The Michigan Daily
Vol. XCI, No. 54-S
Ann Arbor, Michigan-Tuesday, August 4, 1981
Ten Cents
Sixteen Pages
Reagan talks
tough with
EIIEEM air controllers
Daily Photo by PAUL ENGSTROM
Long and winding road
Sun-speckled paths lead travelers into the depths of Nichols' Arboretum.
Violence in Iran
continues; bomb
blasts kill 14 people
From AP and UPI
WASHINGTON-Air traffic con-
trollers illegally walked off their jobs
yesterday and crippled commercial
flights in the first nationwide strike of
federal workers. President Reagan
called them lawbreakers and a federal
judge imposed accelerating fines that
would reach $1 million a day by Thur-
sday.
Reagan, taking a hard line, sought
imprisonment of the strike leaders, but
U.S. District Judge Harold Greene
refused to grant a government request
that he imprison Robert Poli, leader of
the striking Professional Air Traffic
Controllers Organization, and 10 other
union leaders.
REAGAN GAVE thousands of
striking members of the Professional
Air Traffic Controllers Organization 38
hours to return to work or face loss of
their jobs.
The administration moved to im-
pound the controllers' $3.5 million
strike fund and to remove the union as
the bargaining agent for 15,000 of the
17,000 federally employed men and
women who operate the nerve centers
of America's airways.
FBI agents and U.S. marshals were
dispatched to dozens of airports to
gather lists of striking controllers for
criminal prosecution under laws
barring walkouts by government em-
ployees.
AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland
yesterday labeled Reagan's threat of
government action against striking air
traffic controllers as "harsh and brutal
overkill" and pleaded for a resumption
of negotiations to end the walkout.
Kirkland told a news conference
following the opening session of the
AFL-CIO Executive Council's mid-
summer meeting that the government
should address the problems that
caused more than 90 percent of con-
trollers to vote for the strike.
"Those problems should not be
smothered and surpressed by what I
regard as threats of action that would
constitute, in my judgment, harsh and
brutal overkill directed against a
relatively small number of loyal and
responsible American citizens,"
Kirkland said.
THOUSANDS OF vacation and
business travelers sat waiting in air-
ports across the country Monday as
hundreds of flights were canceled or
delayed by the air traffic controllers'
strike.
Some passengers went scurrying to
the nearest train or bus station. Others
suffered only brief inconveniences.
P-ol
... fined $1,000 aday
BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) - A booby-
trapped car exploded 200 yards from
the Iranian prime minister's office in
Tehran yesterday and a bomb
detonated in a Kermanshah square, of-
ficial statements said. At least 14
people were reported killed.
Tehran Radio said gunmen killed
Hojatoleslam Abdul-Karim Dehkadian,
of the "militant clergy" in front of his
house in the southwestern city of Beh-
bahan. The broadcast did not elaborate.
IN BONN, West Germany, 100 op-
ponents of Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini's regime forced their way in-
to the Iranian Embassy, broke win-
dows, damaged offices and injured 10
people before they were ejected by
police, German authorities reported.
The two bombs in Iran went off hour-
after Mohammad Ali Rajai was sworn
in as president, replacing ousted
Abolhassan Bani-Sadr. Reports said
Rajai probably would appoint
Hojatoleslam Mohammad Javad
Bahonar to replace him as prime
minister, consolidating the power of
Iran's Moslem fundamentalists.
THE STATE-RUN Pars news agency
said 13 people were killed when a blast
ripped through crowded Enghelab
Square in the western Iranian city of
Kermanshah at midday, causing
serious damage and setting several
cars afire.
A spokesman for the prime minister's
office, who declined to be named, said
the car-bomb blast in Tehran shattered
window glass at the ministry but
caused no casualties inside the building
or the nearby presidential compound.
Pars said at least one person was
killed and 15 were injured outside the
ministry. Casualty reports still were
incomplete and a reliable, but an unof-
ficial source said at least four were
killed in Tehran.
"All these strikes are a little too
much," said Judy Beightol of Berkley,
Mich., trying to go from Detroit
Metropolitan Airport to Fort Lauder-
dale, Fla. "First the baseball strike,
then the postal workers who threatened
to strike, but did not, and now this."
FIVE SUPERVISORY personnel and
one controller were on duty in Detroit,
compared to the normal shift of 15 or 16
controllers. At Hartsfield International
Airport in Atlanta, the world's busiest,
six of 26 controllers due at work showed
up, and 17 supervisors filled in.
Supervisory personnel took over air
traffic controls as picket lines formed
outside airports and Federal Aviation
Administration facilities from New
York to San Francisco.
There were no reports of violence.
But pickets were heckled in Miami,
where one woman yelled, "I hope you
all lose your jobs!"
JUDGE GREENE, who took over the
case from a colleague earlier in the
day, fined Poli $1,000 a day for the
strike's duration, but took no action
against the other 10.
Finding the union in contempt of
court for ignoring an earlier back-to-
work order, Green said that to allow
such strikes "would be to invite chaos."
The Federal Aviation Administration
is using 2,500 supervisory and non-union
controllers and several hundred
military air controllers to maintain air
traffic at a reduced level.
Transportation Secretary Drew
Lewis said that safety is government's
major concern. "We're not going to
jeopardize the public lives," he said.