The Democratic White House cynically purports to be on labor's side. Just three days after Clinton signed the papers ordering the pilots back to work, Vice President Albert Gore had the nerve to tell AFL-CIO officials, "The right to organize and the right to strike are fundamental rights, and nobody's tax dollars should be spent undermining those rights." He promised the administration would issue regulations barring the reimbursement of companies with government contracts for money they spend to fight union organizing drives or defend themselves from charges of violating labor laws. This shameless hypocrisy by the vice- president was uttered shortly after Clinton, the strikebreaker in chief, gave the flimsiest excuse for trotting out antilabor legislation from the 1920s to order pilots back to work: travelers would be inconvenienced over a holiday weekend. It was the first such presidential use of the Railway Labor Act against a walkout in the airlines since another Democrat, Lyndon Johnson, tried to wield it, unsuccessfully, against a Machinists strike 30 years ago.

As the union tops thanked Gore for his platitudes, their willingness to go along with Clinton's back-to-work order represented a betrayal of the most basic principles of working-class solidarity. "An injury to one is an injury to all" is a life-and-death question for the working class today.

Whatever the outcome of the pilots' struggle at American, there are more fights brewing in the airline industry. Like the bosses at American Airlines, all of the carriers are pushing to cut wages, impose longer hours, and reduce benefits through commuter subsidiaries and other schemes in a drive to beat out their competition. As the string of recent aviation disasters have demonstrated, the airline bosses carry this out with disregard for the health and safety of the workers and passengers alike.

Now is a good time to get Pathfinder's book The Eastern Airlines Strike: Accomplishments of the Rank-and-File Machinists and Gains for the Labor Movement into the hands of as many airline workers and others as possible.

In March 1989, the 8,500 members of the International Association of Machinists walked out at Eastern, one of the world's largest carriers. By the time the battle ended 22 months later, the rank-and-file workers had defeated Eastern's attempt to create a profitable nonunion airline. They had driven Eastern boss Frank Lorenzo, among the country's top union busters, out of the industry. The company itself was forced out of business. Now Lorenzo admits, in his recent New York Times column, that he underestimated the "intransigence" of the fighters at Eastern, who vowed to stay out "one day longer" and stuck to that pledge. The Machinists at Eastern sent a powerful message to employers everywhere who believe destroying unions always increases profits. It's a lesson neither the airline bosses nor their political representatives in Washington have forgotten.

The history of this battle, and the support it won from millions of working people in the United States and around the world, is told in The Eastern Airlines Strike. It's a good companion to The Changing Face of U.S. Politics: Working-Class Politics and the Trade Unions, also available from Pathfinder. These are handbooks for workers coming into struggle today, who want to stand up and say no to the bosses' attacks and government strikebreaking.  
 
 
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