
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, November 23, 1993                   TAG: 9311230186
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

AIRLINE WORKERS END STRIKE

Striking American Airlines flight attendants decided to end their walkout Monday after President Clinton took the unusual step of brokering an agreement between the union and the airline to submit the dispute to arbitration.

Clinton announced the end of the impasse at an afternoon news conference that began barely minutes after the airline and the flight attendants had signed off on a plan that was thrown together by top administration officials in just a few hours. He said the resolution, which puts the contract dispute before a mutually agreed-upon arbitrator, was designed to allow Thanksgiving holiday travel to return to normal.

Clinton said, "This company and its employees are a very important part of the American economy, a very important part of the airline sector that has been troubled for the last couple of years and that is a very important part of our high-tech future."

His actions Monday - which included telephone calls to the chairman of American Airlines and the president of the flight attendants' union - were the most direct steps the White House has taken to influence the outcome of a work stoppage since President Reagan fired striking air traffic controllers in 1981.

President Bush refused to intervene in an Eastern Airlines strike in 1989 and gave his approval to federal intervention in a freight-rail strike in 1992 only after Congress passed a law calling for such action.

The White House took pains Monday to avoid having it appear Clinton was taking sides in the dispute, saying he had merely "facilitated" talks and had neither threatened to impose a solution nor suggested remedies for the underlying issues.

But airline officials said Clinton brought the weight of his office to bear on the airline in arguing the case for arbitration, an approach the union favored.

"He's the elected leader of the country," said Robert Crandall, the chairman of American Airlines, at a news conference in Dallas. "For any citizen or any company or any union to say `No, I won't do that' to the president requires an awfully good reason."

Keywords:
INFOLINE

by CNB