Against the Current, No. 23, November/December 1989
Steve Downs WHEN THE STRIKE of ground crews, flight attendants and pilots at Eastern
Airlines began on March 4, 1989, it was widely viewed within the labor
movement as a decisive struggle that could reverse the tide of defeats
and concessions and begin to move the labor movement forward again.
Lane Kirkland, president of the AFL, CIO, pledged the “maximum degree of
support that is legally possible,” while Kim Moody of Labor Notes, who
rarely agrees with Kirkland, wrote that this strike “could draw the line
on the downward spiral of wages, benefits and conditions in this
changing industry.”
Yet, by early October, the strike seems headed for defeat Frank Lorenzo,
with the help of bankruptcy court, has accomplished much of what the
workers struck to prevent While it has surely cost him much more than it
would have if the workers hadn’t struck, Lorenzo seems poised to come
out on top.
He has sold off major parts of Eastern, most importantly the Boston-New
York-Washington shuttle. Pilots are returning to work in significant
numbers. And the court seems inclined to give him all the time he needs
to put a smaller Eastern back into the air.
For the workers at Eastern this outcome will mark a real tragedy,
intensified by the fact that it could have been foreseen and probably
avoided. The issues of organization, goals and broader program raised by
the strike are not new, although they may have been to most of the
strikers. But in order to have had a chance of winning, a radically
different strategy from that followed by the Eastern unions was required.
Background to Confrontation
Over the last ten to fifteen years the airline industry has been shaped
by two overriding factors: the overall decline in profitability in U.S.
industry and the deregulation that was a response to it.*
By the mid-197 U.S. capital had found many ways to try to preserve
profit rates layoffs, plant closings, reduction of tax rates, speed-up
and, of course, the ever popular wage and benefit cuts. In addition,
some leading corporations, organized and led by the Business Roundtable,
sought to improve their profit rates by reducing the cost of some key
services.
This effort to reduce costs, and thereby increase profits, was behind
the deregulation of the transportation, communications and financial
services Industries.
The initial increase in competition produced by deregulation brought
with it increased downward pressure on the profits of the companies in
those industries. This was compounded by the deep recession in 1980-81.
The decline in business travel, the bread and butter of the airlines,
that accompanied the recession cut into the revenues of the airlines
just as they were experiencing the initial effects of deregulation. This
led to an intensified effort, especially on the part of the employers in
the transportation industry, to reduce labor costs. [See Kim Moody, An
Injury to All (Verso 1988) chapter 6].
The 1980s were a time of widespread and ever-increasing demands for
concessions in the airline industry. And the airlines usually got them.
But the logic of the economic crisis was that some of the airlines
wouldn’t make it—and concessions by the unions wouldn’t change this.
The increased competition of the early 1980s gave way to a period of
concentration and centralization in the late ’80s as the weaker airlines
either went out of business or were bought up by stronger ones. Peoples’
Express, the symbol of deregulation, Continental, Ozark, Republic,
Frontier, PSA, Piedmont and, of course, Eastern were all bought by other
carriers. Braniff declared bankruptcy twice in seven years. And Pan Am,
once the symbol of U.S. dominance in commercial air travel, is on its
last legs.
Within the framework set by these general structural changes there were
two important factors that played themselves out at Eastern. The first
was poor management led by Frank Borman. The second was a union that
resisted concessions more than most in the industry did.
The Machinists union (IAM) at Eastern followed an aggressive program of
research into Eastern’s finances and of membership education as the
mechanics fought against Borman’s demands for concessions. For a while,
when other unions throughout the industry and at Eastern were making
concessions, they were able to preserve their contract But eventually
they decided that they, too, had to make some concessions.
In exchange for wage cuts and work-rule changes the workers got a
twenty-five percent stake in the company and some seats on the board of
directors. Eventually, they also succeeded in forcing Borman out (See
Andrew Banks, “IAM District 100 vs. Eastern and the Banks,” Labor
Research Review 4, Winter, 1984.)
How little the directors’ seats were worth soon became evident A judge
ruled that the “worker’ directors had to place the financial interests
of individual workers ahead of their collective, or union, interests. He
appointed trustees to those seats to replace the union officers. When
the board voted on Lorenzo’s offer to buy, which the unions strongly
opposed, the trustees representing the workers abstained.
Enter Frank Lorenzo
Frank Lorenzo has been one of the winners in the deregulation game. He
used his control of a regional carrier, Texas Air, to buy up other
carriers to build up a national airline. Continental, Frontier, People
Express and Eastern were all taken over by Lorenzo. In doing so, he has
combined aggressive expansion with equally aggressive labor-management
techniques and union-busting.
Lorenzo’s purchase of Eastern was opposed by the unions, who proposed an
employee ownership plan as an alternative. The unions feared that
Lorenzo would do to Eastern what he had done to Continental: bust the
unions, shrink the workforce and impose speed-up.
It soon became clear that there was a basis for these concerns, as
Lorenzo began selling off assets (thus shrinking Eastern and weakening
it financially) and preparing for a confrontation with the unions. By
late 1988, the workers at Eastern, and their unions, had decided that
they had to get rid of Lorenzo, otherwise Eastern would be sold off bit
by bit, and eventually the company would either by shut down or merged
into Continental. In either event their unions would be busted and most
of their jobs lost.
The Strike
In early 1989 Eastern was, as usual, losing money. Lorenzo demanded $210
million in concessions. The unions’ position was that while they were
willing to make sacrifices to save the airline, they did not believe
that Lorenzo wanted it saved, so they wouldn’t consider any concessions
as long as Lorenzo was in charge. When the strike began the unions
principal demand was that Lorenzo sell Eastern. They wanted someone new
to negotiate concessions with.
The unions were not prepared for a long strike. Their strategy was
simple: they would threaten to picket other airlines and commuter
railroads in the northeast (an action that is legal under the Railway
Labor Act, which governs labor relations in the airline industry), thus
forcing the federal government to step in and declare an emergency.
This would preserve the status quo that existed before the strike while
an emergency board tried to work out an agreement. The recommendations
of this board could, if necessary, be taken to Congress, which could
impose a settlement. In other words, the workers would return to work
under the terms of the old contract, a contract Lorenzo had said he
couldn’t afford any longer.
The unions’ hope was that either Lorenzo would find the burden too great
and sell the airline, or they could use their “influence with the
Democratic Party to get a favorable settlement out of Congress.
Unfortunately, the unions were not the only ones who realized that
federal intervention that preserved the terms of the old contract would
hurt Lorenzo. The Bush Administration understood that too. Bush made it
clear that, in the interest of preserving free collective bargaining he
would not declare an emergency. But he would consider ways to force the
rail workers to cross the airline workers’ picket lines, including
amending the Railway Labor Act to make sympathy strikes illegal.
The unions, led by the IAM, decided not to force the issue. They never
tried to shut down the commuter railroads. However, the foundation of
their strategy had now been knocked out from under them and a new one
was needed. The unions now decided that they would try to force Lorenzo
into bankruptcy court.
Again, the unions hoped to prevail in one of two ways. First, they were
going to argue that Texas Air and all of its subsidiaries (Eastern and
Continental) should be treated as a ‘single carrier. This would place
all of Texas Air’s assets within reach of Eastern’s creditors.
The unions hoped that rather than let that happen, Lorenzo would sell.
Failing that, the unions would try to convince the bankruptcy judge that
the strike could be ended and Eastern put back in the air only if
Lorenzo were forced to sell. This involved convincing the judge that the
creditors stood a better chance of getting their money if Eastern were
flying, rather than being liquidated.
The unions were partially successful. They forced Eastern into
bankruptcy. This restricted Lorenzo’s freedom of maneuver. But they did
not win on the “single carrier’ issue nor have they been able to get the
bankruptcy judge to force Lorenzo out In fact, the judge has acted as if
he thought only Lorenzo could get Eastern back into the air.
So within a span of two weeks, a strike that began with much militant
talk and the threat of chaos on the northeast rail corridor found itself
enmeshed in the byzantine world of bankruptcy court with all the unions’
efforts revolving around the maneuvering in the courtroom.
Clearly, once they struck, the unions couldn’t have kept Eastern out of
bankruptcy even if they had wanted to do so. And it was certainly useful
to have Lorenzo’s hands tied even to a limited extent. However, what
went on in the courtroom should not have determined the rest of the
unions’ tactics; the court should have been kept as a sideshow, instead
of occupying the center ring.
Meanwhile, Back on the Line
One thing that was evident to all observers was the unusual unity among
the Eastern workers. The pilots, who were crucial to the success of the
strike, and who have a traditions of crossing lines when other unions
strike, were not only honoring lines but seemed as corn-milled to the
goal of getting rid of Lorenzo as the machinists and flight attendants.
For the first month or so the strikers maintained spirited picket lines.
Among the strikers there was a lot of energy that could have been put to
good use. Unfortunately, that’s not what the union leaders had in mind.
Once bankruptcy court had become the focus of the strike the activity of
the strikers was shaped by the limitations inherent in the unions’
legalism. The unions’ leadership sought to keep picketing within narrow
and ritualistic limits so as not to alienate the judge. In this, their
efforts converged with those of management, which got an injunction
limiting picketing at a number of airports.
At the Eastern shuttle at LaGuardia Airport, pickets were separated from
the terminal by four lanes of traffic. The focus of their activity
became not keeping Eastern’s planes grounded but discouraging passengers
from flying.
There are a number of problems with dependence on a consumer boycott in
this situation. The first has to do with the likelihood of success.
After the first few days the passengers knew there was a strike. If they
had gone to the trouble of getting to the airport and coming to
Eastern’s terminal, they had probably already decided to go inside and
not support the strike and boycott.
In addition, most air travelers, especially on the shuttle, are
traveling on business. By and large these are not people who will be
disposed toward supporting the workers in a strike. Obviously, many of
these travelers switched to Pan Am’s shuttle for the sake of
convenience, but, again, those who had come to Eastern’s terminal were
likely to go in.
The second problem with such a strategy is its effect on the strikers.
Yelling at passengers who ignore you, or worse, who make a show of
crossing the picket line, becomes demoralizing. This in turn leads many
pickets to direct their hostility toward the passengers, rather than
toward management.
Some people lost sight of the fact that the key was keeping Lorenzo and
his planes grounded. If Lorenzo couldn’t get any planes in the air it
didn’t matter how many would-be passengers entered the terminal; if he
got planes into the air there would always be people who will pay to fly
in them.
Could the strike have been conducted differently? Yes. Would it have
made any difference in the outcome? Maybe. There are two key dimensions
of the strike that would have had to be approached differently in order
to have had a chance of success.
The first is the question of concessions. It must be remembered that the
Eastern strike was never a strike against concessions. It was a strike
over who should be given concessions. This may have seemed to the union
leaderships a “reasonable position, but it undermined the strength and
appeal of the strike. It also obscured what it would take to preserve
the jobs of the workers at Eastern Airline.
The machinists, flight attendants and pilots at Eastern had already made
substantial concessions. But these had not achieved their supposed goal
of making Eastern profitable and preserving jobs. Instead, the granting
of concessions just weakened the unions and made it more difficult for
them to resist further concessions. And management, whether led by
Borman or Lorenzo, kept coming back for more.
This is because Eastern’s problems were not simply the result of poor
management or disinvestment Eastern’s problems, as discussed above, were
rooted in the broader shifts in the economy, the general decline in
profitability and its fallout, deregulation and heightened competition.
By failing to recognize this and to base their strategy on this
recognition, the union leaderships reduced their chances of success.
The starting point for the unions should have been the defense of the
jobs, wages and benefits of the workers, regardless of who owned the
company. The logic of not taking this position became painfully clear in
the course of the strike.
Sacrifice for What?
By not firmly rejecting concessions, the unions made it more difficult
to generate enthusiasm for the strike among those union activists who
are increasingly coming to the conclusion that the starting point for
the rebuilding of the labor movement has to be ‘No Concessions!’ Then,
the strikers found themselves in the bizarre position of asking one
union-buster, Carl Icahn, to save them from another.
Finally, the unions had to offer more and more concessions to interest
potential buyers and to convince the bankruptcy judge that proposed
purchases were ‘viable.’ Eventually they were offering concessions worth
twice what Lorenzo had been demanding.
The result of this was that strikers became demoralized as the point of
the hardship they were suffering became less clear. In addition, the
unions’ hand in negotiations with Lorenzo and the judge was seriously
weakened. They couldn’t successfully argue that Lorenzo’s demands were
unreasonable when they were prepared to give up much more to someone else.
Second, to have had a chance of winning, the organization of the strike
itself would have had to be very different. There should have been a
much greater reliance on the activity of the strikers and their
supporters, rather than the lawyers in bankruptcy court.
For example, a serious effort should have been made to shut down
Continental. Since Continental’s workforce is largely nonunion, such an
effort would have required picketing to halt deliveries (fuel, food,
spare parts, etc.) to Continental. The thousands of Eastern workers
idled by the strike could have been recruited as volunteer organizers
for a unionization drive at Continental.
Lorenzo would, of course, get injunctions against the picketing of
deliveries. The workers would then have to decide whether to back down
or to challenge the injunctions, not just in the courts, but on the
picket lines as well. Mass picketing using family member support, civil
disobedience, blocking entrances and dozens of other tactics that the
people who know the airports best could think up, would be ways to keep
the pressure on Lorenzo and mobilize support for the strikers.
There are risks to such a course of action. There is a risk of legal
penalties. And such actions would probably cost the strikers the support
of the leadership of the AFL-CIO. After all, Kirkland left himself an
out when he promised the ‘maximum degree of support that is legally
possible” (emphasis added).
But that’s probably a risk worth taking. The strikers at Hormel a few
years ago, in the face of intense opposition by their international
union and the AFL-CIO, not to mention their boss and the courts, raised
as much money for their strike fund as the AFL-CIO has for the Eastern
strikers. So much for the “maximum degree of support!”
The point is not that militancy is risk-free, but that not to take these
chances, not to mobilize the maximum pressure against Lorenzo and the
court, is almost to guarantee being win-free.
The effective organization of mass picketing and other solidarity
actions would have been greatly facilitated by building broad strike
committees open to all airport workers.
Organizing such committees would have increased the number of activists
with knowledge of the airlines and who could gather information and work
to find ways to spread the impact of the strike. It would help to
develop the view that all airport workers have a stake in the outcome of
the strike. It would build a basis for greater solidarity in the future.
And it would begin to demonstrate the advantages of industrial unionism
over the craft-type organization imposed by the Railway Labor Act.
The need to overcome these barriers was made clear by an incident early
in the strike. Mechanics at Pan Am, represented by the same union as
Eastern’s flight attendants (the Transport Workers Union), were
performing maintenance work on engines for Continental.
A local officer who expressed the opinion that this was improper was
relieved of her duties and charged with “dual unionism,” that is, being
an agent of the IAM! (See Any Pollack’s accompanying article for an
in-depth discussion of airline unionism.)
Why Private Ownership?
Beyond the issue of how this particular strike might have been organized
is the question of how to address the problems of the industry with the
best interests of the workers in mind. There are a few aspects of the
Eastern strike that, at least implicitly, point toward such a broader
program. The most obvious one was contained in the demand that Lorenzo
be replaced.
The idea that workers would strike over who their boss would be—not just
an immediate supervisor, but the owner of the company—has far-reaching
implications. One of the main characteristics that distinguish labor
under capitalism is “free labor.” In theory at least, if workers are
dissatisfied with their working conditions, they are free to change
jobs, to work for someone else.
What the strikers at Eastern said was that, although they were
dissatisfied with the conditions at Eastern, they were staying and the
boss had to go. To achieve this, the strikers had to make the case that
their years of service and the sacrifices they had already made, gave
them a greater stake in the company and its future than Lorenzo’s money
gave him.
They had to argue that they, not Lorenzo who wanted to make a quick buck
by milking the company, were the ones who were committed to the company,
the passengers and the communities Eastern served. This is a critical
point because it raises the contradiction between production for
exchange and production for use; between the interests of profit and the
interests of service, jobs and safety.
Unfortunately, the strikers did not develop these points into an
alternative approach to the organization of the industry. While
implicitly challenging many of the traditional prerogatives that
accompany private ownership, the strikers did not offer an alternative
to it This has much more to do with the conservatism and timidity of the
U.S. labor movement than it does with any failing on the part of the
Eastern strikers.
For example, the strikers sought to force Lorenzo to sell so that he
would be replaced by another individual or small group, who would own
the company and exercise all of the “rights” that go with ownership. But
there are alternatives to private ownership.
The labor movement of almost any other capitalist country would have at
least considered raising a demand for nationalization And some would
have argued for workers’ control But these aren’t even apart of the
vocabulary of the U.S. labor movement.
The idea that the government should take over responsibility for running
an airline, or even the entire air transportation industry, is not so
far-fetched. It’s done in many, if not most, countries. There are even
precedents for it in this country. Amtrak and Conrail are both the
result of the U.S. government stepping in to maintain freight and
passenger rail service when private companies could or would not.
In New York, the city and state recognized the importance of New York
City’s subway system to the economy of the region, so they took over
(bought) the assets of two bankrupt private transit companies and
created a public authority to run them.
The same could be done with one, or better yet, several airline
companies. Transportation is one area of the economy where it is already
acknowledged that the public interest is not always best served by
private providers.
However, even if the government were to take over Eastern’s assets it
would not solve all of the workers’ problems. They would still be under
pressure to be “productive,” to compete with the workers at other
airlines. This is where workers’ control comes in.
The workers and their allies would have to develop ways to ensure that
management’s decisions placed the needs of the workers and the
communities they serve ahead of questions of profit and loss. They would
have to fight for a system of checks and vetoes over management, from
the boardroom on down, of this now-nationalized company. Only in that
way could they see to it that increases in productivity went to improve
service, not to cut jobs, and that safety concerns always came ahead of
meeting schedules.
Any proposal of this nature obviously flies in the face of the U.S.
government’s preference for privatization in transportation. That’s not
really an argument against these types of demands. It’s just further
proof, as if any were needed, that workers and bosses have different
interests.
Capitalists, however, seem to have a clearer idea of what their
collective interests are and how to achieve them than do workers or
their unions. It’s past time that we developed a program that recognizes
the fact of the overall decline in profit rates and addresses its
implications for working people.
Within the airline industry, and others as well, demands for
nationalization and workers’ control will be a part of that program. One
strike cannot accomplish all this. But the Eastern strike clearly
highlights the need to raise these issues within the labor movement and
the working-class at large so that we can begin to build a movement that
can place a working-class alternative to capitalism’s solutions to its
own crisis squarely on the political agenda.
While some of these issues may have been new to the Eastern strikers,
the working class as a whole has been confronted with these same
questions time and again. We have lost too many strikes because too
little was learned from the experience of others. Too many struggles
have been in vain because of the failure of the labor leaders to advance
an appropriate strategy.
Sometimes this is due to corruption or cowardice, but more often it is a
consequence of the union bureaucracy’s acceptance of the sanctity of
profits.
This failure of leadership is compounded when the rank and file is
unable to go beyond what the leadership offers. As a result, the real
political weight of the working class in this country is negligible
because we have failed to fight for proposals for jobs, housing and
social services that break with the notion that profits come first.
Neither one strike nor one article will change all this. But the Eastern
strike will not be the last that poses the questions of militant action
and rank-and-file initiative. And this is not the last time labor will
be confronted with the need to develop solutions to the problems of an
industry and workers pounded by falling profits. This strike could help
a few of us avoid starting from scratch next time.
*See “The Current Capitalist Crisis: Causes and Implications” by Anwar
Shaikh (Against the Current, 1989) for an analysis of the underlying trend.
© 2020 Against the Current November-December 1989, ATC 23