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- <text id=91TT0911>
- <title>
- Apr. 29, 1991: Business Notes:Labor
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1991
- Apr. 29, 1991 Nuclear Power
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- BUSINESS, Page 65
- Business Notes
- LABOR
- Casey Jones Walks Out
- </hdr><body>
- <p> In the age of the space shuttle, American industry still
- livesby the stodgier, workaday technology of the railroad. The
- proof: less than 24 hours after 235,000 railworkers went on
- strike last week against the nation's major freight rail
- companies, Congress, at the urging of President Bush, ordered
- the strikers back to work. Bush defended the action, saying that
- "the strike would cripple the economy and adversely affect
- national security." Some half million workers in the automobile
- and other rail-dependent industries faced layoffs within days
- of the aborted job action.
- </p>
- <p> The railroad industry and 11 unions have been bargaining
- for years over wages, work rules and health care. Tentative
- agreements were reached with only three unions just before the
- strike deadline. In January a bipartisan board created by the
- White House called for salary hikes accompanied by increases in
- the mileage that crews must travel for a day's pay and in worker
- contributions to health-plan costs. Most unions opposed the
- board's recommendations as promanagement. That may not matter.
- A new board is being set up with the power, so far uninvoked,
- to impose a settlement.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
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