Eastern Pilots, Frustrated in Strike, Oust a Leader

Angry Eastern Airline pilots, saying that their union leader had not been tough enough during their seven-month strike, fired him Friday and replaced him with one of the union’s most militant members.

The Eastern unit of the Air Line Pilots Assn. said it had “recalled” its chairman, Jack Bavis, in a vote by its 17-member master executive council, which met in Washington. He was replaced by Charles H. (Skip) Copeland, 55, who has headed ALPA’s Eastern local in New York for many years.

Bavis was being punished, according to a pilots’ union spokesman, for suggesting last month that striking pilots return to their jobs at Eastern, which has been in bankruptcy proceedings since last March. The pilots are said to be angered that the strike, being conducted in sympathy with Eastern’s union machinists, has not been more effective.

Bavis, an Eastern pilot since 1966, for years was a high-ranking official with the national ALPA and ran for its presidency three years ago. He lost but was elected leader of Eastern’s unionized pilots the same year.

“The local leadership felt he was not going in the direction we wanted him to go,” a spokesman for Eastern’s ALPA unit said. The action “more directly reflects the mood of the rank and file. It represents the strength, the resolve and the tenacity of the members.”

The union official said that of the 3,600 union pilots at Eastern, 200 crossed the picket lines at the outset of the strike. Another 300 went back to work during the strike. After Bavis urged that the pilots return to work, another 300 did so, which was “inexcusable,” according to the spokesman.

Most Still Back Walkout

The rest of the original pilots, he said, amounting to more than 75% of them, are still militantly backing the walkout.

“The pilots find themselves in a high level of frustration over the circumstances in which they find themselves,” said Jerrold A. Glass, an airline labor relations expert. “Their stated goal of wresting control of Eastern from (Chairman) Frank Lorenzo and other objections have not been met. “You have to blame somebody. It’s like in baseball. If the team isn’t playing well, you don’t fire 25 people. You fire the manager. Right or wrong, he is the fall guy. Bavis is not viewed as being militant enough for some of the union members.”

Airline analyst John Mattis of the investment firm of Shearson Lehman Hutton said there is “a resolve by those who stayed out to remain out . . . until some kind of a conclusion has been reached. They want something to happen, and there has been no change in status since the strike began. They feel new leadership could get them off square one.”

In a telephone interview Friday evening, Copeland said he has never met Lorenzo but would be willing to negotiate with him under the right conditions.