b'Theres only one thing that was bad. There was a conflict, because the supervisor was also represented by the union.If youre a supervisor, what are you going to do? Who are you going to represent? I was in the union as a supervisor, and itwas a bit of a conflict, because you would try to get some discipline, then the union would come in and say, you cant dothat. And you had to have discipline, you know . . .Who did you supervise?All the bridges in Brooklyn, Queens and Richmond. That was about nine or ten bridges.The 1971 Bridge StrikeYou could only do a strike like that once. The strike tied up the city of New York. Nothing moved. We went on strikefor two days. Because of the Taylor Law, I lost two days pay.How that was done was, we had a meeting, but nobody ever said what was going to occur because they wanted tokeep it a secret. We were in a very unique position, because its not like a regular strike where everyone goes out. Theywent to the people who were scheduled to work at the time the strike was set to occur, which eliminated about two thirdsof the men. My brother was one of the fellows involved. He was the keeper of the control handles. Hes passed awaynow, so I can tell. He had the control handles. The control handles operated the bridges. They more or less controlled thepower, the resistance, so the bridge would raise or lower.What were the issues of the strike?Primarily, the 20-year retirement, as I understood it. We had gone to Albany to lobby. The union provided the buses.We met with a lot of resistance from the politicians. I spoke to Frank [Scarpinato] about it. I said, Why not put this titleinto the physically taxing category? [which has a pension after 20 years], because there was a certain amount of physicalwork involved. But he said we were going to get that 20-year retirement that we were lobbying for. But there were otherunderlying reasons for the strike. There were other titles involved. The union used us to bring a point across, that theunion could tie up the whole city.Ill tell you one thing. Ill be honest with you: I was against the strike, because they never clarified what was going tohappen to the guy who was working at the time. In fact, I spoke out against it at the meeting, and I got all kinds of catcalls. I said, Explain to me, whats because this sounds like a strike to me. [A strike was illegal.] I couldnt afford it.[Sally: We had just had our baby.] I wasnt against a job action. So, I told themand as I said, I got a lot of catcalls I said, All you guys who are making the catcalls, when I pick up this bridge, youre not going to be responsible, I am.I wanted to know what was going to happen when the man came over to me and says, Why did you pick up thatbridge? (It only involved maybe 12, 14 people, one for each bridge.) What do I tell them? Thats what happened to[Daniel] Siciliano and a couple of other guys. DA Burton, in the Bronx, had them sweating it out for five years, because he was going to prosecute them, he was going to indict them.29 '