U.S.

End In Sight For Northwest Strike

September 10, 1998 / 7:53 PM EDT / AP

Negotiators for Northwest Airlines and its pilots reached a tentative agreement on Thursday that could end a strike that has grounded the airline for 13 days.

The agreement is subject to approval by the master executive council of the Air Line Pilots Association and by union members.

Northwest's 6,100 pilots will remain on strike until at least Saturday, when the union's council will meet in Minneapolis to consider the proposal.

Details of the contract would be withheld until then, said spokesmen for both sides. They took no questions at a brief news conference at the suburban Minneapolis motel where talks were held.

Earlier Thursday, President Clinton announced the tentative settlement at a White House news conference.

Bruce Lindsey, one of Clinton's top advisers, had been helping shepherd the talks toward agreement since Tuesday night.

Sources familiar with the negotiations, speaking on condition of anonymity, said all the major stumbling blocks had been cleared by late afternoon and that the parties were working on details of when the pilots would return to work.

Earlier Thursday, the company told mechanics to stop preparing planes for storage and began calling ground workers back from layoff.

North Dakota Gov. Ed Schafer, who had been urging Clinton to intervene, said that Northwest executives told him an agreement had been reached.

The breakthrough came during overnight negotiations, as the National Mediation Board's Maggie Jacobsen kept discussions going until 4 a.m. Thursday.

Room for flexibility was found when the talks in Minneapolis explored stock offers and profit-sharing to address the pilots' compensation demands.

The sources, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, said the company responded to a "significant offer" from the pilots later Thursday and that discussions continued into the afternoon.

The airline's 6,100 pilots, who went on strike Aug. 28, have been negotiating a new contract for the past two years. They were seeking a 14 percent salary increase over three years, while Northwest offered 9 percent over four years. The pilots also want increased job security.

Lindsey, who traveled to Minneapolis to help in the talks, delayed his return to Washington on Thursday. The Clinton administration had resisted ordering the pilots back to work, but Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater confirmed Thursday that the parties were informed that the president wouldn't be able to wait much longer.

"But we we also said, `You guys can get this done,"' Slater said.

Clinton called the union's president, J. Randolph Babbitt, and Northwest chief executive John Dasburg as the parties were in the final phase of talks and urged them to "get it done and to get back to work as soon as possible," an administration official said.

The strike is the longest against a U.S. airline since 1989, when a machinists' strike le to the collapse of Eastern Airlines. Northwest has laid off about 28,300 non-striking employees since the strike began.

Northwest already has canceled flights through Sunday and asked a federal court to stay a Department of Transportation order requiring the company to provide support services to its regional airline affiliates during the strike.

The department filed suit against one of the feeder carriers, Mesaba Airlines, to make sure it resumes service to more than a dozen markets from Minneapolis and Detroit. It also sued Northwest, seeking a court order to ensure ground services for the smaller airlines.

The agency gave Northwest's other feeder carrier, Express Airlines I, until Thursday night to develop a plan to serve five markets from Memphis, Tenn.