Word: railways
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Heavily dependent for income on one export (copper), landlocked Zambia had gone along with the U.N. sanctions at considerable cost. The 1,160-mile Tazara railway, built by the Chinese as an alternative to routes through southern Africa, never became fully operational, because of theft, widespread mismanagement and frequent breakdowns in equipment. Zambia, already suffering from falling world copper prices, found it increasingly difficult to get the metal to markets. Skyrocketing prices and continual shortages of such vital goods as soap, matches and cooking oil created popular unrest and encouraged political opposition to Kaunda's less-than-democratic regime...
...walkout by the 235,000-member Brotherhood of Railway and Airline Clerks (B.R.A.C.) stemmed from a dispute by just one local against just one line, the Virginia-based Norfolk & Western Railway, which has been struck by the clerks for more than two months. But other B.R.A.C. locals, raising picket signs in sympathy, tied up operations at 74 lines in 42 states, idling up to 350,000 of the nation's half a million rail workers, stranding thousands of commuters and millions of tons of freight. President Carter stepped in after three days of chaos. Acting under the emergency provisions...
...order until he got a court-backed guarantee that no reprisals would be taken against union members by the railroads. Then a U.S. district court in Washington postponed a decision on a rail industry call for a no-strike injunction against the union; the court questioned whether the Railway Act empowers the White House to halt a strike already in progress...
Following the provisions of the Railway Act, which was designed to prevent sudden, paralyzing rail shutdowns, the President appointed a fact-finding panel of three arbitrators to recommend terms of a settlement within 30 days. After that the Government will seek to prod both sides into an accord. If at the end of 60 days no agreement is reached, the union would be free to resume its strike. Under such circumstances, past Presidents have sought emergency legislation to avert another walkout. In 1971, for example, Congress imposed a settlement after a strike by railroad signalmen...
...would not compensate them for income lost during strikes. Career-minded women, like white-collar workers generally, tend to identify with management, or at least to believe they have more in common with their bosses than with the stereotyped hardhat. Says Fred Kroll, president of the Brotherhood of Railway, Airline and Steamship Clerks: "We have to get rid of the old baseball bat, T shirt, tattooed image...