Up, Up and Away with Wages

The nation's 63,000 airline mechanics are a cantankerous lot, with far greater power over the U.S. economy than their numbers would suggest. Three years ago, they struck five carriers for higher wages, and Lyndon Johnson entered the dispute. The President helped end the six-week-long transport tie-up by telling the nervous airline negotiators that he wanted a settlement regardless of the inflationary effects. The machinists finally agreed to a munificent increase averaging 5.7% a year for three years, thus pulverizing L.B.J.'s cherished 3.2% guideline for wage and price hikes. Afterward, wage boosts of 5% or so became standard throughout U.S. industry in 1966.

Now the airline mechanics, who earn about $4 an hour, are back with tougher demands. Confronting the airlines one by one, the unions are calling for a 30% raise spread over three years. First they hit American Airlines, one of the industry's strongest moneymakers. After ten months of negotiations and a 21-day strike, American capitulated last month and gave the mechanics a three-year contract with a 25.5% increase, or 8.5% a year. The settlement might not seem excessive when compared with the 7.5% median annual wage increase last year, but it was clearly inflationary.

Competing Unions. For American, the multi-million-dollar package was merely expensive. But for carriers like Eastern Air Lines, which last year lost $12 million, a similar settlement could be hazardous indeed.

The mechanics employed by American and Pan Am belong to the Transport Workers Union. At the other major carriers, they are members of the International Association of Machinists. Now that the T.W.U. has won the 25.5% package with American, the I.A.M. is unlikely to accept less from the other carriers. Another complicating factor for the airlines is that I.A.M. President Roy Siemiller, who ran the 1966 strike, will retire this June at 68. Siemiller, craggy, bespectacled and steel-hard, doubtless hopes to exit triumphantly with an exceptional agreement for his men.

Negotiations are deadlocked at six of the nation's nine major airlines. Eastern and four other companies have asked the National Mediation Board to move in, but so far it has agreed to do so only at National Airlines, where I.A.M. members have called a wildcat strike. The mechanics gained some attention for their dispute last week by disrupting the National-sponsored invitational golf tournament in Miami. A union-hired plane trailing a banner that proclaimed "Don't Fly N.A.L." circled the course. Several strikers invaded the 17th green, traded blows with police and had to be bodily removed before play could continue.

Such antics may seem childish, but they are also serious. On a national level, the mechanics are out to get all they can--and that is bad news for the inflation fighters.

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