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Vol. 76/No. 21      May 28, 2012

 
25, 50, and 75 Years Ago

May 29, 1987

DALLAS—Three hundred flight attendants and their supporters marched through the downtown area here last month in their fight to win a better contract at American Airlines. The workers are members of the Association of Professional Flight Attendants.

Their main demand is an end to the two-tier pay scale the airline instituted in 1983. Under this system, “A-scale” attendants are paid about $25,000 a year while the base pay for “B-scale” attendants begins at under $12,000. Over 40 percent of the 10,000 union members are B-scalers. Under the current contract, it takes 15 years to reach A-scale.

The airline recently fired 20 attendants for passing out literature at the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport critical of American’s safety practices. The union is fighting the firings in court.

May 28, 1962

A wildcat strike at the Waldorf-Astoria—America’s most famous luxury hotel—threw a brief but penetrating light on the state of much of the union movement in the U.S. today.

The revolt at the Waldorf started at a $75-a-plate banquet sponsored by a committee of philanthropists. The usual procedure is for the committee to pay a percentage of the dinner’s cost for the waiters’ tip, but sometimes that arrangement is not made. The waiters would have to pass a basket at the end of the meal, a procedure they resented.

The 120 waiters disappeared from the Grand Ballroom leaving 1,400 guests to listen to speeches on empty stomachs. After 90 minutes of negotiation, the waiters returned. [They] won a straight 12 percent of cost for tips and a written agreement that there would be no reprisals against participants in the walkout.

May 1, 1937

The Supreme Court has finally acted on the five cases before it which involved the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Act, usually referred to as the Wagner Bill.

The Bill provides that there shall be no discrimination against union members and that representatives of the majority of the workers in a given plant shall have sole bargaining powers.

Labor will have to rely upon its own strength, while utilizing the opportunity afforded by the decisions to organize and consolidate its forces. It is true that the boss who has exhausted the legal angles will have to forego his golf in order to sit around the table with workers’ representatives and “negotiate,” but there is nothing in the law that compels him to reach an agreement. A stoppage of production will prove to be a far more persuasive argument in the negotiations.  
 
 
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