The Baltimore Sun from Baltimore, Maryland • 62

4E PERSPECTIVE THE SUN SUNDAY. AUGUST 4. 1991 MAs: Sympathy, But Also Skepticism 10 Years After PATCO Strike, A Legacy of Labor Bitterness 'W By ARNOLD R. ISAACS By MICHAEL K.BURNS i Labor and, tacitly, employers seemed to agree that firing the strikers emboldened companies faced with a strike to take that step, which had been little used since the Supreme Court permitted them to do so. pH0T0 Some said this photo showed downed American airmen; others were skeptical.

I. i tmr i 5 REUTER apart, but not until April, after the prisoner exchange was complete. If their explanation of Vietnam's motives is unconvincing, there's even less logic to the MIA activists' claim that American leaders have known the truth all this time and suppressed It. It's hard to understand why four administrations would have wanted to cover up such information in the first place. It's even harder to imagine any plausible way that real proof of surviving POWs could have been successfully concealed for so long.

(For one thing, since MIA reports are handled by the Defense Intelligence Agency, any conspiracy to suppress evidence would have had to include hundreds of military professionals, many of whom had friends and colleagues among the missing.) The MIA saga over the years has produced, along with questionable evidence and flawed logic, a good deal of highly dubious hustling of money, much of it from susceptible MIA families. What it has not produced is a single piece of convincing evidence that hundreds or dozens or even one American prisoner may still be alive behind Vietnamese barbed wire. Reluctant to dampen MIA families' hopes and perhaps unwilling to stir up the far-right-wingers who are heavily represented among MIA activists, top leaders In both the Reagan and Bush administrations spent years equivocating on the issue thus almost certainly nourishing the wishful fantasies it arouses. The waffling at the top left subordinate officials unwilling to say publicly what most of them believe: that there are no prisoners, and the hundred or so unresolved "sighting reports" in DIA flies were in all probability either made up or were of deserters or defectors who remained by choice, not of MIAs held against their will. When National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft declared eight days ago that he doesn't believe any Americans are being held against their will in Southeast Asia, he became the first senior official in many years to speak clearly on the subject (and, incidentally, to uphold the Integrity of those military and civilian officials responsible for investigating supposed MIA sightings).

Proving a negative is notoriously difficult, so it's unlikely there will ever be complete certainty that there aren't prisoners in the Indochina Jungles. But logic, common sense, and the weight of the evidence all point that way. Sympathy for the MIA families can't change the facts, and the constant disappointments of the past suggest that continuing to nourish their hopes on the basis of suspect evidence and fanciful rescue plans Is lot kindness, but its opposite. -1 t's Impossible not to feel sympathetic to ward families who cling to the hope that fathers or brothers or sons who dlsap- oeared lone ago In the Vietnam war mav still, by some miracle, be alive. If sympathy is in order, though, so is a large dose of 5 skepticism.

The "proof of surviving POWs that has been produced over the years (often by the same people who have used the "missing-ln-V action" issue to collect thousands of dollars from families and other sympathetic contrib-: utors) remains flimsy and unpersuaslve. The same can be said about the logic by which promoters of the issue keep trying to make us believe not only that American pris-l oners are still held in Indochina, but that the 5 American government has successfully con-f spired to suppress the truth for more than i 18 years, through four administrations and numerous congressional investigations. i Even though past "evidence" has regular- lv Droven unreliable, many Americans still seem ready to seize on any new offering the most recent example being a photograph released several weeks ago which shows three healthy, well-fed men holding a hand- Relatives of three airmen who were shot down during tne war said tney are sure 5 those are the three men shown in the photo- graph. (Two other families subsequently claimed that their missing relatives are shown. 1 Newspapers across the country front- nartpH thA rVinfn alnna urltVi rantlnna and news articles that gave almost no reasons to doubt the story.

I In fact, there was ample reason for ques- tions. The photo shows no barbed wire or guards or anything else indicating a prison. The three men look much healthier than would be likely If they had been prisoners for 5 more than 20 years. The handwritten nu- merals on the sign they are holding, espe- ciauy me ones ana nines, are wniien in a European style which few Americans would use. There Is also a suspicious lack of lnforma- tlon about where the photo came from and who took it.

A Senate Intelligence Committee staff member said the committee is aware of esmA AHr1arito fit a rVrt" mat? Vwion foH- rlcated and that the three men and the sign were actually cropped out of another photo that annpana tn havp hpfn talfpn snmmitifw In TTaetOTri TTumrv urfth a harlrtfmiind fihmv-' ing snow on me grounu. The same source, asked what might be a 1 ...1 lr U1 I i LUiisciisua view aiiiuiiK m- vestlgators as to the probability of the pho to autnenticity, repuea, you nate to say zero percent, but I'd have to say It's a .0001 rvwpnt nf a chance. It also turns out that at least two of the 1 A1 IJ 1 .1 A 1 1 uircc men Bitiu uy uicir reiauvcs iu uc siiuwit in the photo were believed by witnesses to have died when they were first shot down, AnnnrAtnd tn thA fnfol Ketone A onmmlttAA 1 nl 1 ALCwnAriA Inkn aiuc, cuui us duuw uiai mi vail uuiui Letohton Robertson's wearjons orjerator. i i nrhst MttntnA anrl uraa fantniwl tnlH tfiA Air Force after he was freed that he did not think Colonel Robertson got out of his F-4 Phantom after it was shot down over North 2 Vietnam in September 1966. An Air Force Rmkpsman said Mai.

Alhrn Lvnn Lundv parachute was seen by four other pilots falling with an empty harness after he radioed tf-tnt Via nroa AtAjttfmrf fmm Vtlo lamnrful nlatlA UIO.1 Ills WOO VjV-Llllg 111111 1110 UCUIlOglAJ JJlCUll over Laos in 1970. The intelligence commit tee aide said tne tmra otneer, navy Li. Larry James Stevens, was in an A 4 that exploded in midair, also over Laos, In 1 969. J1', (The records contain no explicit reference to witnesses, tne aide said, dui presumaDiy the information must have come from someone who saw the explosion.) Colonel Robertson and Lieutenant Stevens were officially listed as mlsslng-in-ac-tion after they were shot down. Major Lundy, however, was classed as "killed-in-action, bodv not recovered" "KIABNR." in service shorthand.

Though it is rarely mentioned, thi K1ARNR ratminrv accounted for nearlv i I 4 1 nan oi ine Amencans wno nave uumc iu uc carelessly referred to as "missing in action" during the Indochina war. Aftpr thA II cease-fire aflre- meni was sigiicu caijjr isij, uraiut j. i i i rno Kaia Arnold R. Isaacs was a war correspondent in Indochina In 1972-75 and is the author or Wltnout Honor: ueieai in Vietnam ana Cambodia." Three Years FAREWELL, from IE of intriguing old buildings that are collapsing, which seems to be the normal state of architecture under Soviet socialism. My wife.

Francle. and I looked around one day and saw a notice identifying the buildings as the wine cellars and out-buildings of the Hermitage restaurant, a landmark of 19th-century Moscow where the young Anton Chekhov, a medical intern training in a nearby hospital, used to hang out. Someone had scrawled In black paint on one wall: "Gdeh khozyaln zemli RusskoyT Where the master of the Russian land? For decades, there has been no khozyaln, no owner or master. The dunderhead state usurped the role, with the result that might have been expected by anyone who knew government work. But now the people are taking back their country, slowly but surely, like refugees returning home to remind alter a long war.

This place gets under your skin, but then It gets into your blood. Francle came with understandable reluctance to live on the 10-lane inner ring road of roaring trucks spewing lead-poisoned fumes, to slide through the black slush of winter thaws, to struggle with brain-numbing case-endings and motion verbs of Russian grammar, to beat her head against the Iron llloglc of the Soviet state. One time she insisted that I write to UPDK. (the Initials of our state landlord, to demand' that they open the permanently IE A decade after President Ronald Reagan fired 1 1.400 striking members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) and abolished their union, a new generation of controllers is on board, represented by a new union and voicing the same kind of complaints about under-staffing, overwork, antiquated equipment and sagging morale. But members of the new National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) will not strike over these Issues, insists union president R.

Steve Bell, who credits the Federal Aviation Administration with taking some steps to improve control of the Increasingly crowded skies and to listen to employee grievances. "We're committed to working in a nonconfrontatlonal manner," he says, echoing similar sentiments of FAA officials. The lesson of 1981, which saw two-thirds of the experienced controllers fired and a severely crippled air traffic system, apparently has been learned by both sides. When PATCO controllers walked out on Aug. 3.

1981, Mr. Reagan's swift, tough response was seen as a turning point in U.S. labor relations. Employers viewed the decision as a green light from the White House to fire strikers and replace them, unions claim. Over the next 10 years, replacements ot striking workers became more common, as the number of major strikes dropped.

PATCO's demise was also seen as a cautionary symbol of the decline of organized labor in the United States. Membership in labor unions dropped from 22.3 million In 1980 to 16.7 million last year, by government estimate. Meantime, union share of the labor force shrunk from 23 percent to 16.1 percent as the total work force expanded. But the downward trend of union strength had begun years earlier. More women and minorities, often ignored by traditional union organizers, entered the labor force.

The shift to a service economy, where organizing was less common, from manufacturing, long a union stronghold, eroded organized labor's membership base. Labor's strong ties to the Democratic Party, while Republicans sat in the White House, weakened its political clout. Economic conditions of the 1980s played a role In more combative, brutal labor relations. Companies slashed Jobs and costs to fight the runaway inflation of the previous decade and to manage the heavy debt Incurred through leveraged buyouts. Accelerated mergers and breakups of existing companies hampered union organizing.

Court decisions and rulings by the National Laoor Relations Board that began In the 1970s also undercut union power. Striker rights were curtailed, some workers were excluded from labor law protection, and union organizers were kept off company property. Government deregulation of business fostered a new look by employers at the labor contract. So did the palpable anti-union, pro-business ethic espoused by Mr. Reagan, the only labor union president ever elected to the White House.

But the mass firing of striking air traffic controllers would be repeatedly cited as the presidential deed that challenged the legitimacy of unions. Labor and, tacitly, employers seemed to agree that the action emboldened companies faced with a strike to take that step, which had been little used since the Supreme Court permitted them to do so a half-century earlier. Lost In this perspective was a key distinction in the PATCO walkout. That strike by federal employees was prohibited by law unlike most strikes in the private sector. And Mr.

Reagan's dismissal of the illegal federal strikers was not without precedent. PATCO action was also not one to arouse public sympathy, despite some legitimate grievances about overwork and stress and nonresponsive management. These relatively highly paid government employees were demanding $10,000 pay raises, a 32-. hour week and a retirement rights with less than 20 years of work not realistic goals for most working folk. The labor dispute disrupted vacation travel plans of many Ameri cans that summer.

Many PATCO members conceded that their union had overreacted Michael Burns covers labor for The Sun. Anti-Aircraft Forces Day that's being celebrated. I will miss the flowers and girls' hair-bows and bands playing on the holiday marking the first day of the school year. I will miss Russian, a language that has everything, Including single words that means "to squander one's money on drink" and the poetry of Pushkin and Akhmatova. I will miss plays at the Sovremennik Theater and music In the gaudy elegance of the Moscow Conservatory.

I will miss the Metro clean, cheap, sleek, fast, safe and everywhere. I will miss green retreats like Serebryany Bor, a peaceful island in a loop in the Moscow River that feels miles away from this city of 10 million, a dividend of city planning and the desire of Communist honchos for a green retreat. I will even miss KGB guards goose-stepping to the dead Lenin on Red Square at night, the quiet spruce-groves of the Kremlin in the daytime, and at all times St. Basil's dral, perpetually about to be lifted into the air by its fantastic onion domes. Once last winter as we left the woods at Serebryany Bor after an afternoon of crossi after it was too late to save their Jobs.

-The consequences of the strike persist. Even today, with a continuing shortage of fully trained air traffic controllers, President Bush refuses to rehire those PATCO strikers. Legislation to lift the administration ban on their employment has not succeeded. Most strikers never regained the salary level they earned as controllers: many were unemployed and In near-poverty several years later, according to a congressional survey. Yet it Is doubtful that many could' return to the Job today, even If the government relented.

The FAA says their skills are too rusty and that the system has changed. Older ex-controllers themselves question whether they could take the job pressure again. The number of Full Performance Level controllers is still inadequate, NATCA says. New trainee graduates are thrown into the breach at major traffic centers Instead of gaining experience at less hectic stations. Six-day weeks and overtime and foregone work breaks are still common.

"It's a much more fragile system," says John Thornton, the union's legislative director. Installation of long-promised ground radar and other improved technological aids have been delayed by FAA, which aviation writer Paul Stephen Dempsey says "Is reputed to be the largest user of obsolete) vacuum tubes In the world." Reports in 1986 and 1989 by the General Accounting Office, the investigating arm of Congress, found problems with equipment, staffing shortages and low morale, although noting ongoing im provements. FAA maintains that its staff of more tharC 17,000 controllers is equal to 1981 that changes In air traffic management and technology have eased the controller's burden, allowing employees to manage more traffic effectively. Air traffic volume has iri creased about 25 percent in much of th country since 1980. "The system is safer than it ever wasX said Edwin S.

Harris, FAA system operas tions director. "The whole environment has changed" since the strike. Aerial near-colllS slons and operational errors (adequate sepa-; ration of aircraft in flight) have notably de- creased in recent years, the agency noted. 'Z. But the FAA concedes that its has not; met its goal that Full Performance Level con trailers, who need no further training, make' up 75 percent of the employee work force at each facility.

Extra pay incentives to attract experienced controllers to the busiest sta-1 tions, which are typically located in high cost-of-living areas, have not resolved the problem. Airlines that schedule a full surge of flights at peak hours present a major chaK lenge for controllers and tax their limits," even if their average workload is reasonable. "Controllers feel that they are being pushed -to the limit, the system is being pushed to Its I limit," Mr. Thornton said of those scheduling surges. Meantime, the ghost of PATCO is evoked, in today's debate over legislation passed by -the House two weeks ago to prohibit employC ers from permanently replacing workers who go on strike.

"Since the PATCO strike of 1981, the" wholesale replacement of strikers and the threat of permanent replacement have beS come epidemic," said Rep. William Ford, DC Mich, a supporter of the bill. A GAO found that a quarter of employers facing strikes in 1989 hired or threatened to permanent replacements, up from 15 cent In 1985. Even If the Senate passes the? bill, however, President Bush has stated he. 1 will veto it.

presidential position is another enduring legacy of the controllers' strike, a lesson well learned by employers and workers from that signal event in labor history 10 years ago. country skiing, a bearded man slid passed us heading into the woods. Laura watched him glide by and said: "That man's Russian. Russians have more time than we do." We laughed about It, but Laura was right. They do.

Americans are born busy and stay that way. Russians always have time. Americans shop fast and cook with labor-saving devices and have to rush to be done. Russians line up for two hours to buy ingredients and peel everything by hand and have plenty of time left over. Americans think soup comes from a can.

Russians think soup accumulates from a sack of vegetables and a little meat and simmers slowly to perfection. Americans sit down at the table and soon it is time for dessert and coffee. Russians sit down at the table and It is time for vodka and endless dishes shopped for in empty stores and the coffee never comes, maybe because there is no coffee. And maybe because there Is no reason to get up from the table as long as there are friends sittirg at it I will miss our Russian friends, who tolerate our quirks, such as sending our children out to play in winter insufficiently bundled, putting ice in drinks, thinking well of Gorbachev, bulldozing Russian grammar, and always being In a hurry. They have given us endless explanations, endless anecdotes, endless gifts, endless dinners with endless toasts.

Now, like good Americans, we hurry away. I hope we take with us some of their time. And I thank this crazy place and Its denizens, to whom I wish full and diverse book tables and, after a while, a normal country. 595 POWs who came home from North Vietnamese prison camps, 1,350 U.S. servicemen were listed as missing not 2,500 as has commonly been said for years.

Another 1 1 78 were In the KIABNR category. It can't be proved that no mistakes occurred. But because the services were extremely reluctant to classify anyone as KIA without very strong evidence, In the absence of a body, it has to be assumed that all but a tiny handful of the KIABNR cases did not survive to be captured. Almost certainly, the vast majority of the 1,300 missing (most of them airmen lost over North Vietnam or Laos) were also killed. Often there was evidence from witnesses that was not considered conclusive enough to warrant a KIA finding but still strongly suggests the men did not survive.

Other cases have been resolved by postwar Investigations showing that men listed as MIA actually died when they were shot down. In still other cases, of course, there is no Information one way or the other; aircraft and men simply vanished. It is logical, though, that a high percentage of those men were also killed. By any rational calculation, the number of men who might have survived to become unacknowledged POWs is quite small, much lower than the numbers tossed about by those claiming that Americans are still captive. The confusion about the numbers is not the only distortion in the debate.

Another the reasons North Vietnam might have for keeping American prisoners long after they should have been freed. The explanation Invariably offered by MIA activists is that the prisoners were kept as hostages for American reconstruction aid a theory that quickly collapses under any rational analysis. To begin with, it's hard to see how anyone can bargain with hostages whose existence is not admitted. In the second place, whatever misconceptions the Vietnamese may have about their former enemy, they are hardly stupid enough to think that coming up with previously unacknowledged prisoners Is the way to make Americans more generous. Lastly, the argument overlooks the fact that when they freed their POWs, the Vietnamese Communists had every reason to believe they would get the $3.25 billion they thought they had been promised in the peace accords.

In March 1973 American and Vietnamese negotiators reached agreement on "principles, functions, organization and working procedures" for the aid program. The two sides even drew up lists showing how many tons of cement and other supplies would be shipped. The agreement subsequently came That Shook the locked door at the base of tne back stairway that, theoretically, served as our fire escape. After two months came back an elegant reply, assuring me that we need not worry, because UPDK maintenance staff had been instructed to unlock the door in case of a fire. The letter's author did not trouble himself to wonder, as we did, how the maintenance men, snoozing on the ground floor of another entry, would know when our sixth-floor apartment was filling with smoke.

To such a letter there is no appropriate printable reply, so we did not answer. The fire escape is still locked. But Francle, under the spell of the place, now wishes we had tried to extend our stay for another year. She tears up when she thinks about our departure and demands time to take some final city walks. She is nearly fluent in Russian, and plots ways to keep it going In Baltimore.

Martha is 7 and barely remembers Baltimore from when she was 4. Laura Is 5 and doesn't remember from when she was 2. Nathan Is 1 and there is nothing to remember, but his face lights up when you sing him a Russian lullaby. The girls recognize Vladimir Lenin but not George Washington, Mikhail Gorbachev but not George Bush. They have heard lots about revolutions and demonstrations.

They know their father goes back to work after they go to bed because even though It may be late in Moscow, it's always early in Baltimore. They know that when Its colder than 25 below zero centigrade, school is closed. They know Rftnma cooks a mean stroga- Soviet Union: Changes and Remembrance For decades, there has been no owner or master. The dunderhead state usurped the role, with the result that might have been expected by anyone who knew government work. But now the people are taking back their country, slowly but surely, like refugees returning home to rebuild after a long war.

noff, and Viktor roughhouses with them and sometimes drives them to school, and Nadya always has paper and pens and the patience to admire their drawings. They know the rides In Gorky Park are always a good time. They know McDonald's is a place you can go only at certain times if you don't want to wait two hours in line. I will miss the pickles from the Central Market, unmatched in the world except perhaps In the Lower East Side of New York. I will miss strange fermented milk products like prostokvasha and ryazhenka.

I will miss adzhlka, a fiery spice paste we buy from Armenian women from Abkhazia, and fresh dill, which is good in everything. I will miss borscht and shchl, cabbage soup, and pel-menl, dumplings. If Russia needs food aid, I believe, America needs recipe aid. Perhaps an exchange Is possible. I will miss ridiculously frequent Moscow fireworks, bursting unexpectedly from 10 places across the city at once at 10 p.m.

and sending you first to the balcony to watch, then to yqur copy of Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star) to whether its Tank-Drivers' Day or.