NWA mechanics seek to rally support

08/09/2005

H.J. Cummins,
Star Tribune
August 9, 2005

The picket line for mechanics at Northwest Airlines could be pretty porous if their union doesn’t gather more support between now and the Aug. 19 deadline.

With less than two weeks to go, most of the other Northwest unions are staying noncommittal about joining a strike.

The Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association (AMFA) is counting on labor solidarity and an outrage factor—a contract offer that would take away half their jobs and a threat of replacement workers if they strike—to win over the unionized pilots, flight attendants and ground workers to their side.

The Eagan-based carrier, meanwhile, is counting on those replacement workers and its precarious financial position to convince employees and the public that substantial labor givebacks are its only option short of bankruptcy.

Kelly LeClair hands out leaflets.Glen StubbeStar TribuneThe pending showdown means everything to the people at Northwest.

But if there is a strike, its effects are not likely to be any tipping point for labor overall, several labor experts said, because most labor and financial groups believe the dispute is localized to the airline industry, without broader reach.

“I think this is not likely to generate much interest among a wide variety of other unions or the general public,” said Marick Masters, a business administration professor at the University of Pittsburgh.

There’s one more reason the action seems to be drawing so little attention, suggested Gary Chaison, industrial relations professor at Clark University in Worcester, Mass.

“One thing I’ve noticed is the labor movement doesn’t want to talk about airlines,” Chaison said. “Everyone wants to talk about the future of Wal-Mart. It’s almost like what’s happening in the airline industry is too much of an embarrassment, because the unions are agreeing to so many concessions over and over.”

The run-up to the current stalemate started with Northwest’s $3.6 billion in losses since early 2001. Northwest pilots took a 15 percent pay cut at the end of last year, and the company now is asking the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) for more.

Also since 2001, the carrier has laid off about half of the 9,800 mechanics, cleaners and custodians represented by AMFA. Simultaneously, Northwest has increased the amount of maintenance work it outsources, which is close to the 38 percent ceiling allowed under the AMFA contract.

Now Northwest says it needs to save $176 million a year in costs for mechanics and related employees. To accomplish that, it’s offering AMFA a contract that would eliminate 53 percent of their jobs and leave the rest with a pay cut of 25 to 26 percent.

Northwest also is hiring replacement workers—mechanics and flight attendants—and the airline pledges to keep flying if the mechanics follow through with their threat to strike at 11:01 p.m. Aug. 19.

If a strike comes, AMFA officials predict their Northwest co-workers will take their side.

“When it comes to really talking about solidarity among unions, the question people are going to have to ask themselves is, ‘Am I going to side with fellow union members or with Northwest Airlines?’ “ said Steve MacFarlane, a Northwest mechanic and assistant national AMFA director. “And when individuals have to make that decision, I think it’s going to be pretty hard for them to side with Northwest when they consider what it’s trying to do to fellow union members.”

With their support, AMFA can prevail, MacFarlane said.

“What really matters is whether the other unions at Northwest will support us,” he said. “And that remains to be seen. At this stage of the game it’s pretty standard for everyone to remain silent and see if a strike occurs.”

The pilots and the ground workers unions at Northwest have said they won’t decide whether to honor mechanics’ picket lines until a strike occurs.

The flight attendants union leaders have walked in informational picket lines with AMFA members and given other shows of support for the mechanics. But last week a spokesman said, “We are just keeping our options open,” when asked whether the flight attendants will cross a picket line.

Fitting in?

Other observers said that both local and national support is crucial to a union and that AMFA has bridges to mend on both levels.

AMFA, which stresses local control and independence, represents about 16,500 airplane mechanics and related workers nationwide. Its goal is to organize mechanics wherever they work.

Northwest mechanics voted to join AMFA in 1998. They left the International Association of Machinists, creating bad feelings with the 14,400 remaining IAM members at Northwest, who include reservation agents and baggage handlers.

Because IAM is an affiliate of the national AFL-CIO, the federation doesn’t like AMFA, either.

“AMFA is a renegade, raiding organization that is creating havoc in the airline industry,” said Stewart Acuff, national AFL-CIO organizing director, in a telephone interview from Chicago. “It’s not in the house of labor. It doesn’t have the strength of 11 million AFL-CIO workers behind it.”

AMFA also doesn’t fit in a new labor movement toward huge mega-unions, which advocates that unions need to be bigger than the companies—such as Wal-Mart—that they hope to organize.

This Unite to Win coalition includes the Teamsters and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which split from the AFL-CIO at its recent convention in Chicago.

It also includes UNITE-HERE, which represents 440,000 members in the textile and hospitality industries in the United States and Canada.

“We want to help the union movement grow and do it with large-scale strategic campaigns,” said Bruce Raynor, UNITE-HERE president, in a telephone interview from New York. “We want to be bigger than the corporations we fight.”

When asked about AMFA, Raynor said: “I don’t know a lot about it, but I think it’s sort of a non-union union.”

However, Chaison likes the AMFA model.

“It’s the small, occupationally based, home-grown unions that are the real new alternative,” he said. “What’s ironic about this new split is there’s very much anti-small-union sentiment on both sides.”

Challenging climate

It’s a tough time for any airline union, said Paul Harrington, associate director at the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston.

There are plenty of unemployed mechanics available as replacements, Harrington said, and airline bankruptcy not only is no longer a stigma, it’s considered a clever strategy.

“If I were in the union, I wouldn’t like hearing, ‘Management says it needs to take your wages down more and take your pension, too, and if you don’t, we’re going into bankruptcy and you’ll lose it all and we’ll reorganize and we’ll be fine,’ “ he said.

It’s harder to gauge the support of individuals in other unions, whether they will follow their leadership’s call to cross or not to cross an AMFA picket line.

But in random interviews at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport last week, most of the dozen pilots, flight attendants and baggage handlers said they probably would keep working.

Several flight attendants said they believe they have no choice because of a federal transportation law that forbids supportive strikes.

A pilot said he believes that the mechanics should take the givebacks, as the pilots had, in the hope that Northwest can rebound over time.

An IAM member who works in the baggage area said the union has indicated that its members should go to work.

If the past is any indication, the experience of US Airways would suggest little support among unions, Masters said.

“As a whole, there is not much solidarity,” he said. “The mechanics and pilots and flight attendants there ... had three sets of negotiations that proceeded quite independently after the bankruptcy.”