Eastern and Unions Reach Agreement in Long Labor Unrest

Government officials today announced an agreement between Eastern Airlines and its unions, designed to ease labor tensions that the Transportation Department had warned could jeopardize safety at the carrier.

Under the pact, a series of committees will be set up to hear grievances and to handle disputes over safety procedures.

“Today we propose a process within which parties can begin to address safety,” former Labor Secretary William E. Brock, who was appointed last month to referee Eastern’s ongoing labor troubles, told a news conference.

“It recognizes that the public safety must not suffer at the hands of a collective bargaining dispute.”

Transportation Secretary James H. Burnley IV called the pact a “good beginning” but cautioned that the airline’s workers and executives will have to work hard to make it effective.

“All of the parties have agreed to a series of actions that have the potential to reduce substantially the threat to safety from labor-management discord,” Burnley said. “If the agreement is implemented in good faith, that potential will be fully realized.”

‘Optimistic and Hopeful’

Among the issues that labor-management committees to be established will handle are the plane captain’s authority, aircraft maintenance training and workers’ access to maintenance information kept by the company.

Charles Bryan, president of Lodge 100 of the International Assn. of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, told reporters in Miami that he is “optimistic and hopeful” that the agreement will ease labor tensions, but said he believes that relations with management will not improve overnight.

“We don’t think this is going to be a total cure for all the problems of Eastern,” said Bryan, whose union represents mechanics and baggage handlers.

The agreement was signed Tuesday evening by Frank Lorenzo, chairman of Eastern, and other airline and labor leaders, after four hours of bargaining that was overseen by Brock.

Brock was named to try to bring the two sides together on June 2, the day Transportation Department and Federal Aviation Administration officials released their report on Eastern’s labor turmoil.

Wage Concessions

The report--written after government investigators studied Eastern, Texas Air and Continental Airlines, another Texas Air subsidiary--concluded that Eastern’s labor troubles had to be solved before they became a threat to safety.

The bitter labor-management relations were sparked by the efforts of Texas Air Corp., Eastern’s parent company, to exact wage concessions from Eastern’s unions and to sell off many of the airline’s most profitable parts.

Management argued that the sales were meant to raise cash for the money-losing Eastern, while unions said the real goal was to weaken the labor organizations.

Texas Air announced last Friday that it had abandoned efforts to sell Eastern’s Washington-New York-Boston shuttle service to another subsidiary.