Flying the Union-Busting Skies

WHEN the machinists' strike against Eastern Airlines began 12 days ago, it was time for organized labor to start singing its old refrain, "Which side are you on?"

Sadly, the response from the government and the public has been, "Not yours!"

This anti-labor attitude was articulated best by President Bush, whose advisor for congressional affairs once served as a corporate vice-president for Frank Lorenzo, the notorious unionbusting chair of Texas Air, Eastern's parent company.

Four days after 3,500 machinists walked off the job to protest a proposed 28 percent pay cut, President Bush set the tone for the public debate on the strike: "I would urge [the striking workers] not to make the public--the innocent traveling public--a pawn in this dispute."

A few days earlier, Secretary of Transportation Samuel Skinner warned workers that the nation must not be an "economic hostage" to the machinists union, who had threatened to encourage sympathetic walkouts by other transportation unions.

The administration's message was clear: this is not a management versus labor dispute, but a case of bullying unions versus the innocent public.

IT is unfortunate that the question in the Eastern strike has been, "Why are they screwing up my travel plans?" instead of, "Why won't Lorenzo make any reasonable concessions to the workers?" The public assumes that unions, not management, are automatically to blame for labor disputes.

Throughout the strike, representatives of Eastern's management took to the television airwaves to plead their case: the airline was losing $1 million per day. Employees must take a drastic pay cut or the airline will fold.

Public debate scarcely considered that Lorenzo's reckless management style, not unreasonable union demands, might be at the root of Eastern's financial distress.

In 1981, in one of the ugliest buyouts in recent history, Lorenzo purchased the successful Continental Airlines. Within two years, he had dragged the company into bankruptcy. While the case was still in bankruptcy court, Lorenzo used Continental's $50 million in cash reserves to purchase stock' in other companies.

Conveniently, under the provisions of Chapter 11 bankruptcy laws, Lorenzo was allowed to void all prior union contracts to help bring Continental back to its feet. Today, Continental Airlines flies the skies again--staffed by nonunion workers.

Not satisfied with busting the Continental union, Lorenzo is poised to perform the same trick on Eastern only two years later.

LAMENTABLY, the travelling public was only too eager to join in Lorenzo's anti-labor effort. Last weekend, hundreds of people flocked to Eastern ticket counters for bargain $12 shuttle tickets to New York.

For more than a week, nervous commuters grumbled that obnoxious strikers might disrupt their travel plans by spreading a secondary boycott to other airlines and railroads.

Instead of expressing admiration for the courageous strikers, who were almost assured that the walk-off would end their careers, commuters reacted selfishly and thought only of their own interests.

It is sad that Lorenzo and the Bush administration were willing to exploit such self-interest against the strikers. If commuters really wanted to act in defense of their own interests, they would have realized that the profit motive that encourages Frank Lorenzo to drive his companies into bankruptcy in order to drive out unions is the same attitude that creates shoddy service and higher fares.

Union officials said from the start that the purpose of calling a secondary boycott was to attract the attention of Bush. The president continued to insist, despite the fact that most of Eastern's service had been halted, that the case was an isolated labor-management dispute.

Labor supporters had hoped that the public would react with outrage and demand that the president declare an official 60-day cooling-off period and appoint a special panel to resolve the crisis, as the union had requested.

Instead, the nervous president remained inactive. Eastern has filed for banruptcy, thousands of workers are without jobs, and airlines--lacking one more competitor--will probably soon raise fares.

A hefty price to pay for a $12 shuttle ticket.