National Affairs: New Titan

In Denver’s snow-banked Shirley-Savoy Hotel last week, 350 convening delegates of the loosely spliced National Federation of Telephone Workers voted themselves a new name and a new power. The name: Communications Workers of America. The power: to clamp a throttling silence on 30,000,000 U.S. telephones with the flip of a switchboard jack. Both will become effective next June, after N.F.T.W.’s autonomous unions ratify the new constitution, formally turn over their sovereign rights to a new national policy board.

Flexing its muscles, the new titan promptly got down to business. The first objective was to get ready for negotiations next March, when contracts expire for most of its 225,000 operators, linemen, technicians and maintenance men. As a whopping independent union—second only to the Railway Brotherhoods—N.F.T.W. felt strong enough to shoot for the works: union shop, dues checkoff, “substantial” wage boosts, etc.

But there was also a second objective: to stop wildcat strikes. Said N.F.T.W.’s President Joseph A. Beirne: “It is absolutely necessary that the industry’s unions always be aware of their two-fold responsibility to the public as well as their members.”