Word: lorenzo
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...strike been higher. After 17 exhausting months of glacial negotiations with management, rank-and-file union members at Eastern decided to strike despite the risk that they might force the 60-year- old carrier to go belly up -- and lose Eastern's 31,200 jobs in the process. For Lorenzo, the intense chairman of Eastern's parent firm, Texas Air, the prospects were no better: the nation's seventh largest airline was clearly in for a bone-jarring ride, huge financial losses and a very uncertain landing...
...jobs, and their action grounded all but a handful of the airline's 250 planes. With a dwindling war chest of $200 million, hemorrhaging at a rate of $4 million a day, Eastern was forced to file for protection under the Chapter 11 provisions of the Federal Bankruptcy Code. Lorenzo used the same tactic 5 1/2 years ago to break the unions and reorganize Continental, but this time, under revised bankruptcy laws, he will find the process more arduous...
Charles Bryan, the tough-talking leader of the airline's machinists, who makes no attempt to hide his personal animus toward Lorenzo, responded with characteristic defiance. Said he: "We take no responsibility for the strike. This is a Frank Lorenzo strike." Eastern's differences with its unions had long since deteriorated into a bitter and highly personal feud between the two men. While Eastern insisted that the airline could not survive without substantial wage concessions from the machinists, Bryan maintained that Lorenzo was out to destroy the carrier and sell it off for his own profit. Lorenzo's battle with...
That set the tone for the showdown. U.S. Transportation Secretary Samuel Skinner, announcing that President Bush refused to intervene in the Eastern strike, could not resist a verbal shiv of his own. "Mr. Lorenzo," he said, "has obviously not got the trust and admiration of his employees." As unionists burned an effigy of the Texas Air chairman, their leaders laid ambitious plans to expand the strike through a series of secondary boycotts that would tie up commuter traffic across the country -- a nightmare that was averted when judges in several cities slapped temporary restraining orders on strikes of intercity rail...
Even so, Eastern's determination to keep planes in the air during the strike quickly unraveled as pilots refused to cross picket lines. Since he took over Eastern in 1986, the pilots charged, Lorenzo has systematically stripped the airline of its most valuable assets, leaving it too small and weak to compete...