On the Ground: Labor Struggle in the American Airline Industry (review)

Liesl Miller Orenic’s study of ground workers in the airline industry chronicles the history of labor relations and shop floor conditions from the epic age of flight to the eve of deregulation. Focusing on baggage handlers as the “touch point” of her narrative, Orenic argues that their experiences are instructive because like most of the postwar working class, their skill level falls in between that of craft and mass production workers. For this reason, this study is meaningful for union cadre and labor historians, and while her points raise questions, especially in regard to the direction of the contemporary union movement, three of her arguments stand out as particularly relevant.

First, Orenic presents a nuanced view of federal regulation of the airline industry. Federal oversight began in 1936 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt amended the National Railway Act to include airlines. The meaning for unions was, as she demonstrates, complex. Under the Railway Act the federal government guaranteed collective bargaining rights, certified unions according to class or craft, and resolved intractable disputes through federal mediation or arbitration. Industrial unions were, however, prohibited and, unions endured a number of jurisdictional controversies at the major airlines. For the International Association of Machinists (IAM) and Transport Workers Union (TWU), unions that represented most ground workers, federal regulation was, in the main, a boon. By 1950 rates of union density reached nearly 60% in the five major airlines. With the beginning of deregulation in the 1970s, unionization declined to approximately 45% of the airline workforce. The lesson of this part of the study seems clear enough. Federal policy can increase rates of unionization and enhance worker’s bargaining power. However, on the other hand, as this study amply depicts, if federal action can lead workers to the promised land of unionization, it can also lead them out.

Orenic also shows the importance of cross-skill organizing for baggage handlers, and, presumably, other marginally skilled workers. Baggage handlers and mechanics were joined by the National Mediation Board through the course of federal regulation. Combined with skilled mechanics, baggage handlers enjoyed a strong bargaining position. Mechanics became more ambivalent about the arrangement. A number of skill-specific mechanic unions appear by the end of the study before deregulation. Orenic cautions against a skills-based approach by citing the failure of mechanic unions at Northwest airlines in 2005.

Orenic’s study contradicts the image of a post-World War II working class that settled for cozy relationships with bosses and automatic cost-of-living increases. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s ground workers relentlessly pursued higher wages and benefits through “whipsaw tactics” in which unions won concessions and short-term contracts from vulnerable airlines operating in a highly competitive industry for which any delay represented an irretrievable loss of market share. Between 1947 and 1957, airlines were involved in hundreds of mediation and arbitration cases, numerous emergency board cases, and thirty-five strikes, mostly with ground workers. The study culminates with the 1966 IAM strike—the largest strike in airline history, involving thirty-five thousand workers, which shut down 60% of the U.S. commercial airline industry. On August 1, after three weeks on strike, with mounting pressure on President Lyndon B. Johnson to end the strike and force arbitration, and antistrike legislation moving through the Senate, ground workers rejected a negotiated offer of 5 percent annual increases in wages and enhanced benefits. Defiant workers, indeed. Ground workers finally ratified a contract on August 15 that provided higher wage increases and a cost-of-living escalator clause.

In addition, Orenic’s book contains a fascinating, though at times uneven, depiction of workplace culture. She shows how ground workers during the 1950s and 1960s controlled the pace of work, established considerable autonomy on the job, and participated in defining a code of conduct that placed less emphasis on physical strength than the ability of workers—almost entirely males—to form...