Nixon, Grayson & Boldt on Phase II and Pay Board

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Come on, looking very well.

And that's just our, the only way to have a certainty in the economy is to make it optometrically.

We can have, we can destroy everything that we want.

So I have a certain chance

I can say one thing.

We've done the best we could.

That was one of our teams.

Well, my guess is that they're going to stay with us.

And I get that from a variety of, not what they say, but what they do.

When we came back that next meeting last Friday,

It was a, there was a different atmosphere.

Now, how it came about and what happened is a different thing.

So he's gonna make his point.

So I understand.

But I have a feeling that the word came down to the, their alternates and their people.

Something happened because the next day it was a different place entirely.

What decisions will be made between now and then?

Well, they haven't told me.

Well, we're going to make quite a number of decisions.

Well, first of all, Mr. President, what we plan to do is to try and get rid of all these matters, and get behind this, because I've said before, as I was saying to Dave and Grace a few months ago, 30, 90 days from now, nobody will remember the error occurred.

It's just one of those inflammatory things that's so difficult to cope with.

But that's the first thing we're going to try to do.

And I hope we'll be able to hold them on, because I personally think it's wrong to do that.

I do to pick out a segment of Americanized labor and give them, make them fully whole.

for the free spirit, and let everybody else in the country, the 8 million, of the 8 million workers, at least 60 of them are non-union, and do what they want.

It's a contractual thing that they are doing.

Oh, so they sell it.

The sanctity of contracts.

And of course, I'm fond of the sanctity of contracts.

But they must bow to public policy, and the public policy right now is to control inflation.

I think the courts have recognized that always the public policy must be a parliamentary contract.

I was just saying to the judges that I've already talked to General Moeller as representative over the weekend, and if the retroactive goes through on the pay side, he already warned me they're going to be right in on the price side.

so we're going to get it whiffling right through so it is that's why i do hope it turns out that the line can be held it's a difficult readout to do the whole thing but i think i think it just got to every one of them deeply feel that it's a present one that'll be unfair

to a whole lot of Americans if we do not have that in mind.

How will it handle it?

In other words, the way it would work would be to just take the 90-acre and slice it out and have it take off from there.

That's right, except that there are a few relevant situations in which there would be some degree of impact that we might be considering.

In other words, what I've been thinking about is that maybe they're present to the, shall we say, more counter-attacks than maybe they expect to the fact that they expect you to be more tolerant than you're going to be.

No, I'm not concerned about that.

What I am concerned about is that we might lose some management, business management.

That's much more danger than we would lose as long as we could retain any.

Incidentally, I thought we did all too well at the very beginning when we got a quorum of ten on majority base.

And we had a margin of ten the first time this issue came up.

But there were a couple maneuvers at our meeting on Thursday that were designed very greatly to weaken, if not destroy, our position on it.

They were defeated, but by a 7-7 in which I broke the tie.

Now, if they, in the meantime, should pick up one more member, one more business member,

we might be in trouble about retroactivity.

And this is much more of a concern than that they're going to leave the party because, I mean, leave the program because of what we do on retroactivity.

I think they're always on the taking.

You do?

I think so.

Of course, that's only just one answer.

They're all there, Mr. President.

If you want to greet the judge and Dean Grayson, I'm not sure what you're doing there.

Yes, sir.

The President will speak first, and then you will speak, Judge, and then Mr. Grayson and Secretary Connolly, and the President will be there with the terms and sound until the Secretary finishes speaking.

The President will come in and vote for you, Mr. President.

And what total period of time are you figuring from the beginning to end when the press is in there?

I don't know.

I think the shorter the remarks, the better.

Well, I have a problem with these legislative leaders' comments.

So I have to leave, unfortunately.

That's all right.

What they will cover, the purpose of this is to give them coverage, maybe.

And what they will cover will be very brief.

So I'm just going to punch it.

No more than that.

Well, I mean, that's what they'll cover.

They'll cover it then.

They'll never get it down to a minute, I don't think.

That's not a problem for me.

It is for the lawyer.

Just the opposite, I think.

Well, I think it was an express appreciation for me for the price they made for the company.

Price they made?

For their work.

For their service.

For their support.

Now, we believe that it will succeed.

That's half stage one.

Because of that, it's important that as a result, we will cut the race inflation in half.

That's what I want you to imagine.

That's our goal.

That's right.

That's all you want me to say.

Let's go to work.

We've been wrestling with some of the toughest problems facing this country, and they proceeded in an orderly way and made the decision.

Amid an atmosphere of everyone predicting it would blow up and it was deadlocked and they'd never see each other, and here they are over here.

Right.

Here they are and they've done it.

Well, we have had one gentleman add it to our problem, but Jack hasn't had that.

That's been my only comfort.

Well, the greatest problem for you to have, of course, is that your activity is a terribly difficult problem in the contractual business and so forth.

And I can hear those guys.

Oh, I understand their point of view perfectly.

I just don't agree with it.

Don't agree with it?

I've been in the process.

All right.

Yes.

Don't do it.

Even if you do this, consider the fact that the cameras are there.

In other words, you don't have to play to the camera.

You don't have to watch it.

I got my baptism from that yesterday, Mr. President.

The next time I'm going to do it.

Yesterday, you know, Steve and I were on this face-to-face.

Face-to-face.

I didn't get to see it, unfortunately.

I was in the camera.

Yeah.

Oh, you're going to do a little more of that?

I don't know.

I'll be glad to do it.

But the way we'll do it, we'll just talk as if we're in a meeting.

You were just sort of talking to me, looking across the common lane, this and that.

So to make it that way, we've got to look at each other.

Can you hold that approach again?

Just back to the increase.

I'll hold it.

Oh, they're probably under the U.S. Secretary of Defense.

Right.

Just the three of us.

And then the Chairman of the House at the end of that meeting.

He's directly addressing the U.S. Secretary of Defense.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Nixon, Grayson & Boldt on Phase II and Pay Board

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on November 15, 1971

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