A valuable book on the demise of Eastern Airlines

Scan page 16

"Grounded: Frank Lorenzo and the Destruction of Eastern Airlines"

bor issues for Business Week, is a valuable book on the 20-month strike at Eastern Airlines.

One would not expect such a useful book from a pro-big business publication. But as a co-worker of mine who worked for Eastern for many years told me after reading the book: "It is 95 percent accurate."

The fact that a Business Week reporter would write a book on the labor movement shows the significance of this labor battle for working people and the employers.

"Grounded" provides a detailed description of the internal workings of Eastern's owners from 1986 to the present. It is a textbook for the employers first and foremost in describing how Eastern was able to wring concessions from its workers.

Lorenzo forced the workers organized by the International Association of Machinists out on strike in March 1989—an action which resulted in an unprecedented sympathy strike action by the pilots and flight attendants unions for eight months. But even before then, the workers faced a campaign of terror by management. Workers were fired at will. Harassment became the norm.

As Bernstein documents, from the day Lorenzo bought Eastern in 1986 until the strike, Lorenzo's management had one objective: to break the unions.

Cops and courts The workers also had to fight the government of George Bush, the ... Poland (continued from page 13) at the time, cut off from the outside world."

But despite all the farcical aspects of this campaign, he has been the only one not afraid to break the established consensus from the round table. He has got one central question right: There is growing opposition to privatizations, the effects of the free market, and the attempts of Western capital to convert Poland into a dependent country and reservoir of cheap labor power.

Social conflict intensifies

Tyminski's success, whatever his motivation, taken together with Walesa's overall victory in the first round and Mazowiecki's crushing defeat, signifies a new intensification of social conflict in Poland.

The whole course of the election campaign, and above all the accompanying workers' struggles, point to a growing class polarization that is making itself felt with unexpected force. This was inevitable. The cost to the working class of the Balcerowicz Plan could not be borne indefinitely without provoking large-scale protest. This protest has now been expressed in strikes and at the ballot box.

The significance of what has occurred has not been lost on the government, which immediately resigned. Parliamentary leader Geremek declared that "society had failed the exam of democracy."

The supporters of Mazowiecki/Balcerowicz have been been routed and they know it, although they are attempting to place the blame on Walesa for "stirring up emotions" in the first place.

The new manifestations of class division and class interest were recognized by Gazeta Wyborcza, the newspaper most closely linked to Mazowiecki. The morning after the first round of voting, the paper's front-page editorial stated the following:

"The results are unambiguous: Stan Tyminski's success was provided by the inhabitants of the countryside and medium-sized towns, by the workers and youth.... We have previously referred to this division into 'two Polands.' "We knew that the "second Poland' —uneducated people, people from smaller townspolice, the courts, and the news media. Labor, on the other hand, had to rely on the rank and file and solidarity from other unionists.

What Bernstein doesn't describe are the actions of the rank and file.

His coverage of labor is primarily on the maneuvering of the IAM top leadership. The book documents the IAM leadership's strategy of seeking new and better owners for Eastern as the way to fight Frank Borman (Chief Executive Officer before Lorenzo) and later Frank Lorenzo himself.

To this day, the IAM is seeking a better "pro-labor" capitalist to buy out the smaller Eastern. (Part of this strategy too was to seek an Employee Stock Ownership Plan— ESOP-of the airline.)

The book shows how Lorenzo's anti-labor policies did not begin with his breaking of the unions at Continental in 1983 and Eastern in 1989.

Many labor leaders have said that Frank Lorenzo was a byproduct of the deregulation of the airline industry in 1978. But Bernstein points out that Lorenzo opposed deregulation, as did most other airline executives.

Lorenzo's strategy Lorenzo began his career in aircraft leasing. Later, in 1969, he and his partner, Robert Carney, put up $25,000 to start a new company, Jet Capital Corporation. Through business connections, they used Jet Capital as the medium to take over a near-bankrupt airline, TXI (Texas International Airlines, later renamed Texas Air). Through the use of borrowed money, Lorenzo began his did not understand the economic reforms, did not accept the need for sacrifice, and no longer supported the government. What surprised us were the dimensions of the hostility displayed by the "second Poland."' The arrogance of the above quote is repulsive. Yet the general idea is correct. Yes, there are two Polands: a small elite of Stalinist bureaucrats, black marketeers, and pro-imperialist intellectuals, who have been benefiting from the moves to restore capitalism-and a large majority who have been suffering.

The newspaper is way off track when it claims the latter "do not understand the economic reforms." They understand them all too well! Which is why they are opposing them.

Exciting prospects for socialists This article is being written 10 days before the second round of voting. An atmosphere of near-panic has hit the press and Solidarity leadership circles following the fall of the Mazowiecki government. While Walesa must be the clear favorite in the second round, he is running scared. Tyminski has shown himself a tougher opponent than Mazowiecki.

The day after the first round, Walesa declared he had not wanted to become president, but had run only to "teach Mazowiecki a lesson and then withdraw." Now, however, he would have to stay in the running to defeat Tyminski.

Following this amazing statement-and as the press announced "the end of Solidarity" and warned of Poland being plunged into "social strife and chaos"— Walesa called for national unity around him against Tyminski. A new period has opened up in Poland. The IMF/Balcerowicz Plan of capitalist reconversion has been rejected by most working people. Opposition is mounting rapidly to the whole free-market project.

This offers exciting prospects of presenting a socialist alternative and new opportunities for the Polish Trotskyists of the Revolutionary Left Current. The task of the Trotskyists is now to turn ever more directly to the working class and give clear practical direction to the struggles, beginning to the mass opposition to capitalist restoration. Neither Walesa nor Tyminski offer any way forward for Polish workers. The struggles will continue-against the Stalinists, empire building.

In 1974, Lorenzo forced the unionized TXI employees out on strike. Five days later, he replaced the strikers with scabs. The strike grounded TXI for four months.

Lorenzo only survived with the help of the other airlines under the Mutual Aid Pact, an arrangement among the major airlines under which carriers were assessed set amounts to be paid any company shut down by a strike. In April 1975, the TXI unions capitulated to Lorenzo.

TXI set the pattern followed by Lorenzo in the post-deregulation 1980s. Lorenzo bought nearbankrupt companies on junk loans, forced the unions (where they existed) out on strike, then brought in scabs. He borrowed money to pay for it all and eventually repaid the high-interest loans.

Concessions framework As Bernstein documents, all the airline bosses stepped up pressures on the work force in the 1980s.

This included major demands for concessions.

The response in the airlines unions was uneven. District 100 IAM leader Charles Bryan was elected president of the district in 1980 on an anti-concessions platform. But during this period, Bryan—like other IAM leaders accepted the framework of concessions "to save jobs.

The AFL-CIO top labor leadership only began to get the wake-up call after President Reagan broke the air-traffic controllers strike and fired all the workers in 1981. But their shift was not to mobilize the ranks to fight back, but to find a new way to get cooperation from the employers. This included seeking profit-sharing plans, partial ESOPs, etc.

So in 1986, when the IAM refused to give more concessions, Eastern was sold to Frank Lorenzo's Texas Air. As Bernstein who are still clinging on to their positions and against the capitalists, who now wish to move in.

All the experts and political commentators notes, everyone knew what was coming: Lorenzo wanted a quick strike to break the unions and merge Eastern into non-union Continental.

Eastern was the third largest carrier at that time. Combined with Continental, Texas Air was the largest carrier in the capitalist world. But it was half-unionized. And Texas Air had growing debts, since the takeovers were financed by junk bonds. Lorenzo's low-cost Continental was still not profitable. Eastern was also in the red. It was this reality that led Lorenzo to push for a strike and to break the unions at all costs.

The result? Eastern Airlines is a shell of its former self. It is waiting to be taken over by a stronger carrier, or sold off in parts. As William Sutton, a chief steward in the Eastern avionics shop in Miami, told Bernstein: "We may lose our jobs, but Lorenzo doesn't have an airline."

of the world's capitalist press who believed the restoration of capitalism would proceed smoothly thanks to popular support have been proven very, very wrong.

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By Malik Mi