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A Little Blackmail. Rockefeller, with control over the Guard his trump, seized the initiative from Lindsay by taking over the negotiations. He named his own mediation panel to supplant the mayor's and treated the outlaw union with unwonted deference. Rockefeller's mediators proposed a pay increase of $425. The union accepted immediately, and the Governor hailed the proposal as "fair and reasonable." Lindsay rejected it out of hand. Though the difference over wages had become seemingly insignificant, Lindsay was determined not to reward the strikers with a figure above what the union leadership had been willing to accept earlier. "A little blackmail," he said, was still blackmail.
For nearly 48 hours after Lindsay's veto, the impasse persisted, and 20,000 more tons of garbage piled up in the city's streets. While Lindsay enjoyed considerable moral support for his stand, the city's three major daily papers attacked Rockefeller. Even the New York Times, normally a Rockefeller supporter, flayed the Governor in uncharacteristically harsh terms, indicting him for "sabotage," "appeasement," "bad politics and bad government."
Ultimatum. By the weekend, the fight was clearly lost. Parts of the city were reeking, and Lindsay could do nothing except stand on principle. At the end of the strike's ninth day, Rockefeller announced a settlement that was really an ultimatum to Lindsay. The union agreed to send its men back to work immediately in exchange for the $425 pay raise that Lindsay had earlier rejected. The city would either agree to pay it or the state, by means of a special measure that Rockefeller will request of the legislature this week, would assume temporary control of the Sanitation Department and fulfill the new contract terms—with city funds.
New Yorkers were doubtless relieved that their latest crisis had eased before turning into an outright calamity. But in the long run, Rockefeller's solution seemed to offer little consolation for a city already traumatized by excessively high taxes and strike-happy unions. As written by Rockefeller, the moral of New York's latest step toward chaos seemed to be that it pays to strike.