The union had been negotiating a contract since last October. The company stalled agreement while it pushed through a new fare rise, the seventh in five years. Finally the union set a strike deadline for Jan. 13.

Mayor Clark called both sides together for a final try. The company raised its bid a few cents and union officials declared their acceptance.

Assuming acceptance of the settlement by the membership, officials permitted the union meeting to be broadcast over the airwaves. They were in for a big shock. The members turned out waving the newspapers announcing the settlement on which they had not yet voted and which they did not approve.

President O’Rourke’s assertion that it was "the best contract the local ever had" was met by a storm of boos. Every official who tried to "sell" the contract was shouted down while rank and file pleas for action were applauded.

Finally, recognizing that there was no brooking the will of the meeting, a vote was called. It was almost unanimous for strike.

Immediately almost every possible pressure was brought to bear on the men. The Mayor and the company threatened to withdraw their offer. [National union president] Quill blasted the meeting as "anarchy" and "not democratic unionism."

The local leadership declared a secret ballot was necessary. Despite the extreme pressure, one-third voted to stay out. The membership was forced back to work with an unpopular agreement. They will not forget this instructive experience when elections and the next contract negotiations roll around.

January 27, 1978
The New York Post’s banner headline read: "Happy Warrior is Dead at 66." A more accurate tag for Hubert Horatio Humphrey would have been "cold warrior," or "warrior against the Vietnamese people."

Hubert Humphrey was a prime architect and defender of American imperialist foreign policy. He bears a large share of the historical guilt for the massacre of countless thousands of Vietnamese--to mention only the worst of many crimes.

As Lyndon Johnson’s vice-president, he was the country’s most ardent war booster, making hundreds of speeches all over the world in defense of American aggression.

By 1967, the "happy warrior" was really exuberant. "This is our great adventure, and a wonderful one it is," he told staff members of the American Embassy in Saigon.

Although Humphrey managed to create a civil libertarian image for himself, his record shows him to have been an enemy of civil liberties. The clearest evidence of this occurred in 1950, when he worked to amend the infamous McCarran Act to set up concentration camps for dissenters during wartime. Six of these camps were actually constructed but never used.

Hubert Humphrey died a Democrat after more than three decades of absolutely loyal service to the American ruling class. That is why the capitalist press is now trying to make him a saint.  
 
 
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