Word: borman
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Looking at a big Rosenquist (a small one is 10 ft. wide, and Star Thief, 1980, the mural whose installation at Miami International Airport was successfully opposed by Frank Borman, then president of Eastern Airlines, is 17 ft. by 46 ft.) is a bit like seeing one of the lost panoramas that were so popular in 19th century America scrolling creakily past, a journey re-created as spectacle, stripped of its pastoral imagery and retooled in terms of media glut. Hey, look! you hear the nasal voice of the artist saying: this is what the banks of the electronic Mississippi...
Despite all the corporate misery that they seem to be creating, the fare fights still have their boardroom defenders. One is Frank Borman, who steps down this week after 9 1/2 years as chairman of ailing Eastern Airlines, which is merging with Texas Air. He is also a victim of cut-rate competition: Eastern took a $111 million loss in the first quarter of 1986. Yet as Borman prepared to assume the largely titular role of Texas Air vice-chairman, he said last week that attractive prices and sharply increased passenger traffic have made the current competitive environment...
Enter Lorenzo with an offer to buy Eastern. Borman was by then negotiating night and day with the airline's unions. He delivered an ultimatum: accept 20% wage cuts or the airline would either sell out or go under. The pilots agreed to Borman's terms, and the flight attendants tentatively accepted a pact, but the machinists' union balked. That led to a confrontation between Borman and Charles Bryan, a 30-year company veteran who has led the machinists since 1979 and been an Eastern board member since 1983. Known as Chairman Charlie because of his power in the company...
...bold and risky ploy. Bryan apparently assumed that Borman would resign rather than agree to sell Eastern. Borman, for his part, calculated that the labor leader would never allow a takeover by Lorenzo. Reason: Lorenzo had enraged virtually every card-carrying union member in 1983, when his Continental Airlines filed for bankruptcy and abrogated the airline's union contracts. Lorenzo laid off the firm's 12,000 employees and offered them their jobs back at about half salary...
During a seven-hour board meeting at Eastern's Miami headquarters that culminated in the decision to sell, the atmosphere was tense. Before the vote was taken, Borman shouted at Bryan, "I'm going to tell the 41,000 employees that you destroyed this airline." Bryan's retort: "I'll tell them that you did it." To outside observers, it was no way to make a rational business decision. Says John Simmons, an Amherst, Mass.-based management consultant: "It didn't have to end in a shoot-out at the OK Corral...