The Nation : Teamsters Threaten Strike at Pan Am

A Teamsters Union official threatened to expand the Eastern Airlines strike to rival Pan American World Airways, which competes with Eastern on the Boston-New York-Washington shuttle route. Meanwhile, Eastern employees rallied in Washington, New Jersey and New York, where Gov. Mario M. Cuomo threw his support behind the workers and challenged President Bush to intervene in the labor war with Eastern boss Frank Lorenzo. Eastern’s 8,500 machinists entered their third week on strike, which has crippled the nation’s seventh-largest airline and forced it to seek bankruptcy protection. The workers have refused to give wage concessions. William F. Genoese, director of the Teamsters Air Division, said in Miami that an expansion of the strike to Pan Am would “tie up the Northeast corridor of the United States.” Genoese met with officials of the International Assn. of Machinists to discuss the possibility of promoting a merger of Eastern and Pan Am through a union-led employee buyout.