September 4, 1978 – CBS Radio News On The Hour – Gordon Skene Sound Collection –
September 4, 1978 – A day of breath-holding. The threatened Postal Strike was undergoing negotiations, with the hopes of averting a long, dragged-out work stoppage. More talks between the Postal Union and The Postal Service were scheduled to begin within a day. The latest of set of talks were scheduled to go on over a 15 day period before the final determination was made. Disagreement still centered on two issues; Lay-off provisions and wage increases. Mediators did not indicate which issue would be taken up first. Most felt it would go from issue to issue as the need arose. So far, the issue of Wage increases contained no surprises the Postal Service still wanted to hold to a 19.5% increase over three years, and the union was adamant they wanted more.
In other news – All was getting ready for the historic meeting between Anwar Sadat and Menahem Begin at Camp David over the coming days. President Carter left for a Three-Nation Summit saying compromises would be mandatory and also indicated the U.S. would be acting in the role of full partner; not imposing the U.S. view on negotiations, but rather searching for common ground on which agreements could be reached and which issues needed an exchange of compromises that were mutually advantageous to all nations involved. Sadat called the Summit a “last hope for peace in the Middle East” – Begin said he was approaching the talks with an open mind. Sources close to all sides said everyone stood to lose a great deal if the summit failed to produce substantive results.
And Indian officials said hundreds of people were killed when monsoon rains and accompanying floods hit Northern and Eastern India. There were reports earlier that thousands had perished. The officials said determining the exact number of deaths was hard because of communications outages in many of the flood stricken areas.
And that’s a small slice of what happened, this September 4, 1978 as reported by CBS Radio News On The Hour.
