Troubled Week

Strikes knifed through the nation's network of 22 million telephones last week. In 44 states, long distance and overseas service was paralyzed. In many a city or town which still has manual phones, local calls were spotty or completely cut off.* Executives and clerical workers, trying to man the switchboards (see cut), fell hopelessly behind the blinking lights.

Root of the confusion was a labor-management dispute involving only 8,000 men--members of the Association of Communications Equipment Workers, who install switchboard equipment for the Bell System. They wanted a long-sought raise of $6 a week, plus a promise to negotiate a postwar increase. When their demands were turned down, they walked out, threw a picket line around any telephone exchange they found handy. Most of the 25,000 long-lines operators and some local operators refused to cross the line.

This week the National Federation of Telephone Workers, whose 263,000 members include more than half of all Bell employes, decided to stop just sympathizing and call its own strike. But it put the deadline 30 days away. For the time being, most telephones were back in order.

From Busses to Caskets. Across the whole labor front, it was a troubled week.

No Greyhound busses ran out of Birmingham, no meat was delivered in Albany, no caskets made at the Tennessee Coffin & Casket Co. Boston, home of the cod, was low on fish because of a fishermen's dispute. The strike of 3,000 A.F. of L. machinists at Stamford's Yale & Towne Mfg. Co. was in its third month. In seven states, workers at Libby-Owens and Pittsburgh Plate Glass plants stayed away for the twelfth straight week, crippling the supply of glass to auto manufacturers not beset with strikes of their own.

In the biggest strike--the 55-day-old walkout at General Motors--there was a ray of hope. President Truman's factfinder recommended a 19 1/2-c--an-hour increase. The company promptly turned it down, but the union approved on the condition that G.M. accept by Jan. 21. This was the date of the new steel-strike deadline. If steel is settled by then (see below), G.M. and the auto workers might also get together.

*65% of the nation's telephones are dial and were not affected on local calls. A great majority of the 123 cities with 100,000 population or over are from 80% to 100% dial. In Chicago (50% dial), all operators manning switchboards stayed at work. Camden, NJ. was the only city with 100% manual phones where all operators struck.

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