Airline Walkout Ends; Talks Set : Labor: American, flight attendants agree to binding arbitration after Clinton intervenes. Carrier is expected to gear up quickly for the busy Thanksgiving period.
American Airlines and striking flight attendants agreed Monday to binding arbitration to settle their dispute after the intervention of President Clinton, ending the five-day walkout that has shut down much of the carrier.
American Chairman Robert L. Crandall, who only the day before refused a union proposal for emergency federal mediation, said the nation’s second-largest carrier will move quickly to rebuild its shattered schedule as flight attendants return to work. About 50% of the carrier’s flights have been operating with passengers.
The airline chief also said plans to eliminate 4,000 flight attendant positions had been dropped.
The sudden end to the strike, which has cost the airline at least $10 million a day, forced American executives to scramble to prepare for the onslaught of Thanksgiving holiday travelers. Flight attendants will report for work today, but many are not in the cities where they are needed. In addition, American has to find planes, pilots and flight crews to operate the 20% of its approximately 2,500 flights it had canceled over the next several days.
“You need everybody at the right place at the right time to get an airline to work,” said transportation consultant Harold Sirkin. “What are you going to do when a Chicago-based flight attendant who is supposed to be in Paris is still at home?”
Within minutes after the announcement that the strike was over, the dozens of American Airlines flight attendants at John Wayne Airport scattered without a trace of the four-day protest that had just ended.
Although the strike was over, the inconvenience to passengers continued.
The strike “cost me about $60, and it cost me about three hours of time,” said Susan Birmingham, 30, a San Jose businesswoman at John Wayne Monday. “And I still don’t have my luggage.”
She said she lost about half a workday because she had been diverted to Los Angeles International Airport and had to rent a car to drive to Orange County.
American says it expects to operate up to 70% of its flights with passengers today. That figure should rise to 85% by Wednesday, which is traditionally the busiest day of the year for airline travel.
American ticket-holders should call the carrier’s reservations center to find out whether their flights will be operating, airline officials said. The carrier will continue to offer full refunds to customers who have not been able to find a seat on another airline or American flight.
On Monday, Clinton called both Crandall and Denise Hedges, president of the 21,000-member Assn. of Professional Flight Attendants, after White House staff members worked to bring the two sides together. Although not without precedent, the President’s involvement in the strike clearly took Crandall, as well as other industry and labor observers, by surprise.
“The President indicated that he felt that it was important to the country that we put this dispute behind us,” Crandall said at a press conference, as he described the brief and unexpected telephone call from Clinton on Monday afternoon. “I simply felt that it was incumbent on me to accept his suggestion. So, I did.”
The White House’s effort to settle the strike comes only a week after Clinton incurred the wrath of organized labor for securing congressional approval of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Some labor analysts said Clinton’s action aided the flight attendants’ cause by forcing American to stop training replacement workers.
“We thank President Clinton for his timely and thoughtful intervention,” Hedges said. “We shut down the . . . airline, but the strike is over now. It’s history.”
But Clinton said the Administration had not exerted pressure on either side to change its position.
“The White House has been actively involved all morning trying to bring the parties to this point,” Clinton said at a White House appearance with Philippine President Fidel Ramos. “But, to be fair, they were willing to be brought to this point. They were interested in trying to figure out what procedures we might follow so that we could get the strike over with, bring the flight attendants back and start the planes flying again. So I have to give them a large share of the credit.”
A senior Administration official who insisted on anonymity said officials in Washington felt Monday morning that it was imperative to push for a settlement before the Thanksgiving travel rush began. With American expecting to operate only 40% of flights with passengers, the strike threatened to disrupt the nation’s airports during the busiest travel week of the year.
The flight attendants called an 11-day strike against the Dallas-based carrier Thursday after failing to reach an agreement after a year of talks, including federally mediated negotiations.
Both sides had deadlocked over salary demands, changes in work rules and concessions sought by management. The airline has offered pay raises, but the flight attendants said the increases would be offset by employee contributions for health and retiree benefits. In addition, the company wanted to reduce the number of attendants on some flights.
On Sunday, the flight attendants union asked American to join them in asking the National Mediation Board to form an emergency panel to review and recommend a settlement. But Crandall said the process would be expected to produce a settlement that would not be in the long-term interest of the carrier.
However, Clinton chose to short-circuit the complex mechanics of federal mediation by appealing directly to the parties to agree to binding arbitration. Neither American nor the flight attendants had settled on the details of the arbitration process. However, in most cases, company and union representatives present their sides to an arbitrator who then imposes a settlement.
Labor relations experts said that presidential involvement in airline and railway labor disputes is not unusual. In this case, because American’s flight attendants requested federal involvement the government became an interested party and Clinton had to act.
The flight attendants had originally planned the strike for 11 days so the company would not have enough time to fully train replacements by the time they returned to work. If an emergency panel had been created to settle the dispute, the airline could have continued training replacements during the prolonged process.
After putting out the call for replacement workers, American had received more than 5,000 applications, and about 600 people began their first day of flight attendant training on Monday, the company said. But the company said those trainees will now have to be let go.
Labor organizations across the country have been closely watching the unusual strike tactics employed by the American flight attendants, and many expressed delight at the apparent success of the limited-duration walkout.
“This has got to be a victory for labor,” said Robert J. Kalaski, communications director for the International Assn. of Machinists, a union that represents mechanics at most major airlines--except American. The flight attendants, he said, managed to deflect American’s threat of hiring permanent replacements for the strikers--an action that has become management’s most effective weapon in labor conflicts.
Airlines may now find it more difficult to cut labor costs as they seek to restore profits after three years of heavy losses.
“It will be very difficult for American Airlines management to go eyeball to eyeball with its pilots and machinists when those contracts come due,” said Paul S. Dempsey, head of the transportation law program at the University of Denver. “What this (end of the strike) signals is that flight attendants may have the resolve to go to the mat with management and force management to cry uncle. If that’s true, the pilots and machinists also have that capability because they are more difficult to replace.”
Times staff writer Donna K. H. Walters contributed to this story.
* TRAVEL TIPS: Answers to questions concerning airline travel during the busy Thanksgiving season. D1
