1 - American Memory

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at tremendous cost, at 100 or 200 percent price increases over what
they normally were before the strike. Both my parents were very se-
verely affected. They were both retirees at that time living only on
social security.
Imagine wifiat these people had to go through during those 180-plus
days when the strike was going on. These are some of the people with
fixed incomes who have suffered most.
Mr. KtTTKENDALL. There are some items that obviously can be air-
lifted for reasons of extremely high value or very low volume. Every-
one here has referred to toilet paper.
There is one very simple reason that there is no way to airlift a
product like that—space. It is too bulky. There are other items that
are very, very heavy.
I think the labor movement on the west coast and probably the Na-
tional Councils of AFIJ-CIO have an instinctive fear that this is going
to undermine the basic strength of collective bargaining in labor-
management relations.
Remember a few years ago there were attempted national airline
strikes. We don't have those any more because organized labor and
management and the Congress recognized the fact that we can not
have a total paralysis. So now when there is a strike, it is selective
and, therefore, will not affect the total economy.
We are not going to have any more national rail strikes or national
truck strikes.
The railroad unions fought long and hard and finally won their case
in the Supreme Court to have selective strikes because they recognized
the Nation would not tolerate a national shutdown.
What is happening to Hawaii has to be presented as the equivalent
to a national strike which has come to be unacceptable stateside.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. DiNOELL. I think the gentleman from Tennessee has made a very
good point. The Chair has observed, I would call, the considerable
distress of the people of Hawaii during the last strike referred to in the
testimony today. The Chair recalls at that point that the Congress did
respond. We did meet the need. It was largely as a result of the leader-
ship of the gentleman from Hawaii and Mrs. Mink that the Congress
did respond.
Both Mr. Kuykendall and I have participated in a number of pieces
of legislation relating to labor-management problems. We regularly
have rail strikes before us and we regularly have the airline strikes
before us when they occur and this committee and the Congress have
responded. I have not always supported the conclusions that the Con-
gress or the committee came to, but we have always responded to the
need to prevent these national transportation strikes or a strike which
would close down an entire portion of the Nation's economy.
I say that even though I have not always agreed with the deter-
minations of the Congress. The Congress does respond and large seg-
ments of the American labor movement have become aware, as the
gentleman from Tennessee has so well pointed out, that these kinds of
labor shutdowns and disputes between labor and management do have
the result of bringing a national response with the demand that na-
tional services do not terminate during these times when labor seeks