The Nation - News from July 16, 1986

Citing a threat to public health from a two-week buildup of uncollected trash, Philadelphia Mayor W. Wilson Goode asked a state court to order striking health care and sanitation employees back to work. The request came two weeks after 14,000 workers in two union districts walked off the job in a contract dispute, halting garbage collection, closing libraries and museums and slowing other services. The city also reinstated an earlier request to have members of white-collar District Council 47 ordered back to work. Members of that union ratified a new contract but many of its 2,500 members have honored picket lines.