Item #804 Worn Placards from Eastern Airlines Strike, Atlanta, 1989.
Worn Placards from Eastern Airlines Strike, Atlanta, 1989.
Worn Placards from Eastern Airlines Strike, Atlanta, 1989.
Worn Placards from Eastern Airlines Strike, Atlanta, 1989.
Worn Placards from Eastern Airlines Strike, Atlanta, 1989.
Worn Placards from Eastern Airlines Strike, Atlanta, 1989.
Worn Placards from Eastern Airlines Strike, Atlanta, 1989.
Worn Placards from Eastern Airlines Strike, Atlanta, 1989.
Worn Placards from Eastern Airlines Strike, Atlanta, 1989.

Worn Placards from Eastern Airlines Strike, Atlanta, 1989.

Each approximately 14.5” x 22” with two holes at top of each for string to be worn around neck. Eight placards total (one duplicate), one with hand-written message in marker on reverse; seven printed (all with “We Support the IAM” and marked with the Allied Printing Trades Council Union Label at bottom center), one with stencil lettering. One has small “9/89” notation in pen in lower corner. Signs of wear from being used by workers picketing. Overall VG.
 
These placards represent an important piece of Atlanta labor and aviation history. Frank Lorenzo—former Chairman of the Texas Air Corporation, which owned Continental and Eastern Airlines—is the target of the ire of most of these placards. The International Association of Machinists (IAM), on strike since 1989, forced Lorenzo to give up control of Eastern (see The New York Times, January 21, 1991, p. 22). When Lorenzo acquired Eastern in 1986, he severed previous alliances with the labor unions, thus causing lasting strife.
 
Eastern Airlines in the 1980s had 800 flights a day and a huge hub at Atlanta’s Hartsfield International Airport, and the striking airline workers were out in force in Atlanta, as they were across the nation (there was even an anti-Lorenzo rally at the Fox Theater in March 1989). You can see similar placards being worn in these images from the Atlanta Journal Constitution in 1989:
https://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/digital/collection/ajc/id/7631/
https://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/digital/collection/ajc/id/7562/rec/14
https://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/digital/collection/ajc/id/7569/rec/22

Striking ephemeral artifacts from a historically significant airline labor strike in Atlanta. Item #804

Price: $950.00

See all items in Aviation, Labor History, Southern U.S.