New York: Aftermath of the Garbage Battle

NEW YORK Aftermath of the Garbage Battle As New York City sanitationmen attacked an Andean accumulation of garbage, a legion of critics—with considerably more enthusiasm—piled into Governor Nelson Rockefeller, the man who had ended the union’s illegal nine-day strike. Both efforts succeeded. The pestilential piles of trash were disappearing, and so was a goodly portion of Rockefeller’s political capital in the state and nation.

It was an abrupt turnabout. The week before, Rockefeller had dictated settlement terms already rejected by city hall through the extraordinary device of proposing that the state temporarily take over the sanitation department. That seemed to leave his fellow Republican, Mayor John Lindsay, no option except surrender. Lindsay had the choice of signing a contract he had already described as a “little bit of blackmail” or watching the state move in and fulfill the same terms with city funds.

Public Relations Virtue. With characteristic stubbornness, Lindsay refused to capitulate. And with uncharacteristic independence, the state legislature declined to act on the Governor’s san itation bill, with the Republican-controlled senate even more vehement in its opposition than the Democratic assembly. The legislative leaders handed the dispute back to Lindsay instead, on condition that he resume bargaining with the union. And at week’s end the city and the Uniformed Sanitationmen’s Association agreed to submit the dispute to binding arbitration, with a Rockefeller aide, Vincent McDonnell, serving as arbitrator.

The legislators rebelled against Rockefeller for excellent election-year reasons. Public opinion, expressed in letters, telegrams, phone calls and editorials, overwhelmingly supported Lindsay’s basic argument that an illegal public strike cannot be tolerated lest more strikes be encouraged and that Rockefeller’s takeover scheme violated the tradition of home rule. Lindsay was not exactly blameless. He had not made adequate advance preparations for the strike, and his abrupt demand that Rockefeller mobilize the National Guard to collect the garbage presented serious problems.-But the Lindsay position, based on sound principle, had the public relations virtue of offering dramatic resistance to a public menace.

Rockefeller was showing his own brand of courage by sticking to a manifestly unpopular course. When asked how the dispute would affect his chances for the Republican presidential nomination, he grinned and replied: “To hell with it.”

Offensive Coddling. While one such difficulty is unlikely to consign Rockefeller’s prospects to the nether regions, it did occur at an awkward time for him. He undoubtedly won further sympathy from labor by refusing to break a strike, but to get his own party’s nomination, he needs support from the Republican right—the very segment that would be most offended by his coddling of the sanitationmen’s union. Richard Nixon, campaigning in New Hampshire, drew fervent crowd response by siding with Lindsay. “Breaking the law of the state,” Nixon declared, “cannot and must not be rewarded.” Ronald Reagan observed that Rockefeller was “treading on thin ice.” Even George Romney, the beneficiary of Rockefeller’s political largess, allowed that “where there is a breakdown of public service, I would order in the National Guard, yes, sir.”

Lost in the clatter of criticism was an important accomplishment. Lindsay, for all his idealism, was unable to end the strike, while the more pragmatic Rockefeller did just that. The Governor’s intervention also led, if indirectly, to an orderly means of settlement. As the Governor’s press secretary, Leslie Slote, claimed: “John Lindsay has won a victory of style. In the end, my guy will win the victory of substance.”

-One danger in using the Guard was potential violence. No Rockefeller can forget the 1913-14 strike at the family-controlled Colorado Fuel and Iron Co. at Ludlow. At least 25 people, including women and children, died in the shooting and in fires that broke out after the militia intervened; the number of dead was never precisely established. Lindsay, however, stipulated that he wanted the troops to be unarmed, with local police providing security.