Unions Get Lift From Success of Flight Attendants Strike : NEWS ANALYSIS
The U.S. organized labor movement, confounded for years by declining membership and power, is finding new strength in the recently completed strike by American Airlines flight attendants.
Labor leaders and observers say the strike--by getting management back to the bargaining table on union terms without loss of jobs--has inspired, encouraged and emboldened unions. They predict that strikes--though clearly reshaped--could once again be effective weapons in labor disputes.
Unions have already refilled their quiver of tactics with legal work slowdowns and “corporate campaigns” to sully employers’ images with investors and customers. Now organized labor is also learning the value of limited-duration strikes, such as that used by the airline attendants, and “rolling” strikes that move from department to department or building to building. Such strikes are designed to catch management when it is off guard and vulnerable, while also trying to protect workers’ jobs.
“They’ve got to shoot from behind a tree,” said Stanley Aronowitz, a sociology professor and labor specialist at City University of New York, who predicts labor unions will become more militant and more likely to use guerrilla tactics.
Aronowitz said the apparent success of the flight attendants, the quick intervention by President Clinton and the historically strong ties between unions and the Democratic Party mean that perhaps “the period in which management had a distinctively upper hand has come to an end.”
For their part, business representatives foresee greater use of limited-duration strikes, but they are reluctant to concede any loss in power or a change in direction for labor-management dispute resolution.
Many in the business community agree with Daniel J. B. Mitchell, professor at the Anderson Graduate School of Management at UCLA, who said the political climate--much changed since the round of devastating airline strikes in the 1980s--had more to do with the quick resolution of the strike than any strategy used by the flight attendants.
Still, executives are likely to soften “supermacho” posturing at the bargaining table, said Audrey Freedman, a New York economist and management consultant. The hard-line stance by American Airlines was unsuccessful; a similar stance by Eastern Airlines led to the carrier’s failure, she said.
Freedman said the apparent success of the American Airlines strike--which ended after five days and with all strikers going back to work despite the company’s threat to lay off 4,000--has to be considered in context of the deep-seated problems facing organized labor today.
Generally, strikes have been ineffective tools for labor since the early 1980s, and in the airline industry, particularly, open-ended strikes often have meant a fight to the death.
Labor unions have been straining against the tight collar of labor legislation that dates back 60 years. Fewer U.S. workers find that unions address their needs: Only 12% of workers in private industry, and only 16% of the total work force, are represented by unions. The crisis facing unions, Freedman said, is not how to use strikes but how to enlist more members.
The ineffectiveness of strikes and dwindling union membership have been drawing plenty of attention from union leaders in recent years. A sense of powerlessness has pervaded the labor movement, said Jerry Tucker, head of the New Directions Education Fund of the United Auto Workers.
The sense of powerlessness, and the threat of losing their jobs posed by a stagnant economy, an abundance of job hunters and unyielding employers, have led many workers to abandon their unions or to cross picket lines.
“All across the country, in any industry, workers had been demoralized,” Tucker said. “With the possible exception of miners, most workers are wary of the strike.”
The flight attendants strike and several earlier, less visible strikes, have shown workers that when the target and the timing are chosen carefully--and when union members stick together--a short strike can demonstrate the workers’ conviction and ability to disrupt business.
Part of the success can also be attributed to the shortened nature of the new strike tactics. When workers are sure of going back to work on a specified date, reasonably confident that permanent replacement workers cannot be hired quickly enough, they are more willing to walk out, several labor leaders said.
Already, Ray Abernathy, a Washington labor consultant who worked with the American Airlines flight attendants to develop their strike strategy, has been called by several unions eager to put the short-term strike into their own arsenal.
Unions are spending more time courting their own members and including them in preparations.
During the flight attendants strike, 4,000 members of the television and movie crafts union, the International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees, gathered at a Burbank park for a rally designed to pump them up for impending contract negotiations.
But the most energizing event for those union members was the victory of the flight attendants, area labor leaders said.
“It is so positive, compared to what it has been” since then-President Ronald Reagan fired striking air controllers a dozen years ago, said Jim Wood, an official of the Los Angeles Federation of Labor. “This gives hope and encouragement to other people to stick together in bargaining with employers. It makes people not feel powerless.”
Skeptics say the flight attendants’ strategy would be unworkable outside the special atmosphere of the airline industry, though it certainly can be adopted by other airline and transportation unions. Gary Chaison, labor relations specialist at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., said he’s fairly confident that one airline union or another will call a limited-duration strike during the heavy Christmas travel season.
But Aronowitz of CUNY cited European labor’s widespread use of short-term strikes and said there are many other U.S. industries in which workers could adapt the strategy to fit.
The UAW’s Tucker agrees. “Workers in various occupations and industries are becoming more willing to stand up, take the risk and use smarter tactics than a blind strike,” he said.
While on one front unions are looking to remold strike tactics to fit today’s realities, organized labor is also struggling to reform labor laws and has a bill languishing in the Senate that would prohibit permanent replacement of strikers--one of the main weapons in management’s arsenal.
While the Clinton Administration has said the President would sign such legislation, the recent animosity between Clinton and labor over the North American Free Trade Agreement has both labor and management guessing whether he would lend it enough support to overcome businesses’ and congressional Republicans’ strong opposition.
Still, business is wary of the political climate, and a murmur of worry rippled through executive suites when Clinton intervened in the airline strike after only five days.
Then there’s William B. Gould IV, Clinton’s nominee to head the National Labor Relations Board. Labor experts say Gould, a Stanford University law professor who has written his own formula for labor law reform, could tilt the board back a little toward organized labor, cutting back on some uses of board rules that have tended to favor management.
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