Industry insiders say there are definite similarities between Eastern and US Airways, most notably the showdown between machinists and management. But, they say, there's at least one key difference.
"The employees are suffering greatly [at US Airways]," said Joseph Guerrieri Jr., who was counsel to the machinists at Eastern and whose firm represents the flight attendants at US Airways. "But it's not a matter of design, as it was under Lorenzo."
Wallace Haber said he doesn't regret a strike by his union at Eastern Air Lines, though the carrier collapsed. But, he said, "It broke my heart. My whole life was wrapped up in that company."
(Photos Phil Sears For The Washington Post)
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"Lorenzo" is Frank Lorenzo, a name that inspires as much ire among Eastern veterans today as it did when they took to the picket lines to denounce him in the spring of 1989. Three years earlier, Lorenzo's Texas Air Corp. had purchased Eastern and almost immediately set to work making cuts, continuing a pattern that had begun under the previous ownership.
The unions felt special animosity toward Lorenzo because they believed he was trying to cannibalize Eastern by transferring its assets to Continental Airlines Inc., which Lorenzo also owned and where organized labor was much less of a force.
"Frank Lorenzo was being portrayed as Darth Vader at the time. There's not that element of real hatred of US Airways," said Elliott Seiden, who worked closely with Lorenzo as vice president and associate general counsel of Eastern's parent company.
Relations between Lorenzo and the machinists came to a head in early 1988, when contract negotiations broke down. Lorenzo's final offer, according to machinist leader Charles Bryan, 71, involved pay cuts of up to 50 percent and a clause that would have given management far more discretion over who did work for the airline. "What he proposed in that negotiation was basically that they were going to break the union," Bryan said. "He would be able to outsource anything he wanted to. That was what he was after."
Lorenzo, who now runs Houston investment firm Savoy Capital Inc., said he has been struck "with how little we've learned in 20 years."
Lorenzo said airlines need to learn how to adjust to the marketplace. Eastern found itself facing increased competition in Florida markets, where much of its business was based.
"That Eastern had to be competitive was not understood" by workers, Lorenzo said.
Bryan saw a strike as the only way out. If workers walked off their jobs, he believed President George H. W. Bush would intervene and get both sides back to the negotiating table for mediated talks. The International Association of Machinists began their strike in the early morning of March 4, 1989. To Bryan's dismay, Bush declined to act.
