Sabotage in Tampa

Until this summer, hustling Tampa was cornering new industries and jobs at one of the fastest paces in Florida. Last week the palmy west coast metropolis was deep in economic crisis: its small businessmen moaned about the lack of business, its big stores drew slim responses from their ads, and payrolls were down by at least $1,000,000 a month. The six counties around Tampa are suffering from a strike against the General Telephone Co. of Florida --a strike with a bitter difference. In a wave of vandalism and sabotage unmatched in Florida's history, the 356,000 telephone subscribers in the area are gradually being cut off from each other and the outside world. As many as 59,000 phones at one time have been knocked out by sabotage, and most of Tampa's service has been affected.

Bad labor-management relations have been brewing ever since 1957, when General Telephone & Electronics, the nation's largest telephone company after the Bell System, bought up the gentle and folksy Peninsular Telephone Co. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers complained that General Telephone quickly moved to cut union benefits, dehumanized the company with its cost-slashing efficiencies. Florida's Railroad and Public Utilities Commission recently blamed General for cutting back service, and threatened fines unless it improved. Negotiating a new contract for 3,500 hourly workers this spring, management and labor found themselves far apart. Last month more than 3,000 operators, linemen and installer-repairmen walked out.

Sabotage began almost immediately. Coin box slots were stuffed with chewing gum or wax. Cables were cut or damaged with rifles, shotguns, dynamite and axes; a row of 22 telephone poles was neatly cut down with a power saw. Fortnight ago in St. Petersburg, a dynamite charge under a bridge ripped apart an 1800-wire cable, and last week 9,000 families in Lakeland lost phone service when seven cables were cut. Though supervisory people man telephone equipment and make repairs, sabotage often cuts off service to one area before it can be restored in another. Among the cut lines were those serving fire stations, doctors and MacDill Air Force Base.

Working jointly, sheriffs of the six counties and the FBI are trying to run down the saboteurs, but so far have made only a handful of arrests. General Telephone has offered a $5,000 reward for information leading to the capture of the vandals; the union has countered with a $10,000 reward--if they proved to be management hired. Spurred by growing public pressure for a settlement, company and union were crawling only slowly toward the kind of communication necessary to end the dispute.

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