Uncivil Servants

If there were any lingering hopes that the long era of labor peace might continue, they vanished last week. Hoping to catch up with double-digit inflation, a record number of workers were walking picket fines. The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service reported that more than 600 work stoppages --the most since the agency began keeping records 15 years ago--involving 230,000 workers were in progress.

National Airlines, the nation's tenth largest carrier, canceled all of its flights after the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers walked out July 15. In Lordstown, Ohio, production of Chevrolet Vegas was halted when a United Auto Workers' unit struck, and in Midland, Mich., a United Steelworkers' unit reached a tentative settlement of an 18-week work stoppage against Dow Chemical Co.

Bad Future. Bad as things looked, the future looks even worse. The 500,000-member Communications Workers of America turned down an offer by the Bell Telephone System of a 10% pay increase and authorized union locals to take a strike vote. In the vital coal industry, the opening salvos were fired in what seemed likely to become an all-out offensive by the United Mine Workers. The union briefly threatened to stage a nationwide work stoppage to pressure a subsidiary of North Carolina's Duke Power Co., which is resisting U.M.W. efforts to organize its workers.

U.M.W. President Arnold Miller will be negotiating his first contract when the current pact expires Nov. 12, and the pressure is on him to bring a big pay increase.

Perhaps most ominous, civil servants were showing a distinctly uncivil tendency to walk off their jobs. In Baltimore, the walkout by 3,000 trash collectors, jail guards, zookeepers and other city workers ended when the city and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees reached agreement on a new contract that made a mockery of Mayor William D. Schaefer's vow to hold pay increases to 6%. Garbage men's salaries will leap 20%%, from $3.42 an hour to $4.12, by July 1975, while policemen's will soar 22%, to a maximum of $ 13,500 a year.

The situation was also serious in Ohio, where 7,000 A.F.S.C.M.E. members and 3,000 other state employees represented by other unions walked off their jobs. The strike began after the state legislature went into summer recess without voting a 310-an-hour increase for the 81,000 state employees. The strikers were particularly incensed because Ohio racked up an $80.5 million budget surplus in the past fiscal year. As the A.F.S.C.M.E. vowed that it would "shut down the State of Ohio," the strike hit prisons, mental hospitals and state-controlled liquor stores. Fearing that the strike would close the state's 290 liquor stores, many Ohioans ventured into Indiana to stock up on potables. National Guardsmen who were dispatched to the maximum-security prison in Lucasville were unable to penetrate the massed pickets at the prison gates; the Guardsmen entered the penitentiary by helicopter.

The strike ended when a legislative committee allocated $22 million for pay raises, ranging from 300 an hour for 41,000 employees whose salaries were less than $8,000 a year, to 100 an hour for those making more than $12,000. The strikers reluctantly accepted the offer, but they warned that they would soon be back for another raise. Said Karl Stewart, executive secretary of the 30,000-member Ohio Civil Service Employees Association: * "This was just one battle. The war is still on."

Government employees have been growing increasingly militant for more than a decade. In 1960 there were only 15 strikes involving 1,700 federal, state and local workers, v. 375 strikes affecting 142,100 workers in 1972. The 700,000 member A.F.S.C.M.E. is the fastest-growing labor union, gaining 1,000 new members a week. Its leaders are lobbying hard in Congress for passage of a law that would guarantee public workers (except policemen and firemen) the right to strike. Meanwhile, an increasing number of local governments are in a predicament: in order to finance the pay boosts workers are demanding and getting, they have to raise taxes or face the possibility that garbage will not be collected and streets not be protected. As A.F.S.C.M.E. President Jerry Wurf has warned, "This is going to be a busy year. We've got a lot of catching up to do."

* The O.C.S.E.A. did not officially join the strike, although many of its members stayed off the job.

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