industry, labor negotiations today, amid reports of progress in settling the industry’s 81-day-old strike.
William E. Simkin, director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, went to Columbus, Ohio, to keep an eye on bargaining there between the B.F. Goodrich Company and the striking United Rubber Workers.
A union official said that “real progress is being made” in the talks with Goodrich. Ward Keener, Goodrich president, also said progress was being made.
Meanwhile, the union set a strike deadline of 12:01 A.M. Thursday against the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, which employs 21,000 workers. The company has been operating on a day-to-day basis while negotiating a new contract to replace one that expired April 20.
The union struck Goodrich, the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company and Uniroyal, Inc., on that date and shut down the General Tire and Rubber Company several weeks later. About 54,000 workers have been made idle by the strike.
The signs of optimism for Mr. Simkin’s trip to Columbus was not disclosed, but there were signs of some optimism that a break might be near with Goodrich. Mr. Simkin called the union and the five companies together a few years ago in Pittsburgh in a bid for agreement, but that failed.
Informed sources said Goodrich and the union had resolved most of the important noneconomic contract items and were returning to the money issues throughout the weekend while other negotiations, carried on individually with each company, recessed yesterday.
All the companies had just reported to have offered the union a wage increase of 40 cents an hour, plus a supplemental unemployment benefit of 75 per cent of those laid off. Several offered 43 cents an hour and a 3 per cent layoff benefit.
The union’s new workers now average $3.68 an hour, while routine workers average $2.60.
A key union demand has been to raise the layoff benefit from the present 5.5 per cent to between 92.5 and 95 per cent.
The negotiations have been complicated by the presence of a new union president, Peter Bommarito, who was elected this year on a militant platform and has been under pressure to achieve big gains.