Word: firemen
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Campaigning in Manila, for instance, attractive Imelda Marcos one day announced supercheap prices for chickens in four public markets; the next day she granted 10% pay raises to 10,800 street sweepers, as well as thousands of policemen, firemen and schoolteachers. Addressing the vast throng gathered at the Luneta bandstand, she promised the construction of more markets, a sports center, railway system and hospitals. "These are all in the planning stage," the First Lady explained pointedly. "They will materialize only if the national government under President Marcos continues...
Perhaps. But in Britain last week, firemen were the ultimate sidewalk superintendents, watching flames engulf the buildings that they normally try to save. For the first time in its 59-year history, the British Fire Brigades Union had called a nationwide strike, ordering the country's 32,000 full-time firemen not to answer alarms. The government of Prime Minister James Callaghan rushed in 10,000 soldiers, most of whom had received only a few days training in rudimentary fire fighting. At week's end 33 Royal Air Force fire teams were dispatched to 13 cities...
...strikers, who earn $121 a week after four years service, demanded a 20% pay hike that would, the union claims, boost their salaries to the current average wage for Britain's industrial workers plus a 10% bonus for hazardous duty. (New York City firemen with similar experience make $385 a week.) But to combat Britain's inflation rate, now 15.6% annually, Callaghan's Labor government has set a 10% ceiling on all union pay increases over the next year...
Though many Britons expressed sympathy for the firemen's cause, their patience is bound to be tried if the strike drags on. In Glasgow, a fire in a textile factory got away from a company of 80 troops and raged for twelve hours. The building burned to the ground. As soldiers stood by helplessly without enough foam spreaders and breathing equipment which strikers had refused to hand over, a 30-hour blaze engulfed a $140 million power plant east of London...
...some firemen, picket duty took second place to heroic professionalism in the face of sudden danger. When troopers failed to check a blaze spreading through London's St. Andrew's Hospital, six strikers donned breathing equipment and rushed into the burning building. "For God's sake, it was a hospital," said one. "This was no time for striking." At week's end, with no settlement in sight, it looked as if the main thing separating Britain from a major fire disaster was luck...