'Cooling off' extended in Guilford rail dispute

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4 SOCIALIST ACTION SEPTEMBER 1986 capitation. Seven thousand North Oakland Clinic patients have already been transferred to the Oakhill Medical Group, a nonunionized facility. As other Health Ameri -ca-operated clinics are closed down, the union will be eliminated from ever-larger segments of the health-care industry.

Medicare and welfare patients who pay less than the average $85 fee may be dropped from the scheme altogether. Even those who remain in the system will lose continuity of medical care as they are shuffled about among strange doctors. Everyone loses by this new development -except the conglomerates, which are distancing themselves as far as possible from the patients who pay them.

To intensify the process, merger mania has hit the health industry. Health America has just been swallowed up by another conglomerate, Maxi-Care, a name that should properly be translated as MaxiProfit. As reported in Business Week magazine, Maxi-Care has incurred $200 million in debt in acquiring Health America. This means they will squeeze PORTLAND, Maine-On Aug. 21, President Reagan signed a congressional resolution to prevent a dispute on the Maine Central Railroad from escalating into a rail strike that could paralyze the Northeast region. The Maine Central is one of three small railroads owned by Guilford Transportion Industries (GTI).

The resolution extends until Sept. 18 a government-imposed "cooling-off" period in the contract dispute between the company and the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees (BMWE).

The Maine Central track workers went on Art LeClair is a committeeperson in Local 791 IBEW, Amtrak. strike in early March when Guilford demanded a 20-percent wage cut and other concessions. The strike spread to the government-subsidized ConRail system in May, forcing the White House to issue a back-to-work order for 60 days. Since then, the government-authorized Emergency Panel has done little to resolve the dispute.

Congresspersons from New England, led by Rep. Sylvio Conte (R-Mass.), had pushed for an extension of the "cooling-off" period, calling it essential in preventing another systemwide shutdown of GTI carriers. Conte stated that a second strike on the Maine Central was likely, following the Aug. 8 decision by Guilford to impose drastic work-rule changes on the track workers—as well as a unilateral 20-percent wage cut.

The resolution requires BMWE workers to remain on the job while at the same time forcing Guilford to rescind the pay cut and maintain the working conditions provided under the old contract.

Meanwhile, in late July, U.S. District Court Judge Gene Carter allowed Guilford to lay off 781 workers on its railroads-the Maine Central, the Boston and Maine, and the Delaware and Hudson).

Carter ruled in favor of the layoffs because GTI attorneys presented a picture of fiscal strife on the carriers. This was due, the attorneys stated, to a loss of freight business resulting from the strike by BMWE members.

Of course, the fact that freight cars and piggy-back units have been allowed to sit in the yards and on sidings while crews are told "there's no work" had no impact on the good judge. Meanwhile, the strikers have been labeled "greedy" and "featherbedders."

The layoffs came less than three weeks after Judge Carter ordered Guilford to rehire 1700 workers it had illegally laid off in May for their solid support of the strike. L