b'out and block the tolls; they were going to drive in and park there, and then get out. And then we would pull the bridgesup and really cut the city off. At 10 o\'clock that night I got a call from Nick Cifiuni, who was then with the District Council[he later came to Local 237] saying he wanted to meet with me. He told me [the Council] was pulling out. We didn\'tworry about that. We\'d go on without them. Besides, everything was in place already. We had a sailboat that would startup at Dyckman Street and come down and pick the guys up because if you ever look at those bridges, when they open,the men are in the middle. So, we had to sail down and pick each guy up. We had a motorboat originally, but it brokedown. That\'s why we used the sailboat. A sailboat is much more difficult to use in that kind of operations. It was a littletricky because there were no landings and the men had to jump. So, we had about 20 guys. The thing took off about 4 o\'-clock in the morning. By 4 we were at the phone setup, we started getting calls. Then we started getting reports from allover"The bridges are up." And then, I remember, I turned on the radio and there was a guy saying, "The 149th Streetbridge is up oh my God, they\'re all up! All the bridges are up!" That was probably one of the biggest kicks I ever had.The whole goddamn city was at a standstill. It was a very effective strike. We had to settle it because the Taylor Lawgives you two days, after which there are penalties, so we had to settle within two days.Who steered the sailboat? This was a pretty elaborate plan.I don\'t know the name of the guy. We hired him. I didn\'t even know how much we paid him. I just knew it was done.By the way, a funny thing about that action: Over the years the bridge guys used to call the Department [of Transportation]when repairs were needed, but the DOT never made them, so the bridge guys would make their own. When the engineers got onto the bridges [during the strike], they couldn\'t get the bridges to work because everything was switched around; our guys had changed all the contacts and whatnot when they made repairs.I understand that there were issues related to a new pension plan that had been negotiated and that GovernorRockefeller was refusing to sign.If Rocky told you no, it was no. An aside: We worked like hell so the Taylor Law wouldn\'t be passed. A day before itwas coming up, Rocky called a couple of us in and said, Fellas, you\'re not going to do it; it\'s gonna pass. We said, Comeon, we\'ve got everyone lined up. And we did. He said, Fellas, it\'s gonna pass. I don\'t know how he did it, but he wasright. If Rocky said it was gonna pass, it was gonna pass; if he said it wasn\'t gonna pass, it wasn\'t gonna pass.Could you tell us about the work that you did to get the three-step pay plan with the Housing Authority?Originally there were eight steps. What the city offered at that time was to condense them. I think they wanted to goto six steps, but the way they wanted to get to six steps, all our seniors would really have gotten screwed. We got into acontest and then we said, let\'s sit down and come up with a plan of our own. We gave John Simon, the housing manager,and a couple of others the plan privately, and they said you\'ll never get it, and if the Mayor hears of it, he\'ll kill us. But weconvinced them. They tried itand it went.The night we were in the hotel negotiating, we submitted the plan to the Authority, and there was quite a tussle.Technically, we submit it to the Authority and the Authority approves. Actually, we submit it to the Authority and theMayor\'s got to approve, or there won\'t be an authority next time. And it got approved. It got written into the contract thatwe would go to five steps and then to three.68 '