Meeting of the Board | Page 5

on extras like Research and Development.
At first--until that fateful night when Daniel P. Torkleson of TWA and
Jake Squill of Amalgamated Buttonhole Makers spent a long evening
with beer and cigars in a hotel room, and floated the loan that threw
steel to the unions. Oil had followed with hardly a fight, and as the
unions began to feel their oats, the changes grew more radical.
Walter Towne remembered those stormy days well. The gradual
undercutting of the managerial salaries, the tightening up of inter-union
collusion to establish the infamous White list of Recalcitrant Managers.
The shift from hourly wage to annual salary for the factory workers,
and the change to the other pole for the managerial staff. And then,
with creeping malignancy, the hungry howling of the union bosses for
more and higher dividends, year after year, moving steadily toward the
inevitable crisis.
Until Shop Steward Bailey suddenly found himself in charge of a
dozen sputtering machines and an empty office.

* * * * *
Torkleson was waiting to see the shop steward when he came in next
morning. The union boss's office was crowded with TV cameras,
newsmen, and puzzled workmen. The floor was littered with piles of
ominous-looking paper. Torkleson was shouting into a telephone, and
three lawyers were shouting into Torkleson's ear. He spotted Bailey and
waved him through the crowd into an inner office room. "Well? Did
they get them fixed?"
Bailey spread his hands nervously. "The electronics boys have been at
it since yesterday afternoon. Practically had the machines apart on the
floor."
"I know that, stupid," Torkleson roared. "I ordered them there. Did they
get the machines fixed?"
"Uh--well, no, as a matter of fact--"
"Well, what's holding them up?"
Bailey's face was a study in misery. "The machines just go in circles.
The circuits are locked. They just reverberate."
"Then call American Electronics. Have them send down an expert
crew."
Bailey shook his head. "They won't come."
"They what?"
"They said thanks, but no thanks. They don't want their fingers in this
pie at all."
"Wait until I get O'Gilvy on the phone."
"It won't do any good, sir. They've got their own management troubles.
They're scared silly of a sympathy strike."

The door burst open, and a lawyer stuck his head in. "What about those
injunctions, Dan?"
"Get them moving," Torkleson howled. "They'll start those machines
again, or I'll have them in jail so fast--" He turned back to Bailey.
"What about the production lines?"
The shop steward's face lighted. "They slipped up, there. There was one
program that hadn't been coded into the machines yet. Just a minor item,
but it's a starter. We found it in Towne's desk, blueprints all ready,
promotion all planned."
"Good, good," Torkleson breathed. "I have a directors' meeting right
now, have to get the workers quieted down a bit. You put the program
through, and give those electronics men three more hours to unsnarl
this knot, or we throw them out of the union." He started for the door.
"What were the blueprints for?"
"Trash cans," said Bailey. "Pure titanium-steel trash cans."
It took Robling Titanium approximately two days to convert its entire
production line to titanium-steel trash cans. With the total resources of
the giant plant behind the effort, production was phenomenal. In two
more days the available markets were glutted. Within two weeks, at a
conservative estimate, there would be a titanium-steel trash can for
every man, woman, child, and hound dog on the North American
continent. The jet engines, structural steels, tubing, and other pre-strike
products piled up in the freight yards, their routing slips and order
requisitions tied up in the reverberating machines.
But the machines continued to buzz and sputter.
The workers grew restive. From the first day, Towne and Hendricks
and all the others had been picketing the plant, until angry crowds of
workers had driven them off with shotguns. Then they came back in an
old, weatherbeaten 'copter which hovered over the plant entrance
carrying a banner with a plaintive message: ROBLING TITANIUM
UNFAIR TO MANAGEMENT. Tomatoes were hurled, fists were

shaken, but the 'copter remained.
The third day, Jeff Bates was served with an injunction ordering Towne
to return to work. It was duly appealed, legal machinery began tying
itself in knots, and the strikers still struck. By the fifth day there was a
more serious note.
"You're going to have to appear, Walter. We can't dodge this one."
"When?"
"Tomorrow morning. And before a labor-rigged judge, too." The little
lawyer paced his office nervously. "I don't like it. Torkleson's getting
desperate. The workers are putting pressure on him."
Walter grinned. "Then Pendleton is doing a good job of selling."
"But you haven't got time," the lawyer wailed. "They'll have you in jail
if you don't start