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* Title : #007 : UNION BUST *

* Series : The Destroyer *

* Author(s) : Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir *

* Location : Gillian Archives *

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CHAPTER ONE

What were they going to do, kill him?

Jimmy McQuade had worked his installer crew to the limit, and he wasn't going to work them one more hour, not if the district supervisor got on his knees and begged, not if the president of the International Communication Workers threatened to kick him out of the union, not if they raised the double overtime to triple overtime like last week, during Easter.

His crew was falling asleep at the job. A half hour before, one of his senior linemen working outside made a mistake a rookie wouldn't think of, and now the old man assembling one of the gaggle of WATS lines connections had passed out.

"Okay. Everybody off the job," said Jimmy McQuade, shop steward of Local 283 International Communications Workers, Chicago, Illinois.

"Go home and sleep. I don't want to see any of you for two days. This overtime pay isn't going to do dead men any good."

Heads lifted. One young man kept working on his knees.

"We're going home. We're going to rest. Somebody shake the kid," said Jimmy McQuade.

A gray-haired worker, telephone cords strung around his neck like leis, patted the youngster on the back.

"We're going to rest."

The young man looked up, dazed.

"Yeah. Rest, Beautiful, baby. I forgot what it was like."

He curled over his installer's box on his tool holster side and snored away in bliss.

"Leave him. Nobody's going to wake him," said Jimmy McQuade.

"It's about time," said an installer dropping his tools at his feet and making his way across the stacked beams and sacks of concrete to a bucket the men used to relieve themselves.