The Press THURSDAY, JANUARY 13, 1966. New York’s Transport Strike

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30957, 13 January 1966, Page 10

The Press THURSDAY, JANUARY 13, 1966. New York’s Transport Strike

It has been a bleak new year so far for New Yorkers, caught up in a mid-winter transport strike of paralysing proportions. It has also been a testing period for the new Republican city administration, especially for its leader, politically ambitious John Vliet Lindsay. Mr Lindsay, who won his way to the top civic office at the age of 44 years, took over from the retiring mayor, Mr Robert Wagner, on New Year’s Eve, and at midnight found himself locked in a trial of strength with the city’s most powerful union leader, Michael Joseph Quill. The 60-year-old Mr Quill, who had just broken off negotiations for a new contract for his 33,000-member Transport Workers’ Union, called the Mayor a “ pipsqueak ”, and announced that all public transport, subway and bus, would cease forthwith. Since New Year’s Day the strike has continued without sign of compromise by either side. Its consequences for the city’s economy have been described as catastrophic. The New York Commerce and Industry Association estimates that it is costing business, in all categories, about 100 million dollars a day.

Close observers see in this wasteful struggle a good deal more than a bid for a new deal for the transport workers. Its timing and certain domestic union factors suggest that Mr Quill is fighting a personal battle for power. His prestige and position within the union are being challenged by younger officers, anxious for more flexible and—in the rapidly-changing industrial scene—more realistic union-employer relations. Mr Quill, the theory runs, deliberately decided on a show of strength calculated .to impress not the union rank and file alone, but also the new, untried occupants of City Hall. The flat rejection of the new contract demands must have been expected at union headquarters. They included a pay increase amounting to 30 per cent; a four-day, 32-hour week to replace the current five-day, 40-hour week; six weeks for holidays after a year of employment instead of five weeks after 25 years; and retirement on half pay at the end of 25 years of service.

The Transit Authority, some 13 million dollars in debt and expecting a 43-million dollar deficit at the end of its fiscal year on June 30, dismissed the demands as fantastic. The chairman of the authority, Mr Joseph O’Grady, said they were not even made in good faith. In the past, when Mr Quill had bargained with the Wagner Administration, he knew that an adequate subsidy would be provided to meet cost increases. This time, however, Mr Wagner quite properly refused to commit his successor. In the outcome, all that Mr Lindsay got from the irascible Mr Quill was an ultimatum—a vastly improved contract, or a strike. At the final talks before the breakdown the Lindsay Administration did make an offer, worth about 25 million dollars, to the union. Mr Lindsay thought it a good starting point for bargaining. Mr Quill dismissed it contemptuously as a mere “ peanut package ” —and the strike was on.

As the crisis deepens, with President Johnson and the State Governor, Mr Rockefeller, offering assistance in resolving it, an alternative bargaining team is arguing the union’s case with Mr Lindsay and the Transit Authority. Mr Quill and eight of his executive officers were gaoled on the fifth day of the strike for defying a court order banning strike action; and from gaol Mr Quill, in a matter of hours, was removed to hospital in a state of collapse, his condition being described as “ serious but not “ critical ”, His absence from negotiation could strengthen the hands of those union moderates who know that attempts to bulldoze the Transit Authority into submission are bound to fail. Mr Quill’s militant play in transport union politics may prove to be his last. Yet. assuming that a new contract is written embodying no more than minor concessions by the authority, the strike will have spotlighted once more a problem that seems impossible of solution—that of putting public transport systems in large cities anywhere on an operable cost basis.