Word: contract
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Morton Thiokol, the company that built the booster rockets for the space shuttle Challenger, has decided to retreat from its long and painful association with the shuttle program. Last week the Chicago-based aerospace and chemical firm said it would decline to bid for the $1.5 billion NASA contract to build motors for the shuttle's next generation of solid-fuel boosters...
Thiokol's stated rationale is to concentrate on correcting flaws in the current booster model, which will be phased out starting in 1994. Company officials may also have concluded that Congress would be reluctant to award another contract to a company that was partly to blame for the 1986 explosion that killed seven passengers...
...strong bid with Debbie Gibson, 17. She may sing like a Muppet baby, but her first album has already fostered four Top Five singles. Capitol counters with Tracie Spencer, 12, whose first album came out last month, while A&M has Shanice Wilson, 15, who landed her record contract by winning a talent contest. Even Tracy Chapman, 24, a singer-songwriter out of Boston, sounds like a flashback. Her warmly praised debut album resounds with high purpose, in marked contrast to the growing legions of pube rockers, but to anyone who actually made it through the '60s, Chapman writes protest...
...nearby International Paper mill; others, despite the weather, will report for the afternoon. The union was locked out of one IP plant in Alabama 15 months ago and went on strike last June at three mills -- the one in Jay and two others in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin -- because of contract disputes. Despite the length of the strike, the members are hanging tough: only 5% of the 3,500 affected employees have returned to their jobs, even though the company has hired replacement workers. The strikers' hopes in a seemingly hopeless cause focus on one man: Ray Rogers, the tenacious labor...
Another factor in Ford's surge is a new spirit of cooperation between labor and management. Last September the United Auto Workers union, which represents 104,000 Ford employees, agreed to accept a contract that calls for a moderate average wage increase of 3% this year. The pact includes concessions by both sides. The union said it would help Petersen achieve his goal of creating more Japanese-style teamwork. In exchange, Ford agreed to a provision that bars the company from laying off workers in all but the sharpest of economic downturns. Says Ford Executive Vice President Philip Benton...