Word: rubberizing
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...late April, 60,000 members of the United Rubber Workers walked off their jobs at plants of the industry's Big Four (Firestone, Uniroyal, Goodyear and Goodrich), starting what had been billed as the big labor showdown of 1976. By June 1, according to most assessments, the walkout should have begun to put a serious crimp in the nation's recovery from its worst post-World War II recession. Instead, as it enters its seventh week, the strike has been only a minor annoyance, and the nation's response seems to be one big yawn...
...Ford Administration, anxious to keep long strikes from disrupting the recovery, is keeping a nervous eye on the rubber situation. Yet mediators have not seen fit to call round-the-clock negotiations, let alone recommend that the Administration ask for a Taft-Hartley Act injunction that would stop the strike for 80 days. Such injunctions are permitted legally only if a strike damages the national "health and safety" and, says one federal official, "we would have a hell of a time making a case" for an injunction...
...members to provide some benefits for workers who might hit the bricks later at other companies. That letdown illustrates a major reason why the strike has had no impact: dissension within the union. Some 40% to 45% of the nation's tire production continues, partly because General Tire & Rubber Co. is not on strike. When U.R.W. President Peter Bommarito asked the General Tire local in Akron to join the walkout, the local refused...
Long and Bitter. None of this means that the strike should not be taken seriously. The rubber workers, who now average $5.50 an hour, are seeking an extra $1.65 to bring them up to the present standard of auto workers. Besides that, they want an unlimited cost-of-living adjustment provision to keep wages from being eroded by inflation. And they seem determined to hold out until their strike hurts, as it eventually will. Their walkout highlights a severe problem for the whole nation: even in a basic industry, it takes a very long and bitter strike to get results...
With shirtsleeves rolled up and rubber boots protecting his feet, the grey-haired man bent like a peasant to the task of planting rice shoots in the flooded paddy. That might seem plebeian labor for an emperor, but Hirohito of Japan, 75, has always shown deep sympathy for the farming millions of his subjects, and made it a royal duty to take a personal part in opening the rice-planting season. Come fall, the monarch will return to the same paddy in the imperial palace compound and harvest a crop of about 300 lbs., part of it destined...