The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.61/No.9           March 3, 1997 
 
 
Clinton Orders Pilots To Halt Strike At American  

BY JANET POST
MIAMI - The first American Airlines pilots' strike since 1959 lasted only four minutes before U.S. president William Clinton intervened to stop the strike under the Railway Labor Act. The 9,300 members of the Allied Pilots Association (APA) had struck at 12:01 a.m., February 15.

Pilots expressed surprise and disappointment in response to Clinton's action. At a nationwide teleconference hook-up attended by 650 pilots in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, where the sentiment was clearly for a strike, the pilots had cheered its kickoff only moments before the announcement from the White House. "This will only lead to pent-up frustration," said APA member Paul Renneisen.

Over the next 30 days a Presidential Emergency Board will formulate a settlement proposal while the pilots work under the old contract. American and the APA will then have another 30 days to discuss the proposal. If no agreement is reached, either the pilots will resume their strike, the "cooling off" period will be extended, or Congress will impose the settlement recommended by the Emergency Board and outlaw a strike.

The Clinton administration invoked the Railway Labor Act by citing a threat to the nation's commerce, and grave inconvenience to travelers. The act was signed in 1926 by President Calvin Coolidge and amended to include workers in the airline industry in 1934. Its purpose is to string out negotiations, tie up workers with restrictive regulations, and to sap the strength of the workers' fight.

The national officialdom of the AFL-CIO was noticeably silent leading up to the strike. After Clinton's intervention AFL-CIO spokesperson Denise Mitchell said, "There are a lot of workers involved, and a lot of consumers who would be affected, and we respect the decisions that were made." On February 18 the Miami Herald commented that the union federation "has kept a low profile during the standoff between American Airlines and its pilots, in part because the pilots don't belong to an affiliated union."

At the Miami airport striking pilots, upon hearing about the presidential intervention, switched their "On Strike" picket signs to "Defend the Profession" signs, thus making it an "informational" picket, for about 30 minutes before leaving the airport. A United ramp worker walking by the departing pickets called out to the pilots bitterly, "That's quite a president we've got, eh?"

In Washington, D.C., national APA president Jim Sovich commented "There is no deal, there is no contract, there is no labor peace."

Republican and Democratic Party politicians, corporate heads, businessmen, and American Airlines officials including Chairman Robert Crandall all demanded the government intervene to stop the pilots' strike - quoting figures in the millions, and billions, of dollars that could be lost in commerce.

Clinton's move drew praise from Frank Lorenzo, the former CEO who tried to break the Machinists union in a strike at Eastern Airlines in 1989-91. Rather than see their union smashed, the workers forced the airline under and drove Lorenzo out of the airline business. In a column published in the February 19 New York Times, Lorenzo wrote, "In retrospect, I think Eastern made a mistake in resisting Presidential interference.... We misjudged the intransigence we would encounter. We would have been better off taking our chances with a mediation board."

Many airline workers and others saw the political impact that the American pilots' strike could have had as the main reason for the White House intervention. "Somebody has to set a precedent. If the pilots can't win some demands, how are the blue-collar workers ever going to?" asked Rodney Johnson, a food service worker at United Airlines in Miami in International Association of Machinists (IAM) Local 368.

"We're behind the pilots 100 percent," said Cruz Lopez, a ramp worker at American. Lopez called Clinton's action "just like a slap in the face for the pilots."

Kevin Holmes, a food preparer at Sky Chef at the Chicago airport, told the Militant, "A lot of people at work were saying that it's not a good move by Clinton - it really weakens the pilots."

Rick Walker, a TWU member in Miami and former Eastern striker, said, "Almost all the ramp workers I talked with understand that Clinton's concern for American Airlines and other corporations are the reason he stopped the strike - not out of concern for `the workers' and whether we have better jobs."

Some American workers, though, had opposed the strike, citing the pilots' high pay. The company had seized on this and had asked them to sign letters that were sent to Congress asking for federal intervention.

The Railway Labor Act, which is often invoked against railroad workers, was last used in the airlines industry in 1966 by President Lyndon Johnson when machinists at five airlines - Eastern, National, Northwest, TWA and United -went on strike. The machinists' union rejected the proposals by the government-imposed mediation board, struck for 43 days, and succeeded in breaking a 3.5 percent wage freeze that had been imposed by the government. Some of the basic gains seen by many airline workers today can be traced back to this 1966 victory. This history has not been mentioned by the media in their coverage of the American situation.

In January of this year the APA membership rejected a proposed contact by 63 percent. The central issue is whether small jets being ordered by American to replace the turboprops flown by its commuter subsidiary, American Eagle, will be flown by the American pilots or the American Eagle pilots - who are paid much less and face more strenuous working conditions. The Eagle pilots are members of the Air Line Pilots Association, an affiliate of the AFL-CIO. The new jets can travel up to 2,300 miles and could replace some of the current American Airlines routes.

"The issue here is an end-run around our jobs," said Alex Garmendia, a Miami American pilot with 21 years' seniority.

American and the other major carriers plan to buy hundreds of these jets in the future and this could become a fundamental question for labor negotiations in the industry. Flight attendants, ramp workers and cleaners who work on American Eagle flights earn considerably less than their American Airlines counterparts, except for new hires at American who work under the recent concession contract.

Janet Post works at United Airlines in Miami and is a member of IAM Local 368. Betsy Stone, member of IAM Local 1487 in Chicago, contributed to this article.  
 
 
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