Slater, Lindsey to Meet Air Strike Negotiators

The White House became more visible Tuesday in attempts to end the nearly 2-week-old pilots’ strike that has shutdown Northwest Airlines Corp., sending a Cabinet member and a presidential aide to Minnesota to meet with both sides.

Secretary of Transportation Rodney Slater and Deputy White House Counsel Bruce Lindsey flew to Minnesota on Tuesday to meet with negotiators for the company and the Air Line Pilots Assn. in efforts to end the strike at the nation’s fourth-largest airline, a Clinton administration official said.

“[They] are going to assess the situation and to give the president an update,” said the administration official. A Department of Transportation spokesperson said the two are not expected to get directly involved with the negotiations.

About 6,200 pilots struck Northwest on Aug. 28 over issues that include pay and job security.

Since then, Clinton has been asked by elected officials from the upper Midwest states most affected by the strike to call a Presidential Emergency Board and stop the strike, as he did last year when pilots struck at AMR Corp.’s American Airlines. But other members of Congress have urged him not to end the strike, which would be a blow to the pilots’ negotiating position.

Negotiators for both sides were meeting in this Minneapolis suburb separately with a federal mediator Tuesday in exploratory talks geared at determining whether face-to-face negotiations should resume. Northwest has said the two sides are about $180 million a year apart on the entire contract, while ALPA has said that amount is closer to $70 million.

The meetings Tuesday followed similar talks in suburban Chicago during the Labor Day weekend. The meetings are being held under a news blackout imposed by the National Mediation Board.

Northwest, which is based in St. Paul, Minn., has laid off more than 28,000 workers due to the strike. Included in the layoffs are 567 part-time employees who received no-work notices Tuesday.

Sending officials to the talks could be a sign that the White House was becoming more sensitive to economic implications and political pressures from areas affected by the strike, said James Lloyd, former general counsel for US Airways.

“Whether the president will take the next step, to call an emergency board, is another issue,” said Lloyd, currently a lawyer with the firm Bryan Cave in Washington.

With the airline shut down by the strike and those workers laid off, one of Northwest’s commuter affiliates said it would not be able to comply with an order by Slater to resume service to smaller Midwest communities by Tuesday.

Mesaba Holdings Inc. has said it cannot immediately resume flying without ground services usually provided by Northwest.

On Friday, Slater ordered Mesaba, which is 30% owned by Northwest, and Express Airlines Inc., which is wholly owned by Northwest, to resume flights Tuesday.

Northwest said it would do everything it could, within the constraints of the pilots strike, to make resources available to the affiliates.

In other airline industry developments Tuesday, US Airways Group Inc. machinists overwhelmingly rejected a proposed five-year labor contract, setting up more contentious negotiations for the sixth-largest U.S. airline.

The 6,100 baggage handlers, ramp workers and other employees also voted in support of a measure giving their leaders the authority to call a strike.

US Airways said it is continuing to work with federal mediators on the contract talks and will be in further discussions with the union.

Meanwhile in Montreal, Air Canada pilots sat down with the airline to resume contract negotiations. Neither party made an immediate evaluation of the chances for a quick end to the labor shutdown, which began last week.