LABOR: High-Altitude Strike

At 4:55 a.m. one day last week, or as soon thereafter as the pilots could get to an airport, the big Mainliners of United Air Lines touched down all over the country and the 900 men who fly them—most of them members of the Air Line Pilots Association, A.F.L.—walked off. Their strike stranded 2,000 passengers, cut off 600 flights. On to the picket line marched the highest-paid strikers in history; Stratocruiser pilots make up to $16,587 a year.

United's airmen were after more pay and less work for what they called their "increased productivity." Better aircraft, they argued, permit two pilots and one plane to do what formerly required eight pilots and two planes. Their demand: pay by the mile instead of by the hour, to be calculated so the pilots get the same salary for 70 flying hours monthly that they now get for 85. Added demand: pay (on an hourly basis) for ground working time.

United's President William Patterson, who complained bitterly that United already pays the highest wages of any domestic U.S. line, was willing to talk pay raises, but not "increased productivity" bonuses. Said he: "I will not saddle this business with the same featherbedding practices that ruined the railroads and would ruin the airlines."