Elevators Not Running

For five and a half days--a full working week--hundreds of thousands of Manhattan's skyscraper office workers were grounded. In 2,100 buildings, 16,600 elevator operators and service employes were out on strike.

It took only the first hour to make Manhattan realize the importance of elevators in its vertical, hurly-burly business life. While workers twiddled their thumbs, some nervously, some happily, mail and express packages piled up. Postal men knelt in the littered lobbies and handed out mail to clerks and executives they knew; express agencies had to halt deliveries. There was little extensive stair-climbing.

It was a carefully planned strike. First the workers were called out in a midcity area embracing the bee-busy garmentmaking district. Then the walkout was gradually extended until it paralyzed most of commercial Manhattan. Pickets walked back & forth quietly; there was no disorder. But millions of dollars worth of business was snarled. (Notably, garment makers in other cities began to gobble up some of Manhattan's markets.)

The Mayor & the Governor. The strikers, led by double-chinned, mild-talking David Sullivan, onetime Irish Republican Army soldier and president of Local 32-6 of the Building Service Employes International Union, A.F. of L., were disgruntled at a WLB wage-&-hour ruling. A WLB panel had recommended hourly wage increases that, with shorter hours, would have kept weekly take-home pay at $30 to $35. But WLB modified the recommendations: the union said the Board's ruling would mean take-home pay of only $28 to $32.50. As is often the case when WLB decisions go against a union, the impatient elevator operators decided to go out and get more on their own hook.

As business slowed down to a walk, hen-shaped, huffy-puffy Mayor LaGuardia appealed to the strikers to go back to their jobs. Nothing happened. Then Governor Tom Dewey spoke up. Said he, with the first official firmness shown anywhere in the strike-racked U.S.: "I call upon your organizations to resume operation of the struck buildings and to submit your differences to an impartial arbitrator." Tom Dewey demanded an immediate answer--and got it.

Promptly the building managers agreed. And then, surprisingly, so did the union. A few members rebelled, angrily stomped into Sullivan's office (second floor) to protest. But the strike leader sent out the word, "The strike is over." Said he, apologetically: "We were hurting our best friends--the garment workers."

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