LABOR: Call for Uncle Zilch

The seventh week in the strike of some 35,000 C.I.O. Communications Workers against the Southern Bell Telephone Co. (TIME, May 2) was the most violent yet. Seven Southern Bell exchanges and stations were burned or dynamited. However, last week's sabotage did not slow up Southern Bell service as much as a harassing scheme called "Operation Zilch."

Weeks ago the union's Vice President A. T. Jones urged strikers to tie up longdistance lines with person-to-person calls for fictitious "long-lost uncles." such as "J. P. Zilch." Another union leader chortled: "We can keep the ones who are working so busy it won't be easy for them to make money for Bell Telephone." Then the union mimeographed a twelve-page booklet, labeled "Operation Zilch," listing 770 phone numbers to call. The plan; to refer calls "in chain fashion, from one number to another."

From Salisbury, N.C., a typical Zilch caller recently asked for Joyce Scott at 58-1379 Birmingham, Ala. The operator calling that number was told she could reach her party at another number. She tried again and was referred again—twelve times in all. The call tied her up for 60 minutes and the circuit for 42. By last week phony Zilch calls had become a nationwide nuisance to the company. In Atlanta, Southern Bell went to court asking an injunction and $60,000 damages from 99 Georgia unionists accused of Zilch operations. "All we were doing," said a union official, "was just using the telephone."