Beaten & Broke

At a New Jersey switchboard last week a tired man in a rumpled business suit flipped the key, patiently intoned: "Is this an emergency call?" An irritated woman's voice replied: "Of course it is. I think you are a very rude man. I don't think you deserve to get any more money."

He wouldn't. He was one of hundreds of top executives who had helped take over the boards when 340,000 National Federation of Telephone Workers walked out a month ago. But along with Bell's dial system and the thousands of nonstriking supervisors (who probably would benefit), his ability to keep the lines open was the reason N.F.T.W. was coming back to work this week--beaten, broke and dispirited.

With that kind of support A.T. & T.'s assistant vice president and chief negotiator, George S. Dring, had been able to stand rock-solid until the strike began to crumble. The first chunk had broken off when two Chicago affiliates kicked over the traces and returned for a $4-a-week raise. Then four independent New York unions settled for the same figure and went back through N.F.T.W. picket lines. When N.F.T.W. President Joe Beirne conceded the end of his hopes for an industry-wide settlement and disbanded his National Policy Committee, the 30-day walkout collapsed with a resounding crash.

Negotiator Dring promptly came to terms with 23,000 long-distance operators in 42 states for an average increase of $4.40, and the rush was on. Freed from policy-committee control, locals signed up all across the Midwest; with Southern Bell; with Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone in Maryland. By week's end nearly 50% of the strikers had agreed to weekly wage boosts averaging $3 to $4. Picket lines of Western Electric installation men still kept most of them from the job, still prolonged the official end of the strike, but for the N.F.T.W. it was all over.

This week N.F.T.W. officials were looking for some salvage in the wreck. Said one: "A.T. & T. was $2-minded. Without the strike we would have gotten the same $2 that Western Union got--a nickel an hour instead of a dime." But the fact was that N.F.T.W. had taken a bad licking, that it had been too poorly financed, too loosely organized to tackle as tough a nut as A.T. & T.

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