**Date:** 6-7-67
**Source:** Unknown
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The five major rubber com-panies have offered a single package wage, pension and wel-fare proposal estimated to cost more than 60 cents an hour over a three year period to the United Rubber Workers Union, it was reported today. A breakdown of the proposal shows the contract will call for a pay boost of 38 cents an hour for tire workers and 31 cents for none-tire workers. This offer is being studied by URW negotiators. A settlement of the 47-day old strike, if it comes, is considered unlikely before tomorrow. The contract-renewal plan, lumping together the first time in the industry pension and welfare benefits with wage in-creases, was proposed by Uni-royal, Goodyear and Fire-stone Monday. Goodrich and General Tire joined the move yesterday. Present three-year pension and welfare contracts aren’t due to expire until September. But the proximity ofthe two rounds of negotiations was said to be blocking a wage agreement alone. Evidence increased last week, however, that the union had become less adamant about keeping the two contracts separate. A three-year contract as pro-posed by the companies, rather than a two-year offer, might still be an obstacle to an early settlement. The proposed pay boosts for tire workers would break down to 16 cents an hour the first year with 11 cent increases in each of the two succeeding years. Other production work-ers (this is of interest locally) pay rates would be raised 13 cents the first year and nine cents each of the two following years. The proposed package, in-cluding pension and welfare benefits, would amount to an hourly increase of about five per cent. Peter Bommarito, president of the International URW, re-jected a previous proposal which would boost the pay rate of the workers 23-1/2 cents an hour and non-tire workers 18 cents an hour over two years. He termed this boost as inade-quate and only about 2-1/2 per cent. Under the new proposal, the companies would lift the pen-sion payments, both for new and retired to $5.25 a month each year of service, and in-crease of $2 from the present $3.25. Improvements are also included for insurance and va-cations as well as broader pay-boost differentials for skilled tradesmen workers who per-form maintenance tasks on rubber goods production equip-ment. This had been a key issue in the URW contract de-mands. Further liberalization is also included in the contract propo-sal for supplementary unem-ployment benefit payments. The amount wasn’t disclosed, but it is understood that it fell short of the URW bid. Talks between the union and companies negotiating teams, will be recessed today so that the package can be studied and to permit union officers to at-tend the funeral of Garnet L. Patterson, URW general coun-sel, who died Saturday. It is doubtful, however, that the propo-sal will be accepted without several counter proposals be-