You Can't Heat City Hall

Sweden's ingratiating young King Carl Gustaf had traveled almost halfway around the world to visit San Francisco, and while he had a blast (see PEOPLE), he was disappointed to find that the city's legendary cable cars were out of service. The buses and trolleys were not running either. All three city museums, the zoo, the municipal swimming pools and golf courses were closed. The King could not even meet Mayor George Moscone, who had been holed up in his office in city hall for two weeks--refusing to cross the picket lines that ringed the building.

Indeed, pickets seemed to be nearly everywhere in the city. Three weeks ago 1,900 municipal transit workers walked off their jobs. They did so in support of 1,779 city craft workers (including plumbers, electricians, carpenters and sanitation men) who struck March 31 when the city froze their pay and reduced their benefits. The city wants to pay plumbers $20,150, but they are holding out for $21,500. Gardeners would get $17,330 instead of the $21,000 they want, and electricians would collect $16,620, not the $21,620 they hope for. City residents voted 2 to 1 last November to set the salaries of certain city employees, including craft workers, at rates comparable to pay for similar jobs in other California cities--not, as in the past, to wages paid in private industry. To add to San Francisco's misery, drivers for Yellow Cab, the city's largest fleet, were also on strike for a while. By week's end, however, their walkout was settled, slightly easing the transportation scarcity.

San Franciscans have endured two municipal employees' strikes in the past two years (the most recent was a three-day-long police and firemen's walkout last August), and were ready to cope. Traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge was tied up for extended rush hours but never hopelessly snarled. Some 500,000 regular users of city transportation (including thousands of schoolchildren) had to find another way to get to their destinations. Most hiked or biked uncomplainingly up the city's hills. But more than a third of the student body was absent because some school-bus service had been curtailed. When boilers broke down, many schools went without heat. Some city fountains were overflowing because there was no one to repair them, and burst water mains went unattended. Streets were dirty, and uncollected garbage piled up.

The 30,000 city housing project residents were having the roughest time, because their maintenance men were out. Eleven of the 44 projects were without heat, hot water or both as the city's temperatures dipped to 46DEG F. on the coldest nights. Sarcastically, one crippled pensioner snarled at two picketing plumbers: "The poor babies, I really feel sorry for them, especially when I'm shaving in cold water. We have to live on $300 a month, and these guys live on $24,000 a year." But not all the citizenry was so truculent. One elderly San Franciscan strolling down Market Street seemed delighted: "This town is so lovely without all those noisy buses, trams and cable cars. Why, it's like it was Sunday every day."

Blackjack Games. As 300 strikers picketed city hall last week, a scuffle broke out between them and office workers who tried to cross the lines. A city worker was punched by strikers as he crossed a picket line, a municipal judge was thrown to the sidewalk, and police finally had to form a 30-man cordon to allow nonstrikers in to work. No one was seriously hurt, but three pickets were arrested.

Labor Secretary W.J. Usery dispatched James Scearce as a federal mediator between the San Francisco board of supervisors and the local AFL-CIO labor council, which has called for a general strike if the bargaining breaks down. Scearce's arrival so greatly cheered Moscone that he finally left his city hall office, where he had been subsisting on coffee and takeout Chinese food, sleeping on a cot, and whiling away late-night hours in marathon blackjack games with aides. City hall itself had been without heat during the strike, and there was no hot water in the shower just off Moscone's office. With federal help on the scene, the mayor felt that he could in good conscience go home to see his wife and four children--and take a nice hot shower.

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