Northwest Strike Hits Business Travelers --- Companies Return to Work To Find Few Options; Car Rentals Get Boost
The impact of the two-day-old pilots strike at Northwest Airlines will deepen today as employers in the markets it dominates return to work with few travel options.</br></br>Business travelers from Detroit and Minneapolis raced home Friday night to beat the midnight deadline for the strike. But as Sharon Yourth, a regional manager for Baxter International Inc., said upon returning that night to Detroit's airport: "What am I supposed to do next week?"</br></br>Now that next week has come, there is little hope of a quick resolution. The two sides haven't talked since the pilots walked out early Saturday. And Maggie Jacobsen, the federal mediator who supervised the talks, said in an interview that she had no plans at the moment to recommend that President Clinton invoke a rarely used law that would put the pilots back to work for 60 days, while a special panel investigates the deadlock.</br></br>In Detroit, where Northwest controls 75% of the flights, General Motors Corp. is instructing its employees to drive to Buffalo, N.Y., and Dayton, Ohio, to find a plane. Still, the auto maker expects that the strike means about 20% of its planned business trips cannot be made.</br></br>The situation is worse in Minnesota's Twin Cities, where Northwest controls about 80% of the gates at Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport. Unlike Detroit, Minneapolis isn't located near other big cities, leaving big companies such as Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing Co. and Dayton Hudson Corp. with no easy backup plan.