Flight Attendants Strike Continental; Minor Impact Seen
Continental Airlines’ flight attendants struck the company Monday, erecting picket lines at several airports around the country, but the company said the strike was having little immediate impact on its operations.
“Not a single Continental flight has been canceled” as a result of the strike, company spokesman David Messing said Monday afternoon. He acknowledged that some of Continental’s 1,400 daily flights were canceled or delayed Monday, but said those were not attributable “to the job action.”
Spokespersons for the Union of Flight Attendants in Houston, Continental’s home base, said late Monday that they had been told there were scattered cancellations in several cities and that flight attendant crews had walked off several planes, but details were still uncertain. The airline serves 120 cities.
Company officials asserted that only a small fraction of Continental’s 6,800 flight attendants were honoring the strike, a charge denied by union officials. Messing said only 5% of the attendants paid dues to the independent union and that the union had been propped up by $1.4 million in financial assistance from the International Assn. of Machinists in recent years.
Carla Winkler, the union’s president, said the membership figure given by Messing was way off the mark. “Obviously, if it was only 5%, we wouldn’t be keeping our doors open,” she said. However, Winkler declined to say how many dues-paying members the union has, saying that information could help the company. She acknowledged that the union has received financial assistance from the Machinists.
About 75% of Continental’s attendants have been hired in the past 5 1/2 years after labor troubles erupted at the company. A number of those workers were hired as replacements during a strike that lasted from October, 1983, to April, 1985.
Several Reasons Cited
Both Winkler and Machinists officials denied that the strike, which came with little notice, was called to help the machinists in their strike against Eastern Airlines. Like Continental, Eastern is owned by Texas Air Corp.
Winkler said the attendants had struck for a host of reasons, including poor working conditions, lack of job security, work schedule problems, frequently shifting work rules, poor grievance procedures and a dispute over wages.
“Continental flight attendants work twice as many hours for half the pay of flight attendants at American, United, TWA or Northwest Airlines,” Winkler said. Picketing Continental attendants in Newark, N.J., said up to six attendants shared an apartment because they couldn’t afford to live alone or in smaller groups.
At the end of a Houston press conference, about 40 flight attendants chanted, “Tank Frank,” referring to Frank Lorenzo, the chairman of Texas Air, who has been considered an archenemy by organized labor since September, 1983, when he took Continental into bankruptcy, abrogated his union contracts and soon resumed operations, functioning non-union.
The Continental attendants have been working without a collective bargaining agreement since then, and negotiations to reach a new agreement have been unsuccessful. Under those circumstances, Continental is free to change working conditions and wages and the attendants are free to strike. Continental said in a statement issued Monday that it had implemented a $19-million increase in wages and benefits for all its attendants on Jan. 1.
“They’re taking advantage of a golden opportunity now” to put pressure on Frank Lorenzo, said Jim Conley, a spokesman for the machinists, of the attendants decision to strike now. He said the attendants’ decision was an independent one, not something that had been dictated by the machinists.
Airports Picketed
Another source close to the flight attendants union said the union anticipated that the strike would grow when more attendants were back at their home bases. The source said some of the attendants who were about to get on flights far from their home bases were encouraged to complete their trips. “We didn’t want to strand anyone in Paris or Australia,” he said.
Groups of Continental attendants in maroon uniforms picketed Monday at Los Angeles International and airports in Cleveland, Denver, Honolulu, Houston and Newark, Continental’s principal hubs.
“I love this company. . . . It was my life, but I can no longer continue working under these conditions,” said Pat Ryan, a 31-year veteran of Continental, who was picketing at LAX on Monday. She said the company did not respect high-seniority employees. “Thirty one years, and someone who has worked five years makes the same money. That’s incredible,” Ryan added.
It appeared that the strike got off to a slow start because the union had called it on short notice and had not notified all its members.
For example, a Continental attendant boarding Flight 460 from Orange County’s John Wayne Airport to Houston via Denver on Monday said she hadn’t heard about a strike and was uncertain if she would walk off the job. “The only way I would have (participated) was if everybody was on strike,” said the attendant, who requested anonymity. “Too many people are wishy-washy about it.”
Along the same line, some passengers who flew from Denver to Los Angeles on a Continental flight Monday morning said attendants on Flight 1265 told them they were unaware that a strike had been called.
Passengers arriving in Los Angeles on Continental flights Monday morning said the strike had not affected service, and those waiting in line at ticket counters said that as long as there was a pilot flying the plane, they did not care whether there was a flight attendant or not.
“It doesn’t bother me, as long as the pilot’s OK,” said Alesia Elbert, 36, as she prepared to take a Continental flight home to Newark. “I can serve myself, but I can’t fly the plane.”
At Lindbergh Field in San Diego, Continental officials said that only one of 35 flight attendants working the airline’s five morning flights had observed the strike.
“Maybe (flight attendants) were afraid not to work because of the result that Eastern Airlines received,” said Juli Linton, referring to the machinists’ strike at Eastern and the company’s decision to file for bankruptcy.
Times staff writers Charisse Jones in Los Angeles, J. Michael Kennedy in Houston, Chris Kraul in San Diego and Kenneth T. Yamada in Orange County contributed to this story.
