Eastern Paralyzed as Strike Spreads : Pilots and Airline’s Attendants Join Machinists; New Boycotts Threatened

Pilots and flight attendants joined striking mechanics, baggage handlers and ground personnel Saturday in a walkout that virtually paralyzed the operations of financially troubled Eastern Airlines throughout North, Central and South America, stranding thousands of passengers.

The International Assn. of Machinists--determined not to accept a pay cut--vowed to disrupt the nation’s mass-transit rail systems as well. In the Northeast, the strikers plan to picket commuter railroads, starting Monday, and rail workers promised not to cross their lines. A railway strike also could affect about 2,200 Southern California commuters who ride Amtrak trains that run between Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and San Diego.

Lawyers for New York-area railroads asked a judge to stop the threatened spread of the strike.

And Transportation Secretary Samuel K. Skinner repeated an earlier warning that the Bush Administration--which had declined to act Friday to put off the walkout--might seek emergency legislation to prohibit a widening strike that would “hold American industry hostage.”

Well Short of Goal

Admitting Saturday that Eastern was falling well short of its goal to maintain at least 25% of its normal weekend flight schedule, airline spokesman Robin Matell conceded that “things are not working out the way we had planned.”

During the first 10 hours of the strike, Eastern--which has an average of 1,040 flights daily--got only 10 flights off the ground. By Saturday afternoon, the total had only risen to 35.

Passengers and baggage were backing up at airports across the country. Some planes were left stranded in the Caribbean when their crews flew home on other commercial airlines, and hundreds of cruise-ship passengers were stuck in Miami, home base of Eastern, the seventh-largest airline in the nation.

“I’ll do anything to get out of here,” moaned Ron Bayless of Crystal Lake, Ill., one of the hundreds who found themselves stranded at Miami International Airport.

Matell said the strike’s effectiveness resulted from the support the machinists were getting from the pilots, some of whom walked picket lines with the machinists.

A spokesman for the pilots said this support stemmed from their longstanding anger at Frank Lorenzo, the man whose Texas Air Corp. bought--and began to strip--Eastern back in 1986. Dan Ashby, a spokesman for the pilots at Eastern, said that since that time, Lorenzo has transferred cash, planes and other assets from Eastern to Continental Airlines and other Texas Air subsidiaries.

He said Lorenzo wanted the strike so he could shut Eastern down, using its remaining assets to bolster Continental, which is no longer unionized. “It was all preconceived,” Ashby said.

The strike was launched at 12:01 a.m. Saturday, a half-hour after the machinists rejected Eastern’s last-ditch proposal, which slightly improved earlier offers. Eastern, which asserts that it is losing as much as $1.5 million a day, had been demanding $150 million in concessions from the machinists. The union had countered with demands for a pay raise.

Totals Wage Concessions

William W. Winpisinger, president of the union, said Saturday in an interview on Cable News Network that over the last 10 years, Eastern employees have made wage concessions totaling $1.5 billion, about the same amount the carrier lost during that period.

“What he (Lorenzo) is doing is spending our money,” Winpisinger said.

The pilots, who had turned down Lorenzo’s separate contract offer in recent days, announced shortly after the strike began early Saturday that they would honor the machinists’ picket lines. The flight attendants followed suit.

Spokesmen for the company, the machinists and the pilots agreed that negotiations are not expected to resume for several days, at the earliest.

At midday Saturday, the 8,500 striking machinists--who include mechanics, baggage handlers and other ground personnel--disclosed their plans for a secondary boycott by rail workers when the new workweek starts.

“This thing will really take off on Monday, when we take out the railroads,” Michael O’Connell, president of Machinists Local 1894, said at Kennedy International Airport in New York.

Judge Enjoins Unionists

In Philadelphia, a federal judge enjoined non-Eastern unionists from sympathy strikes. Similar court orders were being sought elsewhere, including New York, where lawyers for the Long Island Rail Road, the Metro-North Commuter Railroad, Amtrak and New Jersey Transit asked for a temporary restraining order to protect them from secondary boycotts.

U.S. District Judge Robert Patterson in New York reserved judgment Saturday but told lawyers for the New York area commuter rail lines and the striking machinists to be prepared to return today to possibly answer questions, a railroad spokesman said.

These lines are among 12 of the nation’s rail commuter operations--including the Southern California Amtrak service--that are covered by the federal Railway Labor Act.

Unions at airlines and railways operating under the Railway Labor Act are permitted to stage secondary boycotts. The Taft-Hartley Act, under which all other unions operate, prohibits such boycotts.

Officials of the four New York-area rail lines said they would not try to operate if the machinists throw up picket lines and rail workers honor them. The four lines carry a combined total of well over 400,000 commuters a day.

Alternative Bus Service

Plans were being prepared to provide alternative bus service in the New York area, but Robert Kiley, chairman of the Metropolitan Transit Authority, admitted that “we could be in for absolute chaos next week.” Snow, forecast for Monday in the New York area, could be expected to add to that chaos.

In Washington on Friday, a federal judge issued a ruling that Eastern machinists have a right to set up secondary boycott lines at five competing airlines--Northwest, USAir, Piedmont, United and TWA. On the other hand, the judge ruled that machinists at the carriers, all of whom have “no-strike” clauses in their contracts, cannot honor those picket lines.

The machinists union said, however, that the pilots at those carriers, who do not have no-strike clauses in their contracts, could honor those lines. There was no immediate indication whether these pilots might do so.

Ignoring the urgings of 34 senators, President Bush decided on Friday not to intervene in the dispute, declining to order a 60-day cooling-off period. Transportation Secretary Skinner said at the time that such intervention would “destroy the collective bargaining process” and serve only to postpone a strike that had become inevitable.

Issues Warning

However, Skinner warned on Friday, as he did again on Saturday, that the Administration “would not sit idly by” if the strike became so widespread as to “jeopardize the safe and efficient transportation of all.”

Skinner said that if the threat of a widening strike continues, the Administration is prepared to seek immediate legislation from Congress that would outlaw secondary boycotts at the presently exempted railroads and competing airlines.

Despite these warnings, John Peterpaul, vice president of the machinists, said in Washington that union officials were mapping prospective targets for secondary picketing. Peterpaul declined to name any targets, but Frank Ortis, a machinists union official in Miami, said several of Eastern’s suppliers and contractors--including British engine maker Rolls-Royce--were under consideration.

Eastern had hoped to provide a semblance of normal service on Saturday. The airline mobilized management personnel, hired non-unionists and slashed its schedule by 75%.

Schedule Crumbles

But that was not enough. When the pilots and flight attendants refused to cross the picket lines, even the limited schedule crumbled.

“If you don’t have guys in the cockpits of the planes, you don’t have the planes flying,” said Eastern pilot Ashby.

As of 4 p.m. EST along the Washington-New York-Boston air shuttle corridor, Eastern had flown only six of its 64 regularly scheduled flights.

At Washington’s National Airport, passenger agents said the few pilots who did cross the lines were taunted by picketers.

Spokesmen for Pan American World Airways, one of Eastern’s major shuttle competitors, said their traffic had doubled on the corridor Saturday. Pan Am said it would add additional planes to the service as needed. To help carry any spillover, Amtrak added four trains between New York and Washington on Saturday.

Nearly Empty Terminal

At New York’s La Guardia and Kennedy airports, about 200 machinists in coveralls, along with some more stylishly attired pilots and flight attendants, walked picket lines. Security guards quizzed everyone entering the nearly empty Eastern ticket area at La Guardia, and two ticket agents there--neither of them union members--whiled away the hours reading magazines.

“It’s real slow,” newsstand clerk Jimmy Williams told a reporter. “You’re my second customer.”

At Atlanta’s Hartsfield Airport, only a handful of Eastern’s 278 scheduled departures actually took off. Someone scattered nails on the pavement of an Eastern parking lot.

At Los Angeles International Airport, all 15 of Eastern’s flights were canceled.

Also contributing to this story were staff writers Scot J. Paltrow and Barry Bearak in Miami, Robert E. Dallos and Bob Drogin in New York, William J. Eaton and Don Shannon in Washington, Larry Green in Chicago and Henry Weinstein in Los Angeles.