Jan. 1. Some 60,000 oil industry workers will be in a position to strike on New Year's Day if necessary, says OCAW. This puts the union in its strongest negotiating position in sev­eral years, says OCAW president Alvin F. Grospiron, and provides "an opportunity that obviously we do not intend to waste."

In addition to guaranteed employ­ment, OCAW wants an increase of 18 cents an hour on Jan. 1, 1967, and another 18 cents on Jan. 1, 1968. It wants 6 cents of the 1967 increase to be applied to medical-hospitalization insurance plans. It also wants em­ployers to correct inequities created in wage, retirement age, and vacations by the 1964 negotiations. This would mean an extra 2% wage increase at some companies, optional retirement at full benefits for all oil workers be­tween the ages of 62 and 65, and an­nual vacations of two weeks after one year, three weeks after five, four weeks after 10, and five weeks after 20.

DSM fights chemical combine Is amalgamation of its leading chemi­cal firms into a single combine the Netherlands' best answer to competi­tion by the international giants? Speculation was set off last summer when D. de Jong, Koninklijke Zout-Ketjen's chairman, told the Verenig-ing van de Nederlandse Chemische Industrie (the Dutch Chemical Indus­try Association) that this would be the best method of strengthening the country's chemical industry. Com­bining KZK, Koninklijke Zwanenberg-Organon, and Algemene Kunstzijde Unie, for example, would represent almost a quarter of the $2.3 billion annual sales of the Dutch chemical industry. He pointed to Shell's Dutch chemical subsidiary and Dutch State Mines as two major obstacles in com­bining the largest chemical firms.

Rumors of merger talk were rein­forced when Mr. de Jong repeated his views at a KZK shareholders' meeting last month, though he emphasized that a Dutch chemical combine was his own view of the best tack to take, and not a prediction.

DSM has now poured more cold water on prospects of an imminent round of mergers. Dr. A. C. J. Rottier, chairman of its board of managing di­rectors, has come out against a "get­ting together neurosis" in the indus­try. Speaking to the Netherlands As­sociation of Industry and Trade meet­ing in Amsterdam, he said the fore­most point of such a merger should be that the resulting whole be greater than its parts.

There should, he said, be logical and attractive points of contact be-

Dr. A. C. J. Rottier "Getting together" neurosis

tween the product lines of the compa­nies involved. (AKU is mainly a fiber maker, KZK a producer of heavy chemicals and fertilizers, KZO a maker of chemical specialties.) Merger of DSM with other chemical firms is "not an obvious choice" to Dr. Rottier.

The company was originally formed to develop coal mining in Limburg province. Its chemical division now accounts for 50% of total sales and all of the company's profits. Heavy in­volvement in converting Limburg's economy from mining to manufactur­ing as coal and coke operations are phased out makes any merger pro­posals now "highly inconvenient."

But the door is still open to other forms of cooperation with other Dutch chemical makers. Pointing out that DSM has cooperative arrangements with British and U.S. firms, Dr. Rottier concludes that similar agreements could be reached at home.

Japan fears freer outside funds Liberalizing controls over direct for­eign investment in Japan would have a "substantially great" impact on the economy, according to 64 of 80 firms polled recently by the Nihon Keizai Shimbun (Japan Economic Journal) and the Japan Economic Research Center. Fourteen companies in the chemical and automobile industries feel capital liberalization will have a "very grave" impact. Only one firm sees the effect as negligible. Twelve firms in the chemical, electrical, and automobile industries look for effects on the economy within one or two years following decontrol, according to the survey. But 64 others feel it will take three or four years.

Various administrative controls and

procedures now limit foreign invest­ment in Japan, with a very few ex­ceptions, to no more than 50 % own­ership. Japan is being urged by the U.S. and other countries to liberalize capital movement in accordance with her obligations as a member of the Organization for Economic Coopera­tion and Development (C&EN, July 11, page 22) .

The survey is one of the latest ex­amples of Japanese thinking on for­eign investment. Since the U.S.­Japan ministerial conference in Kyoto last July, some Japanese industry and government officials have practically fallen over themselves trying to as­sess the effect of capital liberalization, using polls, surveys, and studies of one kind and another. One study pro­posed recently by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) is aimed at taking a look at some 15 foreign firms in chemicals and allied products, such as Du Pont, ICI, and Bayer, to ascertain their "at­titude" and their "strategies."

The Japanese fear of foreign capi­tal, says one Tokyo-based U.S. chem­ical executive, is Japan's neurosis; the question more often than not may in­volve emotions more than economics.

Meanwhile, no very rapid progress seems likely. Statements from Japa­nese government and industry repre­sentatives usually contain phrases about "not opposing capital liberaliza­tion in principle" but suggesting that immediate decontrol would be "pre­mature" and that measures be taken on a "step-by-step basis."

ISA features process control Electricity and computers continue to exert a strong influence on new devel­opments in process control instru­ments. The latest evidence: a com­pletely redesigned line of electronic instruments from Foxboro, computer-set control stations from Moore Prod­ucts, and differential-pressure trans­mitters from General Electric and Leeds & Northrup, some of the many new instruments introduced last week at the Instrument Society of America's 21st Annual Conference and Exhibit, in New York City.

Electricity is still the minority me­dium in process control. Even the most optimistic estimates give elec­tronic analog instruments only an even split with pneumatics. But the advan­tages of electronics—primarily their compatibility with computers—as well as the steady growth of computer con­trol portend a future dominated by instruments that generate and handle electrical signals.

For the handling aspect, Foxboro has redesigned its Consotrol line of

OCT. 31, 1966 C&EN 25