One of the last national negotiations Fitzsimmons oversaw was another national trucking contract. With deregulation moving forward, the negotiations (which began in early 1979) were particularly difficult. Fitzsimmons gambled and decided to engage in a series of whipsaw strikes in order to pressure the employers to agree to terms, but the trucking companies responded with a lockout on April 2. The Carter administration had imposed wage and price controls that sought to hold collective bargaining wage and benefit increases to 7.5 percent a year, but Fitzsimmons sought 10 percent a year. Four days into the labor dispute, layoffs in the automobile manufacturing industry reached 100,000, putting pressure on Fitzsimmons to lower his contract demands. The strike and lockout were short owing to these pressures, and Fitzsimmons reached on April 11, 1979 an agreement that met the President's wage-control guideline.