TWA Offers Profit-Sharing, Cap on Hours to Strikers

Trans World Airlines said it made proposals Friday aimed at ending a 22-day-old strike by flight attendants, offering to limit their hours away from home, reinstate profit-sharing and buy out workers who were replaced when the walkout began.

TWA negotiators gave the Independent Federation of Flight Attendants until this afternoon to consider the proposal.

The airline and union negotiators met for more than two hours Friday, but TWA spokesman Larry Hilliard said both sides were “still very far apart.”

Union Response Expected

Union spokesman Michael Perri said the union was expected to have a response to the latest proposal by today’s deadline.

Perri charged that the TWA proposal was “no different” than what the airline had been offering previously, and he blasted the offer on profit-sharing and buy-outs as “too vague.”

A motorcade of striking flight attendants circled Kennedy International Airport on Friday, jeering replacement workers and warning travelers that their safety is threatened.

TWA Chairman Carl C. Icahn, who took control of the airline in January, is demanding a 22% wage reduction and work rule changes designed to save the airline $66 million. He already has won concessions from the Airline Pilots Assn. and the International Assn. of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.