Because I'm still on reserve and still bored out of my skull, this also from the ALPA chat site:
[font=Verdana, Arial, Helv]Last Stand Could Fell US Airways
Collapse of Eastern Air Lines a Cautionary Tale for Union
By Griff Witte and Amy Joyce
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, January 18, 2005; Page E01
US Airways machinists face a choice this week: They can approve the carrier's latest contract proposal and usher in the waves of steep pay, benefit and job cuts that come with it. Or they can turn down the contract and open the door to a walkout that could send the struggling US Airways Group Inc. -- and their jobs -- flying into oblivion.
It's a choice, U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Stephen S. Mitchell acknowledged earlier this month, that amounts to asking the machinists "to cut their own throats."
It's also a choice that Wallace Haber knows well.
Haber, 73, spent four decades in the airline business, a career that ended 14 years ago today when Eastern Air Lines Inc. folded and 19,000 workers lost their jobs. Like the machinists at US Airways, the Eastern machinists had faced a decision of whether to accept further reductions in pay and benefits or go on strike and risk dooming the company. They chose the latter.
What followed was one of the most bitter labor disputes in recent American history, one that culminated in Eastern's demise. The episode continues to resonate deeply throughout the airline industry and offers potential lessons for US Airways workers as they confront a future marked by two seemingly bad options.
"I fear they're going down the path of Eastern Air Lines," said Charles B. Craver, labor law professor at George Washington University. "They're getting to the point where they just think, 'I'd rather lose my job.' "
Haber, a machinist who rose to general chairman in the union, knew that was a likely outcome for him and his co-workers when he voted to go on strike at Eastern. But he didn't see any alternative.
"It's awfully hard to say when you're ready to jump off a cliff that you think you'll feel better when you get to the bottom. Awfully hard to say that," Haber said. "All I know is there was a lot of anger."
It was an anger that had built through the 1980s as Eastern's fortunes soured and workers' salaries eroded. A dominant carrier during the 1960s, Eastern suffered after the industry's deregulation in 1978 heightened competition.
US Airways, itself a legacy from the days before deregulation, has managed to survive until now despite taking a battering from low-cost carriers. But, mired in bankruptcy proceedings and unable to reach agreement on a new contract with its machinists, the airline's prognosis remains grave.
Industry insiders say there are definite similarities between Eastern and US Airways, most notably the showdown between machinists and management. But, they say, there's at least one key difference.
"The employees are suffering greatly [at US Airways]," said Joseph Guerrieri Jr., who was counsel to the machinists at Eastern and whose firm represents the flight attendants at US Airways. "But it's not a matter of design, as it was under Lorenzo."
"Lorenzo" is Frank Lorenzo, a name that inspires as much ire among Eastern veterans today as it did when they took to the picket lines to denounce him in the spring of 1989. Three years earlier, Lorenzo's Texas Air Corp. had purchased Eastern and almost immediately set to work making cuts, continuing a pattern that had begun under the previous ownership.
The unions felt special animosity toward Lorenzo because they believed he was trying to cannibalize Eastern by transferring its assets to Continental Airlines Inc., which Lorenzo also owned and where organized labor was much less of a force.
"Frank Lorenzo was being portrayed as Darth Vader at the time. There's not that element of real hatred of US Airways," said Elliott Seiden, who worked closely with Lorenzo as vice president and associate general counsel of Eastern's parent company.
Relations between Lorenzo and the machinists came to a head in early 1988, when contract negotiations broke down. Lorenzo's final offer, according to machinist leader Charles Bryan, 71, involved pay cuts of up to 50 percent and a clause that would have given management far more discretion over who did work for the airline. "What he proposed in that negotiation was basically that they were going to break the union," Bryan said. "He would be able to outsource anything he wanted to. That was what he was after."
Lorenzo, who now runs Houston investment firm Savoy Capital Inc., said he has been struck "with how little we've learned in 20 years."
Lorenzo said airlines need to learn how to adjust to the marketplace. Eastern found itself facing increased competition in Florida markets, where much of its business was based.
"That Eastern had to be competitive was not understood" by workers, Lorenzo said.
Bryan saw a strike as the only way out. If workers walked off their jobs, he believed President George H. W. Bush would intervene and get both sides back to the negotiating table for mediated talks. The International Association of Machinists began their strike in the early morning of March 4, 1989. To Bryan's dismay, Bush declined to act.
There was a surprise in store for Lorenzo as well: The pilots union soon announced it would honor the machinists' lines and refuse to fly. The action grounded the airline and pushed it into bankruptcy court five days later.
Workers were initially optimistic.
"Maybe I lived in a dream world, but I didn't think it would end up the way it did. I thought we would go back -- and go back with our heads up high," said Ted Ramirez, 68, an Eastern machinist for a quarter of a century.
But instead the strike dragged on as Lorenzo trained and hired replacement workers to get the airline back up and running. Meanwhile, Ramirez and his wife, also an Eastern machinist, got by on $300 a week from the union, plus money he brought in unloading 18-wheelers at night. Their financial problems led to strain in their marriage and, eventually, divorce, Ramirez said.
"The strike was extremely tough," said Merle Gray, 63, an Eastern pilot who lived in Round Hill. "You go from making $9,000 a month to making zero. That's a big difference."
The pilots called off the walkout in November 1989, but few were allowed to return to their jobs. Gray ended up working more than 80 hours a week as a suburban courier, a job he held as of Jan. 18, 1991, when all hope of returning to Eastern ended. That night, the airline shut its doors for good.
"We were expectful and hopeful we could work things out," Lorenzo said. "We certainly learned that airlines are not immortal."
To some, the strike had been a victory for labor, proof "that when human dignity is at stake, employees will stand up," as Guerrieri put it. Others were less charitable, noting that the unions may have forced Lorenzo to give up his airline, as he eventually did, but at a cost of thousands of jobs.
Seiden pointed out that Lorenzo's vision for the industry has largely come to pass. "He understood that with deregulation and the ability of new companies coming into the field without expensive labor forces . . . high pension costs and rigid work rules, [his companies] couldn't survive," Seiden said.
For most workers, moving on to new careers after Eastern wasn't easy.
Rock Underwood's world became a topsy-turvy chase for that one perfect job. First he went to what was then US Air. He was laid off from that work and went to Lockheed Martin Corp. Then back to US Air, then back to Lockheed when another layoff occurred. This back-and-forth went on for four years.
Finally, Underwood -- who worked in the engine overhaul shop at Eastern for 13 years -- got a job as a mechanic at United Parcel Service Inc., something he had thought about doing right after Eastern's demise. "I didn't want to go work for UPS because I thought it was just a freight carrier. Like a big brown station wagon compared to a sports car," he said.
Although he initially had to take a 40 percent pay cut, he has been with UPS for 10 years and has been a supervisor for the past three.
Gray eventually landed on his feet, too, buying and selling real estate in Florida. He counts himself among the lucky ones. "There were some that didn't even survive it. If you can't bend, you break. And some people did," Gray said, citing suicides and health problems among former colleagues. "That's the human toll."
Many Eastern veterans ended up at other airlines, some making higher salaries than they had made in their old jobs. After a stint making $5 an hour at a department store, Ramirez became a manager at a cargo transport company at nearly double his $18-an-hour Eastern wage.
Dave Crowther, 58, who had made $70,000 a year as an Eastern pilot, had the opposite experience. In 1990, he was offered a job with a charter air company for $35,000 a year. "I said, 'Hell, no. I'm worth more than that," the Purcellville resident explained. "Three years later, I said, 'You bet.' "
In between, Crowther -- who now works in real estate -- did odd jobs to make ends meet, everything from bartending to yardwork.
If US Airways workers end up losing their jobs, they could be in for a similarly rough transition. With airline employment rolls contracting and factories closing, there are relatively few high-paying jobs available for former pilots, flight attendants, baggage handlers and mechanics.
[/font]
